Linux Marketing Campaign Seeks $350k in 40 Days

Quoting: People will be murdered tonight somewhere, it still doesn't justify me holding the knife.

Something you want to confess to?

The way it seems sometimes, the best vehicle to promote Linux would be a balloon. Then we put a couple of folks from Novell in the basket to keep explaining about why signing agreements with MS is good for us, in order to keep the balloon aloft. A large hot air balloon with a huge tux on the side would be seen for miles. But I don't suppose there's quite the same testosterone dripping machismo attached to a balloon as to a racing car.

I'm inclined to agree with magicfab in principle. Cars are appalling. Over three thousand dead a day, every day, from accidents (globally). Rising levels of asthma and lung cancer that cannot be explained away by "passive smoking". Mountains of rusting unwanted scrap the world over. Choked cities where air quality is now starting to kill in the summer. Journeys that pile stress onto people as they try to navigate a road system that can barely cope with the traffic levels.

There are other sporting events to think about (as well not instead). The Americas Cup, various Golf Tournaments, the World Cup. All great places to think about getting the penguin seen.

Perhaps some sort of fund to which people could contribute which could then finance advertising Linux in sporting events in general. (I realise that for some sports the amounts involved are astronomical) but seeing as how we live in such a sport obsessed culture, any advertising is good.

1. ^^^^^ helios - you' wrong - I've donated to Hole in the Wall Gang (a Champ Car supported charity) and personally contributed to & raised approximately $3000 for medical research in charity go-kart races that I've participated in.

2. ^ bundy - You quoted JJ&A as saying that last year there was a "$1/2 million in exposure value" for the "29 Indy 500 team sponsors". You should probably know that the 'missing' 4 cars in the field (I thought it was 3 but whatever) had NO sponsorship, and that the figure there is based on TOTAL exposure time / # of cars with sponsors -- NOT a $1/2million worth of exposure for each individual sponsor. The cars shown on tv and that had their names repeated on air were the cars in the lead, cars crashing, and - Danica Patrick.

You probably shouldn't sponsor a Champ Car instead of an Indy500 entry because I'm sure it would still fail, but I guarantee you there'd be more people interested in the idea that anything to do with Tony George's Indy Racing League.

3. The kicker of this whole situation - I know my stuff, and 3 days ago when I said "by the way, $350K gets you sponsorship of someone like Stephan Gregoire's car" - I had NO IDEA that that was who was actually being considered. Imagine my surprise today then when I saw a link to a story on the front page of Indy500.com that goes into a little more detail about this Linux-car effort and IT IS STEPHAN GREGOIRE that is being considered! Haha - not knocking the guy but I have to laugh: the team Gregoire hopes to drive for and that Bob Moore wishes to have Linux users' sponsor money go to is Chastain Motorsports.

What the story doesn't mention is that the last time Chastain Motorsports ever took part in an IndyCar race was in 1998 - with Gregoire at the wheel (the article did however mention he drove for them in '98). Nine years ago, IRL IndyCar was quite a different scene to what it is today: there was no Team Penske, no Andretti-Green, no Chip Ganassi, no Rahal (they were all still in CART at the time). It was a bunch of low-budget teams and no-name drivers - in fact, Eddie Cheever won the 500 that year so enough said. Gregoire finished 17th that year - I dread to think what 9 years away from the sport would net them this year. They'll probably just be thankful if there's no bumping on "bump day" again this year.

And by the way - that pathetic no-name field in 1998 drew a tv audience of a 6.0/19 share (5.4million households). Last year's race - with all of the above mentioned teams and "big-name"(they're not) drivers (inc Stephan Gregoire and Danica Patrick!!) drew.. a 5.0/14 share.

That's still a good number of eyeballs - but a far cry from the 9.4/28 share it drew in 1994 and before. Indy ain't what it used to be.

In conclusion: there's probably far better & longer-lasting ways of spending your money and getting exposure for Tux. Not sure what they are - am just saying.

> What are Stephan's rankings? How many wins does he have? Are we likely to get a lot of screen time?

1. He's not a current driver so he doesn't have any current 'ranking'.

Stephan quit open-wheel racing after the 2001 Indy 500. Prior to Indy, he suffered a loss of confidence caused by a season-opening wreck. He found himself not comfortable with his cars and retired himself early from the following 2 races due to this - and was so nervous about the next race (the 2001 Indy 500), he told his team owner to find another driver. He switched teams hoping it would restore his confidence and entered the race, but after qualifying 29th of 33 and retiring early due to a mechanical issue, he suddenly quit the sport for good. ref: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/motorsports/2001/indy500/ne...

