Are IT people happier when they are fighting? OSNews, episode 2 can be downloaded as an MP3 (3.02 MB) or a Ogg Vorbis (4.77 MB) file. Our podcast is located at osnews.com/files/podcast.xml.[podcast 2]
Episode 2: Are We Happier When We’re Fighting?
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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Am I the only person who find the word podcast extremely annoying? It’s one of those words/phrases in modern speech that makes me want to vomit.
There’s nothing wrong with podcasting!
[raises fist] C’mon, let’s fight about it!
–bornagainpenguin
Yes. You’re the only person who thinks it’s extremely annoying.
However, legions of others think it’s “obnoxious”, “nauseating,” or “excruciating.” I talked to a guy once who thought it was invigorating.
I second that. Is there really a need to slap a buzz word on this sort of thing?? I mean for crying out loud, it’s just an mp3 of an online ‘radio’ show. So many people think ‘oh man! it’s a pod cast! that’s so cool!’ Now there’s nothing wrong with making a recording of a quasi-periodic show. In fact, I think it’s great. But come on, let’s just call it what it is and bypass the buzzwords. It’s just an mp3 (or ogg in this case’. It’s not like it’s a live broadcast as the name implies. Big deal.
It’s just the current hype and gonna die later on. Just ignore it. It’s just as useless as in-browser RSS and desktop “Widgets”.
Edited 2006-02-16 08:48
It’s the result of Apple in domination of the Mp3market.
Personally Podcasting is about moving technology backwards from streaming on demand to unnecessary storing of information in lousy quality.
On the other hand, what’s a reasonable word for it. “Radio O’ The Past”?
The guy didn’t ask you all about your opinion of podcasting.
Anyway, Yes I never liked the word either. The word pod is not too great and casting reminds me of a broken arm in a cast. I always think of a broken pod in a cast when I hear it.
I find the word blog much more annoying.
People defend and advocate the products they use for good reason. The more widely used and respected software is the more useful and valuable their experience with that software is.
Take Linux for example. If everyone switched over to BSD tomorrow and threw all Linux’s out, everyone who knew how to properly configure their /etc/modules.conf and troubleshoot kernel panics and send a certain ioctl call out to find out how many bytes are available for reading on a pipe before it blocks would have the value of those skills reduced to nothing. All the kernel developers and module developers would have their work’s worth reduced to nothing as well as having their highly valuable skills as a kernel programmer being rendered worthless. It’s all about self preservation.
If nobody used Firefox, development would end and I wouldn’t have cool new features in the next version. If Visual Source Safe got ripped out of everywhere and replaced with subversion, VSS admins everywhere would have their experience with the product rendered worthless. No matter how good an idea that would be (and it would be a good one) people will fight it.
We hitch our wagons to every piece of software we use and if that ends up being a bad choice, we end up paying for it, even if it’s only a little. People defend their software choices because making the right one is important and people who imply you made the wrong one are basically implying that you are stupid and worthless.
As a VSS admin who ripped out VSS and replaced it with Subversion, it’s a good thing. Having your VSS experience rendered worthless is something most VSS admins dream of. It stops the stabing pain behind the eyes.
To actually make this post on topic: sometimes advocating a product is just dumb. Especially if it’s a bad product, then you’re dumb and dangerous. Just like many things in life though, people hate to admit that they’re wrong.
I’ve been wondering for a couple years now why we do this. I used to find it mildly entertaining, but once I hit about… oh, age 20, it seemed immature.
There certainly does seem to be greener grass in a world where we cut the bickering. And what are we bickering over, anyways? We’re comparable to ditzy models flaming each other about makeup products.
You want the word “hear” not “here.” Want to fight about it?! You’re wrong and I’m better than you. Rawwr, I’ve impressed all the ladies now!
That’s it, let’s see who can whiz the longest distance! Ladies, prepare to worship me!
You’re wrong there Adam. SkyOS doesn’t own its mass of reach to GTK. In fact we must have the most terrible GTK port on Earth. It’s barely usable and dead slow. Robert “hates” GTK. Fortunately, now that we have Mono and Cairo ported, there’s an open road for a much better GTK port.
Massive reach – to be clear, wasn’t about the audience. It was a comment about the immediate availability of several familiar applications.
