Linux still largely invisible in the marketplace

[Zbigniew Koziol]

Peter wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005, Stewart Sinclair wrote:
> 
>> When engineers and mechanics can approach politics without fear and 
>> without personal ego needs there will be real changes.  Until then the 
>> whole show will continue to go to hell in a bucket.
> 
> 
> Imho that would require the unwashed masses (of voters) to replace 
> belief (in false promises repeated over and over) with rationality. But 
> that, in turn, would require the unwashed masses to stop being unwashed 
> masses. And *that* would require an educational system that would 
> educate them in this direction. I can see a problem here (and I can tell 
> you that the communist education system used in former Eastern European 
> countries, which tried to do this up to a point, was a failure out of 
> this point of view).

Not that this discussion is about Linux mostly, anymore. But I enjoy it.

 From which country is your younger experience, Peter? I am asking just 
out of curiosity, though I know that most immigration to your present 
country is from Russia, perhaps Ukraine. I do have a lot of sympathy to 
people from these countries, close to my Poland (I would not take wife 
from there otherwise).

I do not think that the educational system in East-European countries, 
indoctrination there, was a "failure". The system simply last too short 
to achieve its goals. It would need to continue for a few more 
generations. The bolshevik revolutions we had about only 3-4 generations 
ago. And yes, that was not enough to change the people. Still there are 
open minded people there who believe more in the history as described by 
they grand grand parents than in the official versions. But there are no 
many open minded people who still have great granparents alive left.

The Soviet society has been entirely changed by the system. It has been 
changed also in my Poland, the country that did always preserve some 
sort of independance and some political freedom. Average people in 
post-communist countries are different than people living in so called 
western hemisphere. I would not dare to say that they are different in 
an entirely wrong way - thats not the case. I would rather want to 
emphersise that people here can learn something from them as well (silly 
will attack me, but I will repeat: the communism was not an entirely 
wrong social system; Like the system we live in is not entirely "good").

Though I have a huge sympathy to Russians as people, I can not not see 
that their brains have been washed out. Such a simple fact: they do NOT 
know their own history. They do not know much about politics. Not that 
the situation here, in Canada or USA, is much better: how can young 
people aquire a deeper understanding of socio-political development when 
they are tought only the history of their own countries at school? 
Actually exactly the same took place in the former USRR, where they 
learned about the history of communist party only.


Regards,
zb.


> Peter
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