Re:Where is Microsoft mentioned in this story?
on
Profiling A Nation
·
· Score: 2
Microsoft is a joint partner in Ninemsn , with the Channel Nine Network (one of Australia's three commercial television networks). PBL owns Channel Nine... and Ninemsn is basically the Australian equivalent of MSNBC, though Ninemsn has an even heavier M$ slant.
And yes... the MSN in Ninemsn stands for "Microsoft Network"
I personally don't understand the need for IM software... email and IRC have done me well for the last few years and apart from a nice user interface, I see no advantage to IM apps...
t's a common misconception for people who count from 1 to say it will start on Jan 1st 2001. But as a lot of my UNIX lecturers used to always remind us "count from zero".
Wah? WTF does this have to do with Unix?
To my thinking, 1999 is the 1999th year of Christ (there was no 0th year). As such its conclusion will indicate the passing of 1999 years; and 2000 will indicate the passing of 2000 years, which means (to me) that 01/01/2001 is the beginning of the "new" millennium.
It should also be noted that, to my thinking, Christ didn't/doesn't exist in the first place and we're all argueing about one arbitrary point in time relative to another arbitrary point in time.
What amazes me, though, is the sheer willingness of a large section of the western world to throw all logic out the window, simply because of our facination with the number 2000. ie. we can't celebrate the turn of the millennum on 1st Jan 2001 because not enough numbers are changing, and that just ain't cool enuff!
What I'd really like to see is what the front pages of the major newspapers were saying on 01/01/1901... were they or weren't they celebrating a new century? Anyone know?
Every few weeks an article or comment is posted to slashdot lamenting the "controversial" Australian internet censorship laws, and every time hundreds of slashdot readers post comments to slashdot explaining (to the altar boy) exactly why this is such a bad idea.
Why post to slashdot only? Almost everyone here agrees with you.
If you think that the internet censorship is bad and can say so with reasonable intelligence - then please copy your comments to:
The Age is a leading national newspaper in Australia and if they think there is enough public outrage, both in Aus. and overseas, then they will make it a dominant issue. Other news organisations are then guaranteed to follow suit.
If you're going to preach about internet censorship, then you may as well be preaching in a forum that educates those with a limitted understanding of the issues.
the Fahrenheit scale is a more convenient scale for human life.
Next you'll be telling us that it makes more sense to drive on the right side of the road as opposed to the left.
To me, living downunder, 40 degrees means its fuckin' hot, below 0 means its fuckin' cold, and 300 kph is fuckin' fast.
On the other hand, I know that 100 F is hot, but I don't know how hot... I know that 30 F is cold, bu I don't know how cold, and I know that 300 mph is really fucking fast but unless I convert it to kmh I can't really appreciate it.
Errr isn't this how the US political advertisements run? Paid for by each party, with pro messages, and slagging the opposition?
I'm not sure how the US handles this but in Australia any and all political advertising must be authorised and marked us such by the party concerned. ie. the public is always informed as to what is paid political PR and what is not, irrespective of which well-known identity/company/organisation is doing the promotion.
I might not like Microsoft, but the fact remains that Microsoft has the right to try to manipulate public opinion, as does any individual. Microsoft can use any non-illegal means to do so.
Whilst Microsoft may have a legal right to back these adds and attempt to manipulate public opinion, the public may not share Microsoft's sentiments.
The legality of the tactic is irrelevant. As far the general public goes, its the intention that everyone is concerned with - and in this situation they have a right to feel burned.
Public outcry is a powerful force and can go a long way to influencing decisions at the highest levels. However, as many politicians have found in the past, if you attempt to manufacture that outcry, then it has the potential to come back at you full force when the manufacturing process is revealed.
right so really if a band had someone outside the band that was the legal owner of the website, but the band did business through it, would sony then have the authority to sue them? since the owner of the site never signed a contract with sony all should be good eh? or is it.
Nope... Sony would most likely sue the band for a breach of contract and strip even more money from the artists.
Given that we haven't seen the exact wording of the clauses Sony are using (only an excerpt) its hard to pinpoint exactly what the contract forbids, but I'd be surprised if this situation wasn't covered as it'd make URL stuff worthless.
Power outages.. big deal, Trains not working.. Who cares.
Actually it is a very big deal... Victoria, Australia went through a similar scenario when there was an explosion at the major gas provider for the state late last year.
The gas was off totally for 3 weeks across a large part of the state, affecting millions.
