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Re^2: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Feb 24, 2008 at 03:06 UTC
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All new frontiers are initially conquered by those who are considered the outsiders by the mainstream culture. Just look at who came over to the US first, who went West first, etc. In that kind of situation, the individual's capabilities are strongly preferred because an individual can make a much larger difference.
To take a sports analogy, there's a reason why basketball has superstars that out-eclipse those for american football, real football, cricket, and baseball (to cover my bases). Since there's only 5 people/team on the floor at any given time (vs. 9 to 11 for the other sports), each person's performance has more weight. (For those who argue that the quarterback is the superstar of american football, I only have to point to Brett Favre's performance over the past 12 years and its correlation to the capabilities of his front line. And, yes, I'm a Packers fan.)
Now, I suspect my remarks are being read into. I was specifically addressing the confusion that many have when they comes in, as what they perceive to be a reasonable question, and receives what they perceive to be rude response. I wasn't addressing how geeks interoperate or the relative amount of cooperation vs. individualism in the FOSS community as a whole. Frankly, most geeks interoperate very well.
My criteria for good software:
- Does it work?
- Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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BrowserUk,
Geeks don't do sports or sports fanism.
I still use the definition of geek as it related to the distinction between nerds and dorks that I learned back in high school.
A dork is a social outcast. They lack all physical and social grace. While they may enjoy D&D, they have no exceptional intelligence. They are awkward in every way.
Nerds are also socially and physically inept. The distinction, a nerd has a well above average intelligence.
A geek is someone that you could sit next to at a bar and have no idea that they are a rocket scientist. They may not excel at sports or in the art of eloquent speech, but they don't stand out enough to initiate ridicule.
I tend to find the profile of J Random Hacker quite accurate and would point to Physical Activity And Sports. It has been several years since I did anything resembling physical activity - but long distance running used to be my sport of choice.
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Only because you're conflating understanding sports with playing sports. Geeks may not be as athletic, but all those statistics about baseball didn't come out of nowhere. Not to mention, who do you think comes up with the betting lines?! :-p
My criteria for good software:
- Does it work?
- Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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Re^2: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.
by oko1 (Deacon) on Mar 30, 2008 at 13:45 UTC
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> Cooperation beats individual excellence.
This, of course, explains why ants have built spaceships and discovered broad-spectrum antibiotics, while we humans still consider finding a yummy dead mouse the highlight of our existence.
Individual excellence supported by cooperation - and please note the order in which these must come - has taken us to our current status. Without individual excellence, we'd be just another species (and most likely found only in the fossil records of some ancient stratum.)
--
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. -- HG Wells
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Hear, hear.
Cooperative development gave us the Lada and Trabant.
Competition gave us Toyota, Chrysler, VWAudi, Renault, Fiat, Kia ...
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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But hopefully cooperative development will give us "The Semantic Web".
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Cooperative development gave us the Lada and Trabant.
Not too bad cars those, not too bad... specially the Lada_Niva (based on the old Shiguli), of which a fleet of 45 vehicles serviced the Euro Tunnel construction.
But has their development really been cooperative? Not mandated, somehow?
Competition gave us Toyota, Chrysler, VWAudi, Renault, Fiat, Kia ...
...and myriads of incompatible spare parts ;-)
Thinking about that... cooperation (by necessity) made British Rail possible, imposed competition destroyed it... (not yet ;-)
update: thinking about that again - privatizing public matters works as well as privatizing the republic (or the monetary system - see the FED) and equally well as creating private luxury by means of common effort...
--shmem
_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ /
/\_¯/(q /
---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}
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"omg commies!" is *so* 80s...
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I did not know that Toyota was build by one genius ingineer. I thought the cars are build by large teams of people and companies cooperating with each other.
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Hmm - yeah. Maybe you are right - actually most such absolute statements are mostly meaningless. Now I think I should formulate that in terms of dynamic, in terms of change. That now cooperation is cheaper - so it is economically applicable in broader spectrum of situations.
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Re^2: Please remember that geeks have their own social mores.
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 30, 2008 at 14:07 UTC
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Put Cooperation in jail for assault! | [reply] |
