I went to a dinner party/birthday party type shindig tonight - and ended up in a rather heated debate with a bunch of closed-source (closed-minded) OS-B sysadmins. I was trying to sell open source, and the spirit of community driven OS-A, but was met by a wall of "oh well, if it's open source its easy to hack).
I informed them that open source allows backdoors to be patched before they become an issue, but they were not amused!
I spent three hours ranting about OS-A at them and got nowhere.
They (my wifes friends) were not impressed! :rolleyes:
Anyway - has anyone else annoyed their wives friends by ranting about their favourite OS?
If there are people who want to talk shop, then we generally take the discussion away from the girls (it's the last thing they want to hear anyway).
Have had the odd occassion where some narrow minded individuals have been ignorant of regarding IT issues because of their head-in-the-sand ideals/opinions. You either see it coming or you don't. I tend to drop the line of discussion very quickly with those individuals.
It was never my intention to start an OS war, nor would I be involved in one. I maybe should have made my original post more "generic". Therefore, I have edited my above post to remove any references to particular OS'es.
I was just curious to see if others had been in my situation.
I think at future parties, the computing conversation will be taken away from the dinner table and away from my wife!
"heated debates" serve no purpose. When I sense the heat level rising, I bow out and let the hotheads take over. Rather than considering computing off-limits, perhaps "heated debates" should be off limits. And they can arise from any almost any subject. Would a heated debate involving, say, cloning pleased your wife any more?
A very good point indeed. I (now) think that any heated debate should be kept away from such "pleasant" dinner parties. I suppose the topic was computing solely because most of my friends (and my wifes) are involved in IT at some level.
I think that such heated debates have their time and place, and over the dinner table is not one of them!
Next time, I will be discussing the weather, the kids, and the price of my groceries - a much safer option!!
Normally the only time my girlie sh*ts me is when she's dragging my away from the party/pub/club
Rule 1. Never talk about computers with people you don't really know, for several reasons. Main one though. THEY WILL ALWAYS KNOW MORE THEN YOU (even if they don't, I had a bloke try and try me Bill Gates owned Sun Microsystems... strange). even if you do know them stay away from the topic. Play it safe.
Rule 2. Always try to drink as much as you can, then you always got a reason for doing whatever you will get the blame for in the morning
As Neo said "IT OS preferences are like religion and politics".
Ok yes I understand most of my answer involves drinking Yes that's because I'm still young (23) and also I'm an Aussie, we like to drink And a few drinks make all the problesm go away until you wake up