Out of the blue, he returned last year for a one-off at the Indy 500 - qualifying 30th of 33 and as I'd previously stated - retired after completing 49 laps (of the scheduled 200), 18 laps down from the leader at the time - due to, once again - 'handling issues', which is racing speak for parking the car due to a persistent lack of speed due to (a probably justified) lack of confidence in the car. He was classified 29th of 33.

This 2007 Indy 500 entry is also a one-off - he has not raced an IndyCar since the Indy 500 last year.

2. In 49 CART & IRL IndyCar race entries over 9 seasons, Stephan has never won a race. Of 9 Indy 500's entered over 9 seasons, his results include: - 2x DNQ ("Did Not Qualify"), - 1x DNS("Did Not Start" -- he was involved in a 3-car crash on the pace lap of the 1997 Indy 500), - 3x Retirement , - finishes of 19th(1993), 17th(1998), 8th(2000).

Helios mentioned 3 things about Gregoire (in the context of the Indy 500) - and as he technically didn't even start the 1997 Indy 500 (his race was over before the green flag), it is accurate to say he has never wrecked out of an Indy 500 that he's started, and as he's never won one either - and Helios says he's done "at least one of the three", I suppose that indicates that Helios is trying to tell us that Stephan has worn a dress at an Indy-related event. ;)

I'm not sure that that's something to get excited about, but hey - whatever floats your boat!

3. Pray for rain.

TOP2 - Since you apparently have selective statistic syndrome, I guess I'll take a turn:

At the 2001 Phoenix Indy Car race (3 races before the Indy race you cite), Gregoire qualified 4th in a field of 27 cars and led the race for 9 laps. Who were some of the other drivers that day?

2-time Indy 500 winner, Helio Castroneves 2-time Indy 500 winner and 2-time CART champion, Al Unser, Jr. Indy 500 winner and 2-time CART champion, Gil DeFerran Indy 500 winner and 3-time IRL champion, Sam Hornish, Jr. Indy 500 winner and IRL Champion,Buddy Lazier Indy 500 winner, Eddie Cheever IRL Champion and Indy 500 Pole winner, Greg Ray IRL Champion and Indy 500 Pole winner, Scott Sharp

The reason Gregoire lost his confidence at Indy in 2001 is that he knew what a good car felt like and his was not it. If you push too hard in a bad car at Indy you can easily have a bad day.

Stepping out of the car that he turned over to Roberto Guerrero, he jumped into Jeff Ward's backup car and within 6 laps was already 3-4 mph faster than he'd been all month and qualified the car solidly for the race. Oh yeah, the car he stepped out of was not fast enough to qualify and Guererro spun it on his qualifying run.

The reason for Gregoire's retirement from full time Indy car racing had nothing to do with his experience at Indy in 2001. The Simon team's sponsorship evaporated after the race and having tasted what it was like to run at the front, he was unwilling to drive for underfunded programs anymore.

Since then he ran the 12 Hours of Sebring in his first and only attempt in 2003 and finished 4th out of 25 cars in the GT class and he ran the 24 Hours of LeMans in his first and only attempt in 2003 and finished 7th overall out of 50 cars. I'd say he knows a thing of two about driving.

I recently had a question on just this point about OLPC and American schools -

The gist I got from the individual was that we don't need more computers in schools and issuing kids computers that they can take home is a bad idea because our taxes are high enough already.

Here's the post I put up:

Quoting: Truth Seeker wrote: A real problem is the use of computers for education. I think it is great! A fantastic piece of equipment to have. BUT, for the parents who cannot afford computer for their children, I believe the children's education suffers from this. Even with comps in the classroom, research and homework assignments cannot be done from home if they cannot afford a computer. They may not live close to a library, or unable to have access to a computer. What do these kids do? Their grades should not suffer because they don't have a computer to do their homework with/on. Anyone know more than I on this? I know I don't know all the fatcs.

Truth Seeker,

You have touched on a topic that is near and dear to my heart - and I mean that in all sincerity.

short summary of what can be done: With the One Laptop Per Child project, a ruggedised computer can be provided to every child for less than $150 (http://www.laptop.org/ ). There are many *FREE* high quality software programs that can be used, among them gcompris ( http://gcompris.net/-en- ), OpenOffice ( http://openoffice.org/ ), 'Tux of Math Command' ( http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxmath/ ), 'TuxType' ( http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/ ), and 'tipptrainer' ( http://tipptrainer.pingos.org/ ).

