[PLUG] This LUG is still useful...

[guy1656]

Reply regarding Re: [PLUG] The Issues With This List from mike:
: Wasn't it just a couple of days ago that Slashdot had a thread about now
: being able to use the past tense about LUGS?  Said they are not
: necessary any more and most have gone anyway.  Who can't set up a linux
: box now, what with Mandrake and its Ilk?
:

Me, and, I'll admit it. My 'home-office/job' system runs well enough to keep 
my boss from stepping in and forcing me to convert to MS-XCrud.

I've had a few recent successes (such as installing Flash into Mozilla myself 
so I could watch a 'swf' file an e-mail buddy sent me)  but for bigger 
things, I am mostly clueless and rather terrified to experiment too much.

Still haven't gotten avi's to play after all these months - I have lesiure 
time but that's for PLAYING the music/game, etc. Futzing with 'what's not 
happening now, what to I have to twiddle next, or download at 2.6Kb/sec' is 
NOT lesiure ...

I usually plonk out the Debian stuff, how to administer a workplace server, I 
don't program in perl etc. I first learned programming in BASIC in the early 
70's, and (without knowing it) I -LOVED- the feeling of riding shotgun with 
the execution. You didn't need to know what a compiler was - Just give the 
computer a list of orders (numbered to keep them straight) hit RUN, and it 
will do as many of them as it can FIRST, and only complain when it finally 
hits a nasty. If you couldn't figure out why that line number bombed, most 
times you could GOTO around it for now, run out the rest of the code anyways, 
and not be forced to fix everything perfect first before getting a even a 
glimpse of what your instructions do... What days!

But I liked the feeling that a computer will TRY to execute everything it can 
first, and complain later, if at all. Then came Pascal, followed by a desire 
to try out a splitting maul. Things went downhill from there, when computers 
said "LOGIN:" instead of "READY>"

But every once in a LONG while, someone asks a question that even I figured 
out, and I can contribute (a bit.)

-GLL