[ILUG] It's illegal, according to the barrister in PC World

[Smelly Pooh]

In reply to kathryn cassidy's flatulent wordings, 
> >So it's original because you use the same example in a slightly
> >different context?
> 
> Regardless of its originality, it's a reasonably apt analogy.

Regardless of its approriateness (I never said it wasn't, any statement
or implication to that effect is completely of your own conjuring), it's
reasonably apt to say it isn't original

> > > editting /etc and running chsh does not a computer science course
> > > make.
> >  
> > Nor does tinkering with Linux
> 
> But all the examples that Kevin gave after that line do, and you seem
> to have ignored them.

I ignored them because Kevin introduced information not pertinent to the
discussion (that being Windows and Linux in operating systems courses).
What am I supposed to do?  Quote his nostalgia trip and go, oh I agree
and I remember back in the day when I did that aswell?  That's called
straying off topic.  I'm going to stray a little off topic now and talk
about the other week when I saw blade 2, did you know that

1)  The head funny faced vampire guy is Luke Goss from BROS?
2)  The black guy in the vampire ninja team was cat from Red Dwarf (I
expect most of you knew that anyway)
3)  The chinese guy from the vampire ninja team was the dad from Iron
Monkey
4)  Wesley Snipes has jungle fever

> They're easy to do with open source and difficult/ impossible to do
> with proprietary OSs, which makes an open source OS the obvious choice
> for an operating systems course.

Linux isn't the only open source OS to learn from, and certainly not
a good one.  Most OS courses don't use Linux but they do use Windows
(such is the depravity of this world we live in), DOS and a *nix for OS
theory, and the practical part can be anything from writing shell
scripts (as they do in DCU) to writing multithreaded programs to
studying/modifying a virtual OS (such as NACHOS) to studying/modifying a
teaching OS (such as MINIX).  Having been through and read up on a few
OS courses though I'll tell you there's very little Linux kernel hacking
going on

> Obviously you can learn operating systems without linux, but there is
> a limit to what you can learn with just windows.

There's a limit to what you can learn with just Linux, one might say
there's a limit to what you can learn with any particular OS, all I'm
saying is that the operating system that isn't windows doesn't have to
be (and in fact, shouldn't be) Linux

> The original post didn't actually state what operating systems were
> used other than Windows, and sure, just 'cos someone's not interested
> in linux doesn't mean they're not clueful, but if someone is studying
> operating systems they're meant to actually be interested in them and
> shouldn't be dismissive of linux.  The impression given in the
> original post was that the majority of students were.

1)  Most people do operating systems courses as part of computer
science, you'll be very hard pushed to find a student who is interested
in every mandatory module they have to do, including operating systems
2)  An interest in OSs doesn't require an interest in Linux, what's so
interesting about Linux as an OS?
2)  Linux users (especially here) are a lot more dismissive of Windows
than Windows users are of Linux