Is Linux, or The Linux Community, A Cult ?

David wrote:
Why is it that you test results for "Linux Zealot Cult" is way
different
1st post Results 1 - 10 of about 24,500 for linux zealot cult. (0.09
seconds)
this last post Web Results 1 - 1 of about 5 for "linux zealot cult"

that is a difference of only 24,495 pages.

and for what it's worth a search for the "windows zealot cut did turn
up this on google Results 1 - 10 of about 64,300 for windows zealot
cult. (0.11 seconds)

This will help you to understand:

Web Results 1 - 30 of about 1,280,000 for linux makes you stupid.


While we would normally _NOT_ argue with that, you must remember that there
are not 1,280,000 linux zealots in existance. When you enclose it in "", it
yields a number that we can all believe:

Web Results 1 - 30 of about 12,400 for "linux makes you stupid".


See? There are easily 12,400 stupid zealots, but no way are there 1,280,000
idiots in the world. Does that help you to understand the difference?

Of course if you're a linux luser... this is completely over your head.

On Feb 19, 2:56 pm, wrote:
On Feb 19, 1:50 pm, "Rex Ballard" wrote:
On Feb 19, 12:08 pm, wrote:
There are more than a few similarities between Linux and a typical
religious cult.
The description below sounds more like Microsoft!

No it doesn't.
Where is a Microsoft advocacy group that has anywhere near the
traffic, or number of oddballs that comp.os.linux.advocacy has?

That really is funny! ROFLMAO!
Microsoft spends $4 billion on advertising directly. It uses it's
Logo and Trademark control to leverage another $40 billion. That buys
a lot of advocacy, in magazines, in print, even on television.
Hollywood still prefers Macs, and when you do see a Linux desktop,
it's usually breaking into the NSA computer system or some bank.

Linux has a few hundred million web pages, and an avocacy group that
generates a few thousand messages per week. At least the WinTrolls
keep the conversation interesting. Without them, it would be
something like

Roy S: "PC Week says Linux us great"
Rex B: "Yep, Linux is really great alright".
7 : "Linux Rulz"
Ghost: "It has to be the greatest system ever built"

And after about 3 weeks of this, we would all go to some other forum
to try and take actions that would help people become aware of Linux,
try out Linux, and decide whether they like Linux, or if they want to
go back to Windows, do it as a powerful choice, not just because some
guy in a 3-piece suit signed a deal with Microsoft to install Windows
on every PC, because if he didn't Microsoft wouldn't sell him any
Windows and his company would be bankrupt in 3 weeks.

For Microsoft, it's no about Money anymore, it's about POWER, forcing
others to comply with our wishes, maintaining total control over their
most private and confidential personal and corporate information.
That's very cultlike. It reminds me of the "Love Bomb" techniques used
by the Moonies in the 1970s. You'd get "love-bombed" into joining the
cult, then, after you have given everything you on to the church (or
the proceeds from the sale), then you are told who to marry, who to
work for, and your life is managed by the priests of Moon. If you try
to rebel, you are suddenly rejected, until you publcly submit, at
which point it's back to a few weeks of "love bombs" before you rejoin
the slaves and sell flower or whatever else the church wants you to
do.

For some, that wasn't such a bad way to live. But for those who
joined Jim Jones' church, which used the same "love bomb" techniques,
the outcome wasn't so good.

Sorry, in this group - there is no kool-aid served. In fact, we won't
even try to deprogram you. On the other hand, what we want is the
same freedom to make our choices, that you have to make your choices.

Consider our "Radical proposals"!

1. Display at least 1 machine running Linux in each retail environment
where Windows is interactively displayed. Let users compare and
choose for themselves.

2. Establish and conform to a simple set of standards that can be
implemented on Windows, Linux, or any other platform - similar to the
way that TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, and SMTP became "The Internet".

The Windows advocacy group is dead.

Of course it is. Windows advocates don't want to promote Windows is a
group where any dissatisfied Windows user can publicly scratch the
boils and let the puss run!

You obviously have zero knowledge of the Linux community.

I have quite a bit of knowledge of the wackjobs in the Linux
community. Whether or not they, collectively qualify as a cult
I'm not sure but it looks that way.

