Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1123 mails)

[hattons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steven T. Hatton)]

Brian Jones wrote:

[Agree, Snip, agree, snip]

> There have been complaints about the English in the SuSE book -
> if there is a part that is hard to understand because of that, it would
> take seconds for a native English speaker to correct it & when I get my
> copy back I may do just that.

Brian,

RE the snipped stuff:

I fully agree with you.  The reason my boss is an M$ minion is because his
Ph.D. is in Biochemistry.  He has an IQ of at least 145.  To him using an
OS that he needs to spend hours just trying to figure out how to get the
resolution on the display correct is a complete waste of time.  He wants to
set up systems that the customer can use.  He also wants to hire people with
degrees in English, psychology, etc., and teach them enough about the
computer systems that they can master the development tools necessary for
them to produce the final system for the customer.  One woman in our MCSE
course has a degree in elementary education.  She is catching onto M$ very
quickly.  If I put her in front of a Linux box with just the command line
she would be completely lost.

I do my development on NT systems at work and think they are as unstable as
DOS.  It is not clear whether the problems result form NT being bad or the
applications running on NT.  At first NT seems easier to use when running
installs and configuring systems.  Once I get down in the weeds I begin the
appreciate the Unix philosophy.  Unix is far more flexible.  My biggest
complaint with NT has nothing to do with ease of use, and everything to do
with  open systems.  Most end users and many systems administrators don't
see the value of open system standards.  People begin to really appreciate
these issues when they are forced to work between incompatible platforms.
Also the far-thinking individuals who understand the long-term implications
of one software vendor controlling the way we use computers and develop
software see that M$ is a very unhealthy thing for the future of computing.

RE the above quoted stuff:

The English *is* a bit odd at times in the book.  I have never found the
English to be the problem when reading the book though.  The problem I have
is that it is not as polished as it could be.  I write documentation at work
because I have to.  I know that the documentation I produce should be
greatly revised by a professional technical writer.  The S.u.S.E. book is a
very good engineer's draft.  I believe that It should be revised by a
technical writer.  These people are experts at communicating ideas.  I am
not trying to discourage the the authors of the S.u.S.E. book.  I could
never write such a book in my native language.  These guys wrote the book in
a language which is not their native language.  My hat is off to them.  I am
not criticizing to condemn, I am criticizing to improve.

Steve

--

[<A HREF="http://counter.li.org";><A HREF="http://counter.li.org</A">http://counter.li.org</A</A>>]  Yo Bill!  Doo-bee, doo-bee, doo.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no
human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to
man. - Thomas Paine,  _The Age of Reason_

[L]et [the charter] be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of
God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which; the world may know, that so
far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.  - Thomas
Paine, *Common Sense*, February 14th, 1776

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