Aasim does look at what he is doing as a disadvantage in fact this time he came back quite charged up and completed the study backlog in 3 days.

Anyways thanks for reaffirming that we FOSSilized parents are on the right track

Ok I’m kind of going off topic.

But I like to think of it as my little secret, not that I have anything to hide. It gives me a big kick when I realize “hey, I use Open Source stuff ( even if it is only Gimp). I’m one step ahead of the next 16 year old girl, (even if it is only technologically!”

And it totally helps when you reach the “I want to be different” stage! ;D

Aasims friends are probably not going to understand what the event is about , or what FOSS is about for a long time. But as long as he doesn’t look at that as a disadvantage, I guess it will be ok.A lot of his friends may come to Bangalore to visit friends or relatives, but hey! He attends a conference where he gets to meet a great bunch of people, eat lots of pizza, and stay up late! How cool is that!

How am I being “fanatical” about fanatics? It’s not like I found 4353465 random message boards and mailing lists to broadcast my rant, yaknow? ;p I don’t recall *ever* discussing this topic *anywhere* outside of this post here … surely you’re not saying *one* LJ comment equates to “fanaticism” ?!

Also, I’m not advocating a, “let’s all go get hammers and beat up the fanatic idiots” message, yaknow? If you read my comment carefully, you’ll notice that I’m asking so I can *understand* why they’re fanatical about stuff, that’s all. I just thought tariquesani was a good person to ask, given that I thought he hung out a lot at random FOSS conferences. 🙂

Nope, no war-intent perceived/assumed, all is well 🙂 Life treating you okay man? 🙂

Errrr… Thats some outburst dude. Yeah there are a few fanatics but being fanatical about fanatics doesn’t leave any of us in a better position.

p.s: I dont mean to start off a war. Hope all’s well with you.

It’s one kind of happiness, to have friends with similar interests and another kind to have friends with different interests, too. With luck, Aasim will be open to both, and have twice as much happiness in life….showing others what he is interested in, and sharing his friends’ enthusiasm about whatever interests them.

I figured I’d ask you cuz you do seem to hang out a lot in such conferences.
Well whatever gave you that impression! the erstwhile Linux-Bangalore and now foss.in are the only conferences which we visit and hang out regularly and I can assure that running WinXP at foss.in was not a crime nor did someone come and try to preach you if you were doing it. Yes it did attract some looks but that’s about it.

I’m just saying they’re fanatic, and that disturbs me
Fanatics of any kind disturb me very much as well and particularly the kind who jump to premature conclusions and start acting on them

I am replying to you only in Aasim’s context as this post is about him.

Aw, but my comment is exclusively about the adult foss community in India, not about Aasim! I don’t know Aasim at all, so why would I discuss him? 🙂 No, I wasn’t implying that he was “fanatic”. I don’t know Netra either, but your post sounds ominously like she’s well on her way there … to fanatic nirvana … if not already 🙂

To cut this short – I feel that your comment is a bit misplaced on this post.

I guess. I wasn’t attempting particularly to make insightful comments directly related to the topic anyways =p It’s just that your post on foss.in instantly made me think, “oh wow, another foss fanatic gathering thing” and I figured I’d ask you cuz you do seem to hang out a lot in such conferences.

My last visit to BSDCan in Ottawa was really annoying and I never went back. Half the “light conversations” were about WinXP and Linux users being idiots, and I think that is really naive and stupid to say. I mean, I simaltaneously run all of WinXP, OpenBSD, and Ubuntu linux. I’m not even sure which fanatic camp to join then 🙂

Again, to clarify here — I’m not saying foss fanatics (esp. in india) are “evil” or “stupid”. I’m just saying they’re fanatic, and that disturbs me. Same as the GNU heads walking around with their GNU stuff … a lot of them are “nice” and “smart”, but still hover around the “annoying” camp along with desi FOSS-ers.

Lemme know if I’m annoying you with the “offtopic” commentary BTW, and I’ll be more careful in future … thanks!