Who was the mental genius

[Alfred Perlstein]

On 6/6/14, 7:52 PM, Mark Linimon wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 06, 2014 at 04:10:03PM -0400, Jim Ohlstein wrote:
>> Not to get too far off topic but as a life long east coaster (except
>> for a short sojourn in the flatlands of Kansas), and being old
>> enough to know better, that is not "normal" east coast chiding.
>> Maybe that's normal northeast talk, but here in the south people
>> have manners.
> I was going to say something along these same lines ... but to me
> this message, as well, comes off a bit harsh.
>
> I understand Paul's point even if I found the initial tone abrasive.
> But I know a lot of context is lost when conversations are down-converted
> to keystrokes.
>
> Perhaps Paul can understand why, for a native southerner, seeing that
> kind of Subject: line can be demotivating, especially in the light of
> how hard it has been in the past to make such large changes to the
> infrastructure.
>
> Please remember folks: one person's "blowing off steam" can lead to
> another person's "why do I bother trying to fix things anyways."
>
>
Agreed.

I would like to raise one other point.  For every brash new yorker (like 
myself) that blows off steam, there are likely very many people who just 
don't complain and remain silent on issues like usability.  It important 
to be able to take the feedback apart from the obvious frustration.  We 
are after all a software project, we want users.

Another point is that it's obvious that Paul is passionate about 
FreeBSD, he is a long long long time user.  In addition he took the time 
to let us know what broke, he took the time to comment on usability, and 
it's obvious he's a huge fan of FreeBSD and that it was personally 
upsetting that he saw a usability issue that he felt would hurt the OS.

It's very obvious that Paul has a lot of love for FreeBSD otherwise he 
would have just shrugged and installed $penguin_os.  I like Paul.

I also like Bapt, I hope both can be OK and the passion and love of the 
OS can come out of this as opposed to the negatives mentioned earlier in 
the thread.

-Alfred