In the days immediately following the blast, the only effect on the average person was to go to friends and relatives for electric hot water/heating/cooking etc. An inconvenience that could be lived with.
However as it dragged on, the crisis worsened.
Thousands upon thousands of workers were stood down as manufacturing plants and textile factories were forced to stop production lines. Manufactures in other states were forced to stop production lines as they relied on components from Melbourne.
There was panic buying of food and essentials as farmers tipped milk down the drains (they needed gas for pastuerisation), and large bread factories ground to a halt.
There was a shortage of electrical appliances as 100's of restraunts across the state tried to keep their doors open. Many failed and had to close for weeks.
All of these people lost a lot of money, with many of those working in manufacturing industries already hard up for a buck. It created an immediate welfare problem.
What I am getting at is that, whilst we should still heed the night, the Y2K problems on New Years eve are less of a concern than the amount of time it takes to rectify them and the ramifications of that delay.
This all came about due to the failure of one utility in one state in one country. You don't necessarily need a wide-spread Y2K failure to stuff things things up.
If you want a summary of the chain of events that took place then check out The Story so far... the gas crisis or the full coverage . It's a good indication of what might happen in the first few weeks of 2000.
What did Intel have to lose in naming Transmeta as a competitor? Whether Transmeta is a competitor or not... someone, as a part of the anti-trust case, would have needed to check it out.
This possibly put Transmeta in the position of having to either deny that they are a potential competitor to Intel, or confirm that they're working in a similar field.
So, this contract asks the artist to say "Hey, this thing I don't own... you now have rights to it!!"
No... The article appeared to be stating that Sony will, by default, now own the rights to all URLs related to an artists name - but that's just FUD.
As an added bonus to what they're really doing, they're also scaring fans, name sakes etc. away from those URLs by asserting ownership even though they may have no legal basis for such a claim.
IANAL, but I think the real situation here is that Sony is telling the artists, by way of contract, that "the artist" will never be able to register those URLs. ie. Sony is blocking the artists ability to contact its fan base directly on the net.
I assume Sony will use the usual trademark/copyright route through the courts to hassle anyone else who happens to lay claim to a particular URL.
If sites had to rely on promoting their IP addresses rather than their domain name, any marketing advantage or disadvantage to domain names would be removed. The legal issues with domain names to do with trademark infringements and squatting would disappear and mom&pop companies could coexist with large corporations on the internet quite comfortably. (eg. Clue computing and Hasbro)
Existing trademark laws would still apply, but the focus would be on content and product rather than location. Also p0rn sites and other parasites would not be able to latch on to variations of popular site names, and it would be extremely difficult for them to get similar IP addresses.
The only downside (though not for me) would be the loss of the monopoly by US companies on.com addresses...
Determining if you're an internet addict is far simpler than trying to determine the percentage of each week/day/minute that you're online. Those figures are meaningless and merely indicate the level of participation and interest that a person has with the internet (that's not addiction)
Determining how addicted you are to the internet is as simple as determining the level of your frustration when you jump on your machine to go to Slashdot or some other regular haunt and you suddenly discover you don't have a network connection.
Your ISP is busy, your DNS/proxy/router/network card has taken a bullet, or a backhoe operator just dug up your ISDN line. It really doesn't matter what the reason is, the bottom line is that there's just you and your hard drive.
No slashdot. No surfing. No email. No newsgroups. No news.
Just this nagging frustration that you can't quite justify in the back of your mind as you try to find something else to occupy your time.
Addiction is not how often or how much of a particular thing a person does - its how much they crave it when its taken away unexpectedly.
As others have stated, the media in Australia have largely treated the passing of this Bill as a non-issue. Though there have been some strongly worded op-ed pieces in the national newspapers, they haven't really devoted any major press to it.
Time to use the/. effect for a really good cause...
A national newspaper, The Age, has an internet censorship feeback section which would be good spot to voice your concerns (nicely and intelligently of course...;). The only downside is that the feedback section is only appearing online at the moment and not making it to the printed version (ie. comments there are being read by people who already agree that the legislation sucks), but it is still worthwhile.
A much better approach, however, would be to CC those comments to letters@theage.fairfax.com.au as this a place to submit comments to their daily reader column for the printed version.
The Age does carry a lot of influence in Australia, and if they had the reactions of the rest of the world pushed at them, along with a valid reason as to why this should be an issue,then we could maybe get some press involvment and some proper public understanding (guaranteed to be followed by contempt) of what the Australian government has just done.