Ah, thanks for clearing this up, now that I listen to it once again I have no idea how did I come up with “mass of reach”. You’re right there then. Gaim, GIMP, Blender, AbiWord. These applications were immidiately available, but now they’re barely working. We’re looking to replace them with native applications or better ports. For example we already have Pixel, which should replace GIMP completely. A native XMPP/Jabber client is in the works (will replace Gaim), etc.
Peace offer :
For the good of all man Kind lets all stop this fighting about OS , lets all put aside our difference and lets all get back to basic and make the best software , sharing the source code among all platform and make device driver for all.
YES RIGHT !!!! Like GNU/Linux will be followed in its step by the thief , liar and traitor.
Basically , Microsoft and Apple built on top of nice people technology who believed that everyone whas going to share back , BSD is all but extinct because of that , its not extinct because GNU/Linux came on to the scene its extinct because they where already removed the right to improve upon what they built because people like to take advantage of others. Why use BSD and support it when MAC OS X is BSD ? why support it when Windows already improve upon it ?
Where is OS/2 ? Hey , it whas a joint venture between IBM and Microsoft who Microsoft made a closed fork.
Who closed BEOS and all the others access to hardware platform ? the Company behind them who only care about bottom line income and not about making a better system for there users and community. Microsoft who made exclusive deal forbiding the possibility of dual systems.
Why Because they could take advantage of license and there leading position. So basically people fight first for survival , also because they dont whant a repeat of the past. Well those who know what there talking about.
People restist change and are afraid of change , its normal human nature. People will fight new things they dont understand and feel are trageting there way of life.
There is also the lies and insult and harassment that moderator let people spread.
GNU/Linux is communist. GNU/Linux is a religion , GNU/Linux is built by geek in there basements , GNU/Linux dont make money , GNU/Linux dont have the software I need. GNU/Linux is a black console with nothing more. GNU/Linux is a server OS.
All the above are GNU/Linux qualicative and are all lies and insult to many.
Do we like fighting ? Personnaly no , but its a necessity , for survival. If you dont fight and support what you do , it will die/disapear.
I think you may be taking your software a little bit too seriously
“I think ”
No , you dont 😉
“you may be taking your software a little bit too seriously”
Of course I do , whats the point of coming to OSnews if
you dont ?
I think most people start out ready for calm debate, but then jealousy, boredom and some other things get mixed together in the minds of a few people and a chain reaction insues which leads to the breakdown of civility.
I’m not completely innocent myself. One of my peeves is ignorance, especially when it gets moderated up by people who know very well it’s flamebait. Sometimes you just have to bite your tongue which hurts as much as ignoring trolls. One of the best and worst things on any news site by a long shot is the ability for people to comment.
The subject is pretty much the question… I see people spreading FUD everywhere in the hopes it will further there cause.. When in reality it’s hurting them more over the long run. Why eat saltines when there is so much more out there to be had? I use Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac, and even Windows… PC’s are cheap these days by most accounts, so why not have three or four and dress them all up differently and enjoy the more tasty parts of each of them?
Well, in truth, I doubt if most DEVELOPERS of oss projects are as polarized at their followers. Now, for commercial development, even commercial oss development, I bet they are a little tighter wound(after all it is their livelihood), but still probably not as much as the users. Right now im sitting around a cluster of machines running Mac OS 10.4, Mac OS 8.6, Linux(a few flavors), and Windows XP and thats just my personal machines! Now, I do happen to think that for 90% of tasks Linux is the better choice, but its that other 10% that has me using my mac and my xp box(music production and games, respectfully)
Actually, I wonder if its alot like people’s political preferences. There was a study last year that suggested that when someone saw an ad that supported their candidate the person’s brain responded by processing it with the logical parts of the brain(its a simplification, i know) and when they saw something that was a negative their brain processed it in the emotional parts of the brain. I assume a similar thing happens.
In terms of actual programs, I support many different programs for the same thing, each catering to a particular audience(or in the case of emacs, the audience being people who want it all), however, I think that open standards are important. Lets face it, if Microsoft used opendoc they would still sell Office, and if it was ported to other platforms(other than Mac) they would sell even more copies. I think a lot of the infighting is people who take things to extremes. In the case of opendoc and Mass. using it either no one would buy office or Microsoft would sue openoffice for using their scheme. And truth be told, neither event would happen. People would still buy Office if Mass. went to opendoc, and if Microsoft sued OSS office suites that used MS’s format, the DOJ would bitchslap them into the 80’s. Its these extremes that cause most of the infighting, and the impact that an extreme would have on our lives/jobs/etc.
