[mdlug-discuss] Speaking Of Teenagers........

[Aaron Kulkis]

Brian Riggs wrote:
> I actually have my niece, 17 at the time of setting her up, with a SuSE 
> 9 box, and my mother-in-law, 66, with Unbuntu and they have had no 
> problems, and prefer it to M$.  Good luck.
> 
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Peter Bart <peter at petertheplumber.net 
> <mailto:peter at petertheplumber.net>> wrote:
> 
>     Warning, I'm getting on a soapbox!!
> 
>            What is it with kids?? I know I sound like my Dad <groan>. I
>     set up my
>     old T30 Thinkpad for my step daughter. Opensuse 10.3. Pretty well loaded
>     it up, all the ipod tools, frostwire (I wouldn't do limewire because it
>     keeps wanting root file access), lots of cd ripping tools, all gui
>     stuff. Several email clients, browsers, games, etc. All the stuff I hear
>     her talk about or know that she likes. I explained about it's not
>     windows, don't bother downloading programs. It got used now and again,
>     very infrequently. Myspace surfing, IM, listening to music. I would find
>     some Windows setup program for one or more programs every time. I would
>     usually install the Linux equivalent unless it wasn't available or
>     wanted something I wasn't willing to give. After several months it was
>     finally used for what I intended it for; because her Dads had crashed;
>     to do a school assignment. It was finally taken with but returned
>     several days later, because they were unable to log on. I had tried to
>     troubleshoot over the phone but that wasn't going to work. I toggled the
>     caps lock key and signed on...... I kept it for several more days and
>     let her know it was ready. There is sat. It's a good solid machine that
>     works very well, but it's not MS so it gets treated like a red headed
>     stepchild. The menus are almost identical, I even renamed programs so
>     anyone would know. Put links on the desktop, etc. The other night she
>     was here showing Mom something on the web on Moms notebook, or trying
>     to. Something wouldn't work, I counted no less than eight reboots by the

Solution to sheeple-mode:

"if I hear that thing get rebooted one more time without anyone
actually attempting to FIX THE PROBLEM, it's going directly to
the trash.... in pieces!"

Sometimes, the only way to get people out a trance, especially
one that results from conditioned behavior, is to apply what
is known as a "pattern interrupt" -- interrupt the auto-pilot
behavior so that the thinking part of the brain actually gets
engaged once again.

Depending on the situation, a pattern interrupt can be as simple
as yelling the word, "Stop!" or making a loud noise, or a flash
of light.  (that's ONE reason why police use "flash-bang"
grenades -- to derail conditioned "resist all authority figures,
no matter how stupid it is to resist" patterns of people in
the area to be cleared).