[Edu-sig] [ANN] rur-ple: pre-release of new lessons.

[kirby urner]

On 1/29/06, Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:
>
> From: kirby urner [mailto:kirby.urner at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 2:06 PM
>
> Forgive me my relentlessly adversarial stance.  But I was a misunderstood
> child, you see.  My father was the poor boy, who was able to provide me
> with
> some advantages.  Like nice toys.  Would drive him crazy that I wouldn't
> "take better care of them".  The evidence was certainly there - the toy in
> pieces.



Good autobio.  I can also see why this might predispose you to appreciate
the open source approach, where the guts are within reach, and if you don't
like how your Tivo is programmed or whatever, you can just hack on it.
That's the spirit behind O'Reilly's Make: magazine for sure -- seems you
would have loved a subscription, might even today.

Other products come sealed up tight with a lot of warnings, and trying to
get to the guts voids the waranty or whatever.  Some might rather reverse
engineer, and damage the goods beyond repair anyway, because the working
version isn't as valuable as the non-working version with the guts exposed
(to them).

You get into tense family dynamics when you have say a brother with a little
sister, and the boy likes to take apart sister's favorite gizmos, to say
"what makes them tick" (but he of course lacks the skills to put humpty
dumpty together again).

Obviously, parental intervention is in order.

Or maybe it's the girl who's training to become an astronaut, and who keeps
making off with the brother's boy toys to do secret projects with them.  One
day, her hide-out is discovered...  (many story-lines diverge).

Kirby
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