What's with the ugly penguin in eWeek's Linux articles
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| NoDough Oct 14, 2005 5:08 AM EDT |
OK, I've been wondering about this for about a year now. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/45271/index.html Follow the above link, pull up the full story, scroll down toward the bottom and look at the photo of the ugly penguin. This penguin shows up on hundreds of eWeek pages, and is it ugly! So here are my questions for your consideration. - Through the selection of this ugly bird, is eWeek (and, by extension, Ziff Davis) showing open animus toward Linux? The alternatives that occur to me are journalistic incompetence or extremely bad taste. - Is this type of image damaging to the Linux community? - If it is animus or if it damages the Linux image, how should the community react? Ignore it? Flame the editor? A kind letter? A campaign? There are other examples of this, and I wonder how we as a community should react. |
| tadelste Oct 14, 2005 5:43 AM EDT |
NoDough: I believe I share your disgust with subliminal messages in the environment used to disparage the honest efforts of the Linux community. Before I saw this post, I had made a list of items I contemplated including in an article about Microsoft's alter-egos like the Citizens Against Government Waste, the BSA, Political Action Committes. I laid out the involvements of the Microsoft sponsored Foundations possibly involved in the money laundering schemes for which authorities has indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. I also wanted to bring in the potential infractions of the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act which seems applicable to Microsoft's admitted $180 million slush fund to squash Linux in foreign Government. Which ones do we choose?Which ones do we go after? Who do we mobilize? Where do the financial resources originate? Then I thought about all the settlements for anti-trust that Microsoft has paid. The numbers stagger ones imagination. For example, a little over a decade ago, if you installed Windows 3.1 and you used Digital Research's Dr. DOS, a message came up and said Windows didn't work with Dr. DOS. Microsoft paid dearly for that. And this week we heard that Microsoft paid a huge settlement to Real Networks much like they did Sun Microsystems. When you settle for billions of dollars in case after case after case, that sort of brands one as a perpetrator. It seems that no one really cares. People have growth an extra skin. I bought a plane once and learned to fly. I much prefer that to traveling on commercial airlines. But, they vast majority of people would rather take a drink or a Zanax and sit in a cramped seat and not have to learn about aerodynamics. In my opinion, the best way to deal with these myriad problems lies in making this publication a voice with which to be reckoned. LXer has accomplished remarkable goals in less than two years from scratch. Last month our hits jumped to 3 million from the previous month's 2 million. In November of 2004, we had hot of 783 thousand. Rather than scatter our attention, help build this publication and have people say, "we're releasing Ubuntu in the morning, let's publish it on Lxer." I know that you won't see any Microsoft advertisements here. They cannot buy us. |
| TxtEdMacs Oct 14, 2005 6:00 AM EDT |
Are either of you serious about the bird picture? It's a real penguin! Remember that Linus chose the penguin mascot (not the cartoon), because it was memorable: it bit him! Moreover, getting real, verifiable evidence of bias or least with strong inferential evidence being the source of an attack is a difficult task! Even an obvious case can be disregarded by sensible people. |
| SFN Oct 14, 2005 6:04 AM EDT |
"It's a real penguin!" I have to say, that was my take on it too. |
| tadelste Oct 14, 2005 6:04 AM EDT |
Oh well, I doubt the seriousness of the Penguin being the issue. But, it has some symbolic overtones. |
| TxtEdMacs Oct 14, 2005 6:36 AM EDT |
Quoting:But, it has some symbolic overtones. Agreed, but sometimes it is better to ignore your enemy and set your own path. A war is won not by winning every battle, but those battles that count. Most of the Japanese army was never confronted, they were simply cut off and left to fend for themselves. |
| NoDough Oct 14, 2005 6:55 AM EDT |
Yes, it's a real penguin. But if I'm a journalist looking for a photo of a real penguin, do I choose one like eWeek's or do I choose one of these...
[url=http://images.google.com/images?q=penguin&hl=en&btnG=Search Images]http://images.google.com/images?q=penguin&hl=en&btnG=Search ...[/url] The point is that journalists make conscious decisions about photos, phrases, sentence structure, etc. in order to sway their readers toward a certain belief, even if that belief has nothing to do with the article. Call it propaganda if you wish. eWeek consciously chose a very ugly photo to represent Linux. Accidental? Possibly, but I doubt it. More likely a subliminal attempt to cast Linux in a bad light. |
| tadelste Oct 14, 2005 7:07 AM EDT |
NoDough: It's OK. We turned your post into the comment of the day. The editorial staff liked it. |
| tadelste Oct 14, 2005 7:10 AM EDT |
Txt: That was exactly my point. We can't fight every ambush, but we can make ourselves potent. |
| NoDough Oct 14, 2005 7:13 AM EDT |
tadelste: Thanks. BTW, I think your response was right on target. |
| tadelste Oct 14, 2005 7:23 AM EDT |
NoDough: Thank you. I appreciated the opening, it worked. |
| BrianS Dec 10, 2005 10:47 AM EDT |
NoDough, Micro$oft probably "paid" them to use that picture I thought was a filthy SeaGull. (You know, the usual way, free crappy bloated crashware or discounts on crappy bloated crashware for representing linux poorly and making sure certain bad-for-the-image M$ articles never see the front page) Also keep in mind that authors who understand such subtle "influence" may not have picked the photo. It was more likely picked by some suit who wouldn't know what you were talking about, nor why M$ cared enough to give him free crappy bloated crashware for using the picture they provided. Same as it ever was, BrianS |
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