[ILUG] AGM 2004

[Niall O Broin]

On 17 Oct 2004, at 00:25, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> I was surprised to learn (if I heard correctly) that the quorum was 25 
> ordinary members plus (or was it including) 3 committee members, which 
> sounds extraordinarily ambitious.

Quorum levels are laid down in the constitution, and are 3 committee 
members + the lower of 40 or 5% of the ordinary members (members 
ordinarily resident in Ireland). There are currently 579 addresses 
subscribed to the list, so we made a wild stab that 79 of those are NOT 
ordinarily resident in Ireland, thus yielding a nice number of which 5% 
was easily calculated :-)

> I should say I found the meeting very interesting

That's good to hear.

> though it did confirm my view that asterisk is strictly for 
> pointy-heads.

It does have a learning cure reminiscent of the Eiger Nordwand. I doubt 
that it will ever be much simplified. It is solving a hard problem, and 
there simply aren't enough people interested in using it that anyone 
will ever develop a simple interface.

> In fact the nerd quotient of the audience was frighteningly high.
> Don't any normal people run Linux?

Most 'normal' people simply run whatever is delivered on their PC when 
they buy it which is usually Windows. So by definition, the decision to 
use Linux takes one out of the realm of 'normal' people. I mentioned 
recently my plans to convert Aunt Tilly to Linux. Well, I have 
abandoned that plan because brother Billy (rhymes with Tilly) recently 
bought a new laptop. There has been enough heartache with having him 
use Mozilla on that for web/mail rather than the unholy duo which he 
has been using that I am not even going to think of converting Aunt 
Tilly. Call me a coward if you will - I simply have more to do with my 
time.

> Next year in Jerusalem.

Better buy a bomb proof laptop case so :-)


Niall