The beauty of all of these programs is that the source code is publicly available for anyone to use. This means that a programming course could be created for older students, and they could be producing software that could be used by younger students at no charge to anyone. It's called Open Source (http://www.opensource.org/ ).

The biggest obstacle for Lee County is that there is a heavy dependence on Microsoft products which are *not* free nor 'Open Source'. If Lee County Schools were to immediately move to a model like Brandon Elementary in the Atlanta School District, St. Mary's School in N. Florida, or the ACCESS program in Indiana, the District would see an *immediate* savings of over $500,000 annually.

It isn't because of ignorance that the IT department of the School District doesn't make the change, I've been forwarding the success stories of using Linux in schools from all over the nation and the world to Dwayne Alton and Dr. Browder for the last 6 months on this exact issue. The next step is to ask the School Board directly why nothing is being done to save that $500,000 (actually it will work to be more than that when you start cutting costs of computer infrastructure that is only so high because they base everything on the poor quality MS-Windows platform.) They really have no justification for not migrating at least 95% of the infrastructure, since the city of Largo FL had no real difficulty becoming Microsoft-free. Even the Ernie Ball Corporation realised a savings of $80,000 for 80 computers in the first year just by changing software and not hardware.

It's time to start asking the hard questions about this directly from the School Board, because it seems that the IT department doesn't want to realise that $500,000 annual cost savings since it puts them outside their comfort zone. You normally need fewer technicians to administer a Linux network compared to a Microsoft network.

I forgot to mention that about 4 years ago, Mr. Alton was given a live demonstration of setting up a Linux-based network for the entire district. This is not something that should take a lot of research or trial & error.

And here are the reply posts questioning the benefit of laptops for students in our school district:

Quoting: DarrenR114 I do hear what you are saying, I do have and have had my kids use the computer to help them in a report. However, what do the parents do that cannot afford one. And I still stand by my thoughts on the calculator. That has gotten misused if you ask me & has become a crutch. So have the new computerized cash registers. Have you ever given anyone $5.03 for something that was $4.53 and they gave you a blank look? They are have no clue as to why you gave them the 3 cents... or better yet, give the 3 cents AFTER you gave the $5 and the register already told them to give you back the 47 cents... then they are even more confused! They don't realize that the 3 cents would make you be able to give them back 50 cents... I agree with outdated text books. Having kids in high school & college, I do see how fast the books become out dated when the college requires the newest edition the next semester! I understand all of that. I am just saying that if not careful, the computers will go the way the calculator did.... it is bad enough now, when they do a paper on the computer, they have the spell check & grammer check.. they no longer have to look a word up in a dictionary nor do they have to know correct correct grammer. Yes, I know I have a spelling problem Laughing I live with my dictionary.. not on here though Laughing kids don't understand what it is to look it up. They will not learn to spell it, it is automatically corrected for them. If they have to keep looking it up, sooner or later it might click in their head.... I am all for tech... but to a limit... and not all will be that way as it has already been proven ======= DarrenR11 Here is an example of what I am saying:

My daughter is in Edison College, second semester. She is in Eng Comp 2 (currently carrying a B+). She has passed Eng Comp 1 with an A & in HS she got a 5.5 on the FL writes. One of her Law prof's has asked the class to do a paper in a certian format. There was no one in the class that knew the format. He passed the comment that they must not know how to write then & obviously failed Eng Comp. My daughter spoke up & said that she even went to her Eng Comp prof and asked her what was meant by "yada yada".. she did not understand it either. He gives her a dirty look.. then another student.. this was an adult student.. not a kid just out of high school, he speaks up and says the same thing.. he went to his Eng Comp prof (different one than my daughter's) and his said the same thing. This Law prof gets very angry and says.. I don't have time to teach it.. look it up on a computer!! What the He!! We are paying for his salary... no one in the class understood the format he wanted nor did the 2 Eng Comp professors at the college.. here he is relying on a computer to teach his class for him... this is an example of a teacher, which when you boil it down, that is what he is... telling his students to look it up because he doesn't have the time to teach it Confused Confused Could the entire class be at fault, could 2 Eng Comp prof be wrong... ??? Yes, I know this is college. You do go to college to learn and when no one in the class knows it, that is telling you something.. teach it.. do not have a computer teach it.