[H-GEN] Room Bookings Update

[Anthony Towns]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:15:43AM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote:
> never seen before and some poor pleb who has downloaded Firefox 
> can can't understand why it gives him an error when he tries 
> to connect via HTTPS to port 563 - for example.

Okay, so I just tried that, and got:

] Port Restricted for Security Reasons
]
] This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes
] other than Web browsing. Iceweasel has canceled the request for your
] protection.
]
] The requested address specified a port (e.g. "mozilla.org:80" for port
] 80 on mozilla.org) normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. The
] browser has canceled the request for your protection and security.
]
] [Try Again]

(Try Again obviously doesn't do much...)

That doesn't really strike me as an error that would inspire someone
to turn to Unix, or even want to better understand the way computers
work, though? 

If you want to promote Unix knowledge by error message, "Error: Operation
succeeded." would be a better one to start with. :)

Actually, I suspect that the Windows thing is kinda reversed -- back when
HUMBUG started, most potential l33t hackers would've been running Windows
95 (or DOS, or Amiga Workbench, or Mac OS); nowadays most potential l33t
hackers will have already downloaded a live cd (or grabbed one from a
magazine) and tried it out.

That doesn't mean there's no point reaching out to Windows folks who
haven't already tried Linux; just that you're not likely to hit a terribly
technical crowd that way -- as opposed to the sort of people running Unix
at home in the mid-90s. I look at HUMBUG as being for people who want
to be clever and technical, even if they aren't atm -- putting computers
together themselves, running their own server, programming, chatting about
scheme versus haskell, how well postscript works as a window manager, etc.

I'm *all* for people buying a Linux netbook to match their handbag and
using Firefox and OpenOffice and whatnot on it for web, IM and email, and
not caring about KDE versus Gnome, or even knowing how to quit from vi,
but that just doesn't really seem like HUMBUG's target audience, even if
they are in fact Brisbane Users of Home Unix Machines...

Cheers,
aj

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