Walk Alone

You may be wondering about the title - hackers? Its inspired by A Brief History of Hackerdom. The people I’m writing about exibhit a behaviour that is almost clannish or tribal - I think exclusivity would be a better word for it. The mechanics of their actions escape my comprehension. Perhaps its one of the reasons that I feel a need to apply a label to them. And what better way to do it than by calling them hackers?

BTW, these people in the Comp/IT streams seem less fired up about interacting with PCs than they should have been. I guess thats because I’m there to do it. Or maybe its the toaster syndrome.

I’ve come across this tribe recently - courtesy my entry into the tech team. I guess I can put up a series of analytical reports on them.

They usually have a PC. And it runs M$. It is entirely possible that they may have not had an option. Their engineering syllabus has Visual $tudio components, stuff like scripting and other such stuff. A point that I found was that they are very strong in M$ products - so far I’ve heard about A$P (scripting), Access (database), VC++ (programming and RAD), VB (programming, RAD and GUI developement) and Flash (rich media content distribution platform). Next point I noted was none of these have a credible free developement and deployment software. You are free to derive the conclusion of what is actually being used. Another point I noted was their insistence on using only these products. One guy was so busy in suggesting VB for everything that I considered saying something about it. But then, I’m a relative newbie (are they aware of this term? only linuxers use it, I guess), so I held my peace and followed the stream.

Another section of the team has put up a website with a database backend. Commendable. It runs A$P (I believe thats ActiveX $erver($ervlet?) Page - ActiveX is one of the things that anti-virus always warns us about) on II$ (the weakest server, security point of view - atleast the ratio of II$ servers attacked successfully to II$ servers deployed is more than for Apache) connecting to Access (need I say anything?). Guess one more server intrusion attempt will be made sometime soon.

Its come down to this - tomorrow is the day when the different posts are going to be “officially” alloted. Its a battle allright. The spoils will go to the victors. The contestants have returned home - to be ready with their body and soul for the battle the next day…

Bookmark this page for the results of the battle. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

How does one persuade a guy to use Linux? When he is using w32 since he’s using a PC. The only thing he has used or is interested in are w32 apps, frequently MS products. By nature of the OS being proprietary, quite a few apps are proprietary. I leave the rest to your intepretation. This guy treats his PC as as appliance - like a toaster, or maybe a glorified DVD player + calculator + TV + game console. His immediate concern concern is getting the toast - or his job on the PC done. And the only way he can/wants to do it is the way he was taught or like he learnt it. He recently migrated to Win XP. And is curently coming to terms with multi-tiered user levels, advanced config options which were never seen in Win 98/Me and much more.

I feel sad. I was like him once. Not having a choice. Not being aware of a choice being present. Not knowing that things could be different, and better, than they were now.

He is sorting out issues with his newly installed w32 build 5.x. He scoffs when I tell him that wizards are/should be the last option. He believes that having less wizards indicates a high-minded attitude among the developers of a system - that it is intended to drive away newbies. And then he says that LUGs are symptomatic of some shortcomings in Linux - that “linuxers are handicapped”. He refuses to believe that something which survived through so much (so much that I can’t fit it all here - visit Eric’s and Joe’s sites for more info and links) won’t last into the future. Though he is gracious enough to admit that the same fate may fall on w32. I believe that Linux will survive. Perhaps by another name. Maybe BSD will become dominant. Solaris. Maybe even Mac OS or the proper, authentic Unix itself will become open and dominant. Am I being over-confident? Will the principles of OSI and FSF fall away?

I don’t think so. I’ll do my best to keep them up - my little bit.

You might want to read more of this GNU/Linux v/s Windows slugfest at Sandesh’s blog.

My friend thinks I lose my handle very easily in a discussion. That I lose the thread and start abusing the participants.

Well, he may have a point. When I see a discussion filled with ad hominems and non sequiturs, I just lose it. Besides, he very rarely chooses to debate on topics on which I have a firmer grip than him. Half the battle is won when the topic and time of discussion are your preferred choices.

Hell, its just that I’m plain NOT INTERESTED. The going-ons of the Sangh Parivar are given the lowest priority in my mind. I can ALWAYS find something more important to discuss than Hindutva and the Hindu psyche. And frankly, even if I don’t, I’ud prefer to go to sleep. India doesn’t realize it, but it has no time for stuff like that. An indication of how useless such things are, is the ind_league group on Yahoo India. It is failing miserably with threads lagging, polls flopping and messages pertaining to other stuff cluttering the space. And as for members, most have joined for the novelty of it. Only 2-3 members out of 11 post. Its the same everywhere. When your stomach growls with hunger, religion doesn’t help, except in charity - and that won’t take you far. The only way to fill your stomach using religion is to make money out of it. Thats what ALL religious, social and political institutions do.

I know my priorities. I love my nation. I know the ways I can serve its needs. To tell that Hindutva is the way forward, is fascist. To think that they are the saviours of a religion which has thrived for centuries and survived the birth of half-a-dozen other religions without any deliberate effort, is arrogant beyond comprehension. My skills and interests are distinct and I prefer to utilize my energy on them. I would like to use them to help my nation in my own way.

Then, as for debating styles, I prefer to write thoughtful pieces, which are restrained. Then the other side can respond to it and so, it moves on. Short volleys of points and counter-points with the opposite sides shooting down people in mid-sentence - thats not my style. My friend points out that he may not be in the proper mood to read the piece. Well… what can I say to that? So get into a verbal discussion and your mood is just right for it? Maybe, we should catch them in the wrong mood and THEN start a discussion.