Wouldn't this be a good opportunity for competitors of GeoCities steal customers by offering a service that ensures that your content remains "your content"?
After all, if it doesn't cost them anything to move, and the incentive is there, wouldn't it make sense to move - just in case you happen to hit upon a money-spinner down the track?
I wonder what the situation would be if a GeoCities user came up with a winner like slashdot... Would Yahoo step in and say "Wow! Cool idea! Thanks for that - but we'll take it from here" ? (of course, with windows containing banner adds popping up every 10 seconds, it'd likely piss too many people off to get on a roll like that:)
I took ESR's comments to read that the "OSI Certified" logo would refer to the type of licence that you used. ie. Provided the license has the blessing of OSI, you could slap the logo on any piece of software that you've slapped the license on.
Actually GMT would have been nicer... At least that gives everyone a reference point - getting tired of working out what the timezone differences are for live performances etc on the net. At least with GMT you only need to know what the time diff is between you and GMT (which most people know)...
I would like to make a couple of points about the conversation so far.
First, I am a little discusted that what started out as a plea for support against a fairly ill-informed and poorly motivated piece of legislation, to do with Internet censorship, turned into a round of US-based Aussie-bashing.
This is particularly disturbing when coming from Slashdot subscribers, which, until this point, I had considered fairly open-minded and intelligent.
Second, I find the notion that Australia's restrictions on gun ownership and Internet censorship being related in any way absolutely ridiculous. The fact is that a large majority of Australians fully and passionately support the gun control that Australia has, and the issue has been debated heavily though the media and in public.
However, what has not been debated or even explained fully is this legislation on internet regulation. The current government (in Aus.), is trying to ram through a piece of legislation aimed solely at satisfying a poorly-informed independent senator on a morals campaign, in order to get his crucial vote on tax legislation. It has nothing to do with the good of the people, nor have they checked whether or not the legislation is actually capable of achieving its goals. Its a pity this situation gained no sympathy from Slashdot, given the stand they have taken on CDA.
BTW, if a half-hour, grossly-inaccurate, though somewhat funny Simpsons episode is all you know about Australia, then please refrain from commenting on it. To the rest of the world you merely look ignorant (and arrogant).
As happened here. Just about all of the 100 or so replies on ZDNET trashed the article, Mr. Cuban's rationale, and questioned his motives.
I would have thought this would be one of the collective purposes of the slashdot community - to promote the values of a piece of technology worthy of promotion, and provide logical and well-reasoned opposition to the FUD tactics of others who would otherwise benefit from its demise.
If fact, slashdot comments are probably better utilised on sites like ZDNET rather than here - as most of the time on slashdot you're preaching to the altar boys, not the masses.
Perhaps an ongoing ZDNET pressence by slashdotters will turn ZDNET - ie. if every FUD article they write gets hammered (thoughtfully), they'll get the message. They do have a comercial interest in their articles after all - so public perception is paramount to their continued success.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is a joint partner in Ninemsn , with the Channel Nine Network (one of Australia's three commercial television networks). PBL owns Channel Nine... and Ninemsn is basically the Australian equivalent of MSNBC, though Ninemsn has an even heavier M$ slant.
And yes... the MSN in Ninemsn stands for "Microsoft Network"
So M$ is very much involved.
M@T
> Sure, today you can go to VA.
... or Dell.
yeah... TODAY you can go to Dell... but how did that come about??
Wouldn't have had something to do with the pressure being lifted by the mere existence of the anti-trust trial would it?
The question is: would Dell have been providing Linux had the anti-trust trial not occurred? And if so, how much would they be hurting now??
Actually, the FoF specifically states that MS sold Win 98 for $89. I think that in itself is a pretty good figure for damages.
Customer: I didn't want Windows 98.
MS: You got it anyway.
Customer: But I didn't want it!
MS: Consider it a gift - from us to you.
Customer: But you charged me for it...
MS: What!? You want something for nothing?
Customer: I...didn't....want...Windows...98!!!
MS: You got it anyway.
.
.
.
M@T
Any consumer that did not want windows could learn enough to piece together their own machine.
I guess I'd be supplying myself a 12 month warranty on all parts and support too huh?
Sorry, I can't afford that. I'd have to charge myself too much.
M@T
I personally don't understand the need for IM software... email and IRC have done me well for the last few years and apart from a nice user interface, I see no advantage to IM apps...
am i missing something?
