On Fri, Dec 11, 1998 at 06:48:34PM -0500, David Feuer wrote:
> "H. Peter Anvin" wrote:
> >=20
> > By author: "Alan Olsen" <alano@adams.pcx.ncd.com>
> > > On a similar note:
> > >
> > > ZDnet (publisher of some outstanding anti-Linux FUD) has registered
> > > "linuxbiz.com" as a domain. It is not alive yet, but expectations fo=
r it being
> > > anything positive are not good. (Reading slashdot.org does have some =
uses. ]:>
> >=20
> > I think ZDNet is more clueless than evil. They have shown a huge
> > variance in their Linux coverage, from very good to very bad. That
> > indicates cluelessness more than malice.
>=20
> Good point. People who have only been exposed to Microsoft Windows and
> then want to write a report (on a deadline) about an operating system
> utterly unfamiliar to them tend to mess things up. Similarly, I notice
> that a number of people who write science articles for the newspapers
> easily get confused about what is known, what is believed, what is
> conjectured, and what is one of 100 equally possible guesses. But they
> could be a little less bold in their statements sometimes.....
This assumes that these publications want to get things right to begin
with. Judging by the magazines I run across in waiting rooms and in
the book stores, they seem to be supported by a whole lot of Windows
advertising. When basic system and network software exist free for
UNIX, the developers don't make money off of it, therefore they don't
pay for advertising space. This is mostly good for us, but totally bad
for magazines which make their money off of advertising.=20
The authors are mostly familiar with Microsoft Windows, so if they
suddenly have to cover Linux they don't know what they're doing. This
is mostly bad for us, and bad for the writers in the unlikely event
that the Windows magazines ever disappear. The writers want to hang on
to what they know. They're more familiar with Windows, so they
complain that Linux is so hard to use, when the reality is that they
haven't put the same kind of learning curve into Linux that they put
into Windows.
As a general rule, any time the mainstream media touches anything
related to science and technology, they get it wrong. Look at movies
like "Armageddon," news shows which ran alarmist attacks on the
Internet, major media-supported web sites which won't work with Lynx
at all or without a lot of pain, and "tech" fiction like "The Net"=20
for good examples. Throw in news sites which send more formatting=20
information than news story, too.
The public helps them out, too. I actually had some buffoons try to=20
use "The Net" as a factual reference in a class I took a few years
ago. They couldn't understand why I kept alternating between amused
and disgusted.
While I don't think these people go out of their way to be ignorant,=20
I also don't think that they care if they are. The majority of the=20
public will swallow it because they think that if it's in the major=20
media channels it must be true. People like us won't buy the magazine=20
anyway and we aren't going to sue them, so they don't care about
us. :)=20
Disclaimer: I don't even know what ZD publishes these days, so I'm not
fingering them specifically.
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