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Voluntary Sponsorship of Linux?
shift8key asks: "Last year, a friend asked me whether I would sponsor his NASCAR race car.
The sponsorship came cheap and I decided to do it. Since I did not have a commercial message for my business, I had him put 'Linux.org'
and a penguin on the hood. He had more inquiries about it than any other message on his car. My community phonebook called me to ask if I would repeat the message there, and I think I will do it. Have any Slashdot readers
ever done any voluntary sponsorship of Linux? If so, what experiences did you have?"
A real-life TuxRacer! Nice!
subject says it all
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
i guess the important question everyone wants to know is...
how much is "fairly cheap" sponsorship?
moox. for a new generation.
Perhaps someone can counter with the BSD Daemon giving it to Tux. At least rednecks understand cornholing.
Lowmag.net
Any chance you could make a photo of the car available?
Steve
Anyone with a faster penguin ? Perhaps a Tux sticker on the NASA space shuttle ?
Tux2000
Denken hilft.
Yes, I understand NASCAR's redneck reputation, but rednecks also buy computers, and if this message converts just one person away from using Microsoft, it will have served its purpose.
Just because people drive cars does not limit there ability to use a decent os I refere to linuyx and decent by talking about slack or debian anything else I consider to be puiny and not worth while , People do not percieve your inteelegence based on your job you should not do the same , Unfortunatly no I have never done any voluntary promotoing with the use of linux but would like to in the future ,
NASCAR isn't successful because of the Rednecks, it's successful despite the Rednecks. Granted, Wal-Mart and Target do target the Redneck contingent, however, there's a lot of sponsorship to go around. Bayer AG sponsers a car in the Busch league. Why would a German Pharma company sponsor a car? BECAUSE A SHITLOAD OF PEOPLE WATCH NASCAR, NOT JUST REDNECKS.
Granted, Bayer AG has given a lot to the world: Asprin and Heroin.
You are a sad, sad man. There are more important things in life than computer operating systems, you know.
If you really want to make a difference, why not sponsor a child in some 3rd world country?
You linux dudes need to get some perspective on the world!
I also sponsor two children in Nigeria.
Meye speling sux.
I have a Linux Fish on my car. Does that count?
Software Wars
Sure I could have, but I like to spread the little wealth I have around a bit. This PRIMARILY helps my friend who owns the car. I see your point, though: Advertising often seems so utterly wasteful. How about millions go into ads for, say, cosmetics?
Didn't they also participate in many of the experiments performed at concentration camps during the holocaust? I seem to remember hearing something of that...
/usr/games/fortune
Its really hard to see all the logos on cars going 180+ MPH. What is the car and who is the driver? I'll also ask you to define "Fairly Cheap", someone already has, but if you see it here first...
Sig? What's a Sig?
He is helping the children by helping to build a stronger information commons. It is from that Info Commons that the real developments that will make life better come from.
And you could sponsor several if you weren't wasting your time. Never good enough for you is it?
"Have any Slashdot readers ever done any voluntary sponsorship of Linux?"
I like to go around town with spraypaint and write EAT MORE LINUX on peoples cars. Then I lie in the gutter and twitch, and yell at people about how stupid they are for supporting the Evil M$ Empire.
My community phonebook called me to ask if I would repeat the message there...
I would suspect it's not because they love Linux though. Anyone who considers sponsoring a NASCAR race car as "cheap" is a great person for salescritters to contact for other advertising opportunities. BTW, if you want to place banner ads on my site I'll give you a great $25 CPM for 10 million of them.
That's a little too subtle for most of the slashdot crowd, but I'd give you a +5 funny.
And the Kinsey Institute performed sexual-response experiments on young boys that basically involved forced masturbation. In several instances of published 'experiment' reports, it's clear that crying young boys were 'manipulated' for hours.
And it gets published as 'science' every day. Liberals defend the Kinsey Institute virulently.
I'm not excusing what Bayer did during the Holocaust. I'm just saying 'look further, at what organizations closer to home have done.'
We want race car pictures, please.