Careful, you bias is showing. Actually, you are correct, there are
some Linux avocates who can get quite militant. They are frustrated!
They have tried Linux, they really like Linux, but they are under
extreme pressure not to use Linux. If you've ever been fired from a
job because a Microsoft sales rep told your boss that unless you left,
Microsoft would revoke your Windows licenses, you tend to be a bit
more aggressive about defending your right to choose. Soon, you
refuse to work for companies that WON'T let you use Linux, both as a
personal workstation OS, and as a solution for IT servers. It's not
so bad though, after a few years of sticking to you guns, you may find
yourself making twice or even triple what your Windows Loving ex-
buddies are making.

If you've ever had a boss absolutely insist that Windows 95 was the
right choice to replace a UNIX server for a brokerage system - and
told you to quit if you didn't agree (in writing), you tend to be a
bit wary of someone who seems to think that Windows is the only
possible solution for any problem.

Here is a comic strip that describes the Linux community to a tee.

http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001...101258.24.html

Snip***** a whole bunch or ramblings by Rex Ballard*********

Linux depends almost entirely on Word-of-Mouth.
[snip tasteless reference]
You snip to sentences out of a 200 page book. Here's the full story.

http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto01.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto02.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto03.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto04.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto05.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto06.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto07.html
http://www.open4success.org/bio/Auto08.html

Yep. I've overcome some really nasty obsticles, and in the end,
produces some extraordinary results which impacted a lot of people.
I did it "anonymously" because I knew I had a past and being a
"celebrity spokesman for the Internet, OSS, and Linux" might have
done more damage than harm.

I've written over 8,000 postings to this group, each averaging about 4
typwritten pages. I've written over 9,000 postings to an online
publishers list that helped the earliest on-line publishers put their
content on the web.

But you decided to trot out just the dirt.

THAT'S WHY JIM GOSLING NEVER HEARD OF ME.

When I proposed a plan to put McGraw Hill on the Web, I sent it to
Walt Arvin, who removed my name and replaced it with His. He sent it
to another Executive who removed Walt's name and replaced it with his,
and sent it to Terry McGraw.

The point is, that if Rex Ballard had sent an e-mail directly to Terry
McGraw, it wouldn't have been read with the same intensity as an e-
mail from the president of Standard And Poor's to the CEO of McGraw-
Hill.

I was invited to about 50 meetings with the technical leads in each of
the major divisions, and we formulated a web strategy. Later, a
Microsoft Biggot tried to get me to go to this technical committee and
tell them that they should use Windows NT 3.1 as a Server, and that
all of the documents should be Word, Excel, or Powerpoint documents,
which would be passed by the browser directly to Microsoft office who
would open them for viewing. When I refused, he stopped letting me go
to the meetings. Eventually he spend a few $million trying to may his
idea work, and eventually, about a month after I left, he was moved as
far away from anything Internet related as possible.

Of course, by this time, I'd recruited about 7,000 publishers and the
standards were pretty well established. I went on to work in the
financial industry, guiding companies like Merril Lynch, Prudential,
Horizon, Amica, and numerous others, in to how to use Internet and
Intranet technology to integrate their internal systems and integrate
with external resources, including care providers, other insurance
companies, government regulators, banks, customers, and employees, as
efficiently and flexibly as possible.

Most of these efforts involved using multiplatform solutions, OSS
technology, and multiplatform technology as well as open standards -
to integrate systems that were never designed to be integrated.

If you really want to throw slime, then you have to play the flip side
of the record - the side that lists the accomplishments.

If I'm honest enough to tell you about the ugly, then why would I lie
about the good stuff? Remember, this Open4success.org is an
unsponsored, personally funded web site, that contains notes and non-
confidential information about my personal life, correspondence, and
accomplishements. It is, at best, the start of an interesting novel?
Perhaps notes for a biography when I have accomplished something
interesting in my own name? Or maybe something to remind me of who I
was, and who I am today.

And by the way, there are a lot of other distinguished people on this
newsgroup, in both the Windows Advocacy camp, and the Linux advocacy
camp. Some have been around for almost 25 years - since the very
beginning of what we now call the internet - when the usenet merged
with the Arpanet, to become the Internet.