-mike
that’s rich. Maybe if certain websites don’t encourage fighting purposefully publishing sensationalist articles or create headlines intended to provoke heated repoonses … surfer eyeballs are precious and websites would whore themselves in anyway possible to become popular.
I have noticed a pattern that website forums that has the most arguments is usually a reflection of the type of articles published by the website administrators. If there is a lot of flamewars on a certain site, usually not a suprise, its by design.
I think it’s possible that the amount of “fighting” in forums is dependent on the how esoteric the subject matter is. As if there’s a cut-off where even the people that don’t know what they’re talking about in general but will try anyway, won’t touch it. For example, the more “technical” subjects here become, the less people actually comment on them at all. When they do there will be a few overtly uninformed comments and a few pet rants, but the discussions don’t seem to fall into cycles of genital waving. It’s when topics focus on accessible, predictable material that the most comments are generated and people embarrass themselves. If the topic article includes flamebait it just exasperates the problem, by encouraging people to angrily respond in the forum immediately to tell everyone just how stupid the writer is.
Can’t we all just get along ? Well, no. Opposing viewpoints will always exist and a good thing too. There will always be heated debate too which likewise is a goos thing because when done right it forces both sides to refine their arguments and force them to think critically about both their own and their opponents point of view.
Ofcourse online a lot of paople tend to degenerate into name-calling and rehashing fixed points of view. Which may be seen as proof of the “Greater Internet f–kwad Theory” ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 ) but these people exist offline too. The rules of etiquette have always stated that you should avoid discussing politics and religion in polite conversation to avoid ugly arguments for example.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I think indeed we are hardwired to argue. A minority can do it rationally and around them there exists large accretion disks of accolytes whose job it is to spread the orthodoxy.
Edit: hey, I’ve been censored! Has that always been there?
Edited 2006-02-16 11:05
Because I’m always accused of being pessimist I’ll bend my argument around to a positive too : people are forming relationships online and are defending what they see as the founding principles of those groups which are based around a particular software, hardware or license. As such you could see the incessant arguing as a negative side-effect to a positive phenomenon.
Use “Audiocast” please.
I won’t get in this sacred battles, but OSN is available to the hole world, and not just the countries where that product has the majority of the market.
Also, transcripts of the audio file would be very welcome (I’m pretty sure there’s one specification somewhere how to put them in the feed’s XML). Besides making it more accessible, it makes the hole file easier to seek for some specific part and also facilitates search and search engine compatibility.
Am I the only one who doesn’t get an update using rhythmbox’ podcast feature?
The podcast feed is updated after the podcast “story” is posted. It is available via the podcast.xml feed now.
There are actually people complaining about using the word ‘podcast’.
Oh… My… God.
I remember the first complaints (podcast #1) when the mp3 file didn’t have a feed yet and people were complaining that it wasn’t a proper podcast, so it shouldn’t be called a podcast. Now that it is a proper one they complain about the name.
You may try, but you will never satisfy everyone.
People actually complained about both things in the first one…
Too bad for them. It’s a podcast. Deal with it.
No I won’t, I couldn’t be happier!
Any chance for an ogg feed?
I doubt it. I don’t think there’s a demand for it. But *I* will always offer my podcasts in both formats.
If enough people demand it, however, you can bet we’ll publish one.
The problem with the word podcast is that it’s misleading. I thought that iPods got some sort of WiFi or cell phone connectivity upgrade, and now could stream radio stations! Oh, wait, it’s a friggen radio show mp3………………………uh, wow. I had a ‘podcast’ of Brocket 99 on my 64meg mp3 player in 1999, jeez.
Edited 2006-02-16 23:16
Calling all nerds: Chill out.
What does it matter what it’s called – just listen to somebody’s hard work and try to enjoy it.
I don’t think recording a podcast is exactly hard work. Real radio DJs work much harder and I don’t feel obliged to enjoy them.