[ale] as promised/threatened, an overly long post with probably nothing of real importance

[George Allen]

A few observations:

After skimming through a bit of the posts the other day, I thought to
myself "well, ALE has gone off the deep end again... will check back
in a few days and skim, should be slightly amusing, though wildly OT."

Bottom line -- I've referred at least half a dozen people to this list
since I moved to the area about five years ago. All ranged from
IT/Linux newbies to experienced windows admins who were starting to
learn bits about unix.

In my time of lurking - I know there are several business owners,
security experts, Linux related book authors, and basically a /huge/
amount of experience on this list, however Each and Every person I've
referred to the list told me later that they unsubscribed due to the
OT-B.S. level and the tone of the list. Not exactly the way to build
the community.

<OT> As currently serving military, I keep my political views to
myself. However, I'm disappointed that people partied in the streets
due to OBL's death. I don't believe in 'celebrating' anyone's death,
deserved or not. BUT - I am glad we live in a country where ALE can
debate/argue/bicker over these things. I hope all of you, of whatever
viewpoints, exercise your freedoms in writing your electorate as well
as ALE. That is the *most appropriate* forum. ;) Either way, I think
these discussions are far more productive when they involve 'debate'
rather than 'characterization,' as previously pointed out in this
thread.</OT>

Whether OT posts should be banned or not I won't say. I learned a few
good things from the legal/technical discussions on electronic voting
a few years ago, but, again, some of it was pure BS also. We're all
'hackers' and it's in our nature to analyse and fix things, so some of
this 'social' analysis comes with the territory, although I would hope
we also value logic and merit enough to know the difference between
productive discussion where ideas are being built, and the
flame-baiting/finger-pointing that generally prevents anything
constructive.

Anyway, it's the 'Linux' list, which is why most of the time, I only
post re: Linux. And hopefully next time I refer someone to the list
they'll actually feel like they can ask questions and use the depth of
experience here, rather than cancelling with a bad taste in their
mouth.

--George