On Feb 19, 9:08 am, wrote:
There are more than a few similarities between Linux and a typical
religious cult.

You are confusing linux users with the open source developers.

For example:

Both worship their leader.
Both have a distended, warped view of their subject matter.
Both are obsessed with something that most people know nothing about.
Both believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Both insist on proselytizing or converting every single person into
the fold.
Both have a warped view of the economy. IOW give everything away for
free.
Both have socialistic tendencies.

Partially true. United States is a very socialist state these days.

Both seem to attract oddballs, social misfits and the mentally ill.

Partially true. While we're on the subject comp.os.linux.misc is not a
very good fit
for the advocacy issues.

Both encourage obsessive behavior and total devotion to the cause.
Both disparage and try to discredit the mainstream or competition.

Using the Steve Ballmer's own methods. Vague IP threats
are his trademark. Nothing wrong with that. We'll fight back.
At least most of us are sane enough to realize we won't be
able to crush M$. There is no need to crush M$. Linux and Windows
is oil and water despite what Novel thinks.

Both have a militaristic attitude of you are either with us 100
percent or against us.

The rest of the accusations are 100% baloney.
The industry is well balanced
now with neither side being able to crush the other at the moment.
A truce of sorts. Amen.

Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:


My only problem with the Linux and Mac people is they seem extremely
jealous of windows and\or windows users. Whether they have a better
product doesn't seem as relevant as forcing their beliefs that they
do, down everyone else's throat.

I suppose it hasn't occured to you that some of us actually run more
than one operating system?

--
Paul-B

Paul-B wrote:
Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:

My only problem with the Linux and Mac people is they seem extremely
jealous of windows and\or windows users. Whether they have a better
product doesn't seem as relevant as forcing their beliefs that they
do, down everyone else's throat.

I suppose it hasn't occured to you that some of us actually run more
than one operating system?


Yeah, why does it have to be either/or? I use XP and Ubuntu.

Alias

In other words, for all your posting you have near nil hands-on experience
with Vista.

--
Saucy Lemon
--
For email:
guidsaucy at hotmail dot com
--


"Alias" wrote in message
...
Paul-B wrote:
Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:

My only problem with the Linux and Mac people is they seem extremely
jealous of windows and\or windows users. Whether they have a better
product doesn't seem as relevant as forcing their beliefs that they
do, down everyone else's throat.

I suppose it hasn't occured to you that some of us actually run more
than one operating system?


Yeah, why does it have to be either/or? I use XP and Ubuntu.

Alias

"Paul-B" wrote in message
...
Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:


I suppose it hasn't occured to you that some of us actually run more
than one operating system?

Sure there are people who dabble in everything, I played around with Linux
many moons ago, but I never felt the need to run into the Linux forums and
post why Windows is better. I work with a group of VMS people, who believe
VMS is the only way to do things and that everything else is just kids toys
(especially Windows), but they don't run to Linux or Windows forums and post
why VMS is better.

I don't go to a Ford forum and argue why my Yugo is better. It just reflects
poorly on any group to another groups and point out everything wrong with
them\it. We had\have Mac people in here arguing why Macs are better, but can
never explain why after all these years, they are still ~5% of the market.

Personally, I wish Linux and Apple all the best. It's not until one or both
capture about 30+% of the market, before Microsoft will release an
absolutely outstanding new product or they will die away like IBM mainframes
and VMS Vax servers. At which time, Linux or Mac will take over as the new
king and in 20 years or so, there will be a new upstart group\Os that will
make fun of Linux people and call them Lintrolls and such

People are here in the Windows groups, because they have windows. Most all
know they have other options, but those options don't appeal to them. They
prefer windows, it's what they know and they don't want to learn something
new or they just like Windows better. You can't make people like Linux, just
because you do. You'll never convince me, Pepsi is better than coke. Coke
may be an evil empire, that tortures millions of people and they may even go
out of business and I may start drinking Pepsi, but I'll always prefer a
Coke

Why are you responding to and supporting these trolls, this is not a linux
group, it's windows XP, ignore them, and they will go away, at least one
hopes!


I suppose it hasn't occured to you that some of us actually run more
than one operating system?

--
Paul-B