M@T
Do you reckon you'd get slapped with a trademark infringement if you created a drink and called it "Bite the Wax Tadpole" ?
M@T
This is the disclaimer on the bottom of each page of the Gartner report:
Microsoft Web Letter is published by Microsoft. Additional editorial material supplied by Gartner Group, Inc. © 1999. Editorial supplied by Microsoft is independent of GartnerGroup analysis and in no way should this information be construed as a GartnerGroup endorsement of Microsoft's products and services. Entire contents © 1999 by Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. GartnerGroup disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. GartnerGroup shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
Need I say more?
M@T
t's a common misconception for people who count from 1 to say it will start on Jan 1st 2001.
But as a lot of my UNIX lecturers used to always remind us "count from zero".
Wah? WTF does this have to do with Unix?
To my thinking, 1999 is the 1999th year of Christ (there was no 0th year). As such its conclusion will indicate the passing of 1999 years; and 2000 will indicate the passing of 2000 years, which means (to me) that 01/01/2001 is the beginning of the "new" millennium.
It should also be noted that, to my thinking, Christ didn't/doesn't exist in the first place and we're all argueing about one arbitrary point in time relative to another arbitrary point in time.
What amazes me, though, is the sheer willingness of a large section of the western world to throw all logic out the window, simply because of our facination with the number 2000. ie. we can't celebrate the turn of the millennum on 1st Jan 2001 because not enough numbers are changing, and that just ain't cool enuff!
What I'd really like to see is what the front pages of the major newspapers were saying on 01/01/1901... were they or weren't they celebrating a new century? Anyone know?
Every few weeks an article or comment is posted to slashdot lamenting the "controversial" Australian internet censorship laws, and every time hundreds of slashdot readers post comments to slashdot explaining (to the altar boy) exactly why this is such a bad idea.
Why post to slashdot only? Almost everyone here agrees with you.
If you think that the internet censorship is bad and can say so with reasonable intelligence - then please copy your comments to:
The Age - Letters to the Editor (print) and
The Age - Internet Censorship Feedback (online)
and check out The Age's Censorship Online section.
The Age is a leading national newspaper in Australia and if they think there is enough public outrage, both in Aus. and overseas, then they will make it a dominant issue. Other news organisations are then guaranteed to follow suit.
If you're going to preach about internet censorship, then you may as well be preaching in a forum that educates those with a limitted understanding of the issues.
M@T.
the Fahrenheit scale is a more convenient scale for human life.
Next you'll be telling us that it makes more sense to drive on the right side of the road as opposed to the left.
To me, living downunder, 40 degrees means its fuckin' hot, below 0 means its fuckin' cold, and 300 kph is fuckin' fast.
On the other hand, I know that 100 F is hot, but I don't know how hot... I know that 30 F is cold, bu I don't know how cold, and I know that 300 mph is really fucking fast but unless I convert it to kmh I can't really appreciate it.
It all comes down to what you're used to.
M@T
Errr isn't this how the US political advertisements run? Paid for by each party, with pro messages, and slagging the opposition?
I'm not sure how the US handles this but in Australia any and all political advertising must be authorised and marked us such by the party concerned. ie. the public is always informed as to what is paid political PR and what is not, irrespective of which well-known identity/company/organisation is doing the promotion.
M@T
I might not like Microsoft, but the fact remains that Microsoft has the right to try to manipulate public opinion, as does any individual. Microsoft can use any non-illegal means to do so.
Whilst Microsoft may have a legal right to back these adds and attempt to manipulate public opinion, the public may not share Microsoft's sentiments.
The legality of the tactic is irrelevant. As far the general public goes, its the intention that everyone is concerned with - and in this situation they have a right to feel burned.
Public outcry is a powerful force and can go a long way to influencing decisions at the highest levels. However, as many politicians have found in the past, if you attempt to manufacture that outcry, then it has the potential to come back at you full force when the manufacturing process is revealed.
M@T
right so really if a band had someone outside the band that was the legal owner of the website, but the band did business through it, would sony
then have the authority to sue them? since the owner of the site never signed a contract with sony all should be good eh? or is it.
Nope... Sony would most likely sue the band for a breach of contract and strip even more money from the artists.
Given that we haven't seen the exact wording of the clauses Sony are using (only an excerpt) its hard to pinpoint exactly what the contract forbids, but I'd be surprised if this situation wasn't covered as it'd make URL stuff worthless.
M@T
Power outages.. big deal, Trains not working.. Who cares.