Yep - I didn't pay much attention to NASCAR until my younger brother started running a car in a regional division. (Since they are much more affordable, sponsoring those cars is a LOT cheaper.) But, once I started attending each race and spending time in the pits, I realized 2 things:
1) it's NOT just rednecks...it's also a hobby for doctors, lawyers, etc who happen to enjoy going fast
2) there's a lot of science that goes into setting up a car correctly...sure, at some of the lower levels, it's not really paid attention to all that much...but at the Winston Cup and Busch levels, it is.
To hear my not-so-technically inclined younger brother talk about diminishing his rotational mass in his transmission by taking out gears that he didn't use...and for him to grasp the concept of cross-weights and the various modifications that can be made to help a car better grip the track...that's when I really developed an appreciation for it. There's more to it than just rednecks going around in circles.
Bayer also supplied a lot of the toxic gasses the Germans used in WW I.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
This comming from someone who does not know when to use "a" and "an."
Every driver should do this, since we all know that Linux never crashes. ;)
If You linux dudes imply that you're using Windows, then how come you didn't sponsor a few kids in some third world country instead of feeding the money to Microsoft?
So, what are you saying? That NASCAR is successful, not because of the rednecks, but because of the country club set? And despite the rednecks? What are you saying, that the rednecks have tried to stop NASCAR? Nothing could be further from the truth. NASCAR has a predominantly blue-collar fanbase. NASCAR is successful due to the huge quantities of loud, brightly-colored, cheaply-made, but high-priced T-shirts sold. However, you are correct in your assertion that Bayer is a sponsor simply for the mass exposure.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
We could stop sending our toxic computer waste to their countries. We could stop quietly condoning their use of child labor in sweatshop conditions. They could use food, water, shelter.
Even this guy had something sane to say about it, can you guess his name before you follow the link?
Do people have any concept of what it means to live on less than a dollar a day? There's no electricity. Do they have PCs that don't use electricity?"
Good one. (Here's what it's based on, btw.)
I tag sidewalks with Peace Love Linux.
hehe
Don't write in this space.
OK
more people watch nascar than ANY other sport
it has the largest draw than any other spectator sport. that includes football, soccer, etc
If you really want to make a difference, why not sponsor a child in some 3rd world country?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of helping the third world, but sponsoring children is not the best way to go about it. There are a number of problems...
1) Many groups (for example, hunter gatherer groups) exist on a communal basis, sharing the food they gather (or hunt...) and working together for the common good. Sponsoring a child in one of these communities can make one family materially better off than the others and this can cause a breakdown of their community.
2) The groups promoting this child sponsorship are often missionary organisations (although they are not always keen on presenting this in their publicity). There is therefore an incentive for familys to 'embrace' Christianity in order to gain sponsorship. This destroys traditional religion & community identity. You may feel that promoting Christianity is a good thing, but ask yourself whether bribary is a 'Christian way' to go about it.
3) We (as a western society) are vulnerable to images of suffering children. But it is the communities that need our help, so they can provide for their own children. We also should be careful not to send the message to these desperate people that it is necessary to have a child to get help.
This information is not based on journalism or conjecture but based on a report (I think by a UN body or something similar) about the activities of such charities, notably World Vision, in the Amazon area.
I would encourage you to make whatever contributions you can to help people in desperate circumstances (in your own country or abroad) but please target your donations carefully.
This is not a troll.
"Linux is a serious competitor"
- Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Microsoft Corp.
Not all blue-collar folks are Rednecks. Despite the fact that a lot of Rednecks watch NASCAR and a lot of people make fun of Rednecks, NASCAR is still the most watched sport in the USA. NASCAR wouldn't be as successful if ONLY Rednecks watched it.
The one race I did go to (Busch series in NH), I was a guest of Bayer and had a grand old time. I would wager that only about 70% of the people there were blue-collar and only half of them could be considered REDNECKS. So, if only the REDNECKS showed up, then the place would've been 35% filled.
--Mike
This coming from someone who doesn't know how to spell "coming"?