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NoDough writes: "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!"
"There are other examples of this, and I wonder how we as a community should react."
Since I've only been on the job a month, I needed time to learn the intracacies of this site. We're seeing a response to the quality of Lxer by increasing statistics. Soon, we should seize the moment and become a voice of reason and influence. -Tom Adelstein Editor in Chief
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NoDough:
OK, I've been wondering about this for about a year now.
[HYPERLINK@lxer.com]
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:
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, etc. I laid
out the connections to Microsoft sponsored Foundations possibly
involved in the money laundering schemes for which authorities have
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 grown an extra skin. I
bought a plane once and learned to fly. I much prefer that to traveling
on commercial airlines. But, the 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 hits 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.
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Although I must admit that I wondered why eWeek would display a picture of a turkey vulture.