Actually it is a very big deal... Victoria, Australia went through a similar scenario when there was an explosion at the major gas provider for the state late last year.
The gas was off totally for 3 weeks across a large part of the state, affecting millions.
In the days immediately following the blast, the only effect on the average person was to go to friends and relatives for electric hot water/heating/cooking etc. An inconvenience that could be lived with.
However as it dragged on, the crisis worsened.
Thousands upon thousands of workers were stood down as manufacturing plants and textile factories were forced to stop production lines. Manufactures in other states were forced to stop production lines as they relied on components from Melbourne.
There was panic buying of food and essentials as farmers tipped milk down the drains (they needed gas for pastuerisation), and large bread factories ground to a halt.
There was a shortage of electrical appliances as 100's of restraunts across the state tried to keep their doors open. Many failed and had to close for weeks.
All of these people lost a lot of money, with many of those working in manufacturing industries already hard up for a buck. It created an immediate welfare problem.
What I am getting at is that, whilst we should still heed the night, the Y2K problems on New Years eve are less of a concern than the amount of time it takes to rectify them and the ramifications of that delay.
This all came about due to the failure of one utility in one state in one country. You don't necessarily need a wide-spread Y2K failure to stuff things things up.
If you want a summary of the chain of events that took place then check out The Story so far... the gas crisis or the full coverage . It's a good indication of what might happen in the first few weeks of 2000.
M@T
just some thoughts...
What did Intel have to lose in naming Transmeta as a competitor? Whether Transmeta is a competitor or not... someone, as a part of the anti-trust case, would have needed to check it out.
This possibly put Transmeta in the position of having to either deny that they are a potential competitor to Intel, or confirm that they're working in a similar field.
M@T
So, this contract asks the artist to say "Hey, this thing I don't own... you now have rights to it!!"
No... The article appeared to be stating that Sony will, by default, now own the rights to all URLs related to an artists name - but that's just FUD.
As an added bonus to what they're really doing, they're also scaring fans, name sakes etc. away from those URLs by asserting ownership even though they may have no legal basis for such a claim.
IANAL, but I think the real situation here is that Sony is telling the artists, by way of contract, that "the artist" will never be able to register those URLs. ie. Sony is blocking the artists ability to contact its fan base directly on the net.
I assume Sony will use the usual trademark/copyright route through the courts to hassle anyone else who happens to lay claim to a particular URL.
M@T
If sites had to rely on promoting their IP addresses rather than their domain name, any marketing advantage or disadvantage to domain names would be removed. The legal issues with domain names to do with trademark infringements and squatting would disappear and mom&pop companies could coexist with large corporations on the internet quite comfortably. (eg. Clue computing and Hasbro)
.com addresses...
Existing trademark laws would still apply, but the focus would be on content and product rather than location. Also p0rn sites and other parasites would not be able to latch on to variations of popular site names, and it would be extremely difficult for them to get similar IP addresses.
The only downside (though not for me) would be the loss of the monopoly by US companies on
Any thoughts on this?
M@T
Determining if you're an internet addict is far simpler than trying to determine the percentage of each week/day/minute that you're online. Those figures are meaningless and merely indicate the level of participation and interest that a person has with the internet (that's not addiction)
Determining how addicted you are to the internet is as simple as determining the level of your frustration when you jump on your machine to go to Slashdot or some other regular haunt and you suddenly discover you don't have a network
connection.
Your ISP is busy, your DNS/proxy/router/network card has taken a bullet, or a backhoe operator just dug up your ISDN line. It really doesn't matter what the reason is, the bottom line is that there's just you and your hard drive.
No slashdot. No surfing. No email. No newsgroups. No news.
Just this nagging frustration that you can't
quite justify in the back of your mind as you
try to find something else to occupy your time.
Addiction is not how often or how much of a particular thing a person does - its how much
they crave it when its taken away unexpectedly.
M@T
As others have stated, the media in Australia have largely treated the passing of this Bill as a non-issue. Though there have been some strongly worded op-ed pieces in the national newspapers, they haven't really devoted any major press to it.
Time to use the /. effect for a really good cause...
A national newspaper, The Age, has an internet censorship feeback section which would be good spot to voice your concerns (nicely and intelligently of course... ;). The only downside is that the feedback section is only appearing online at the moment and not making it to the printed version (ie. comments there are being read by people who already agree that the legislation sucks), but it is still worthwhile.
A much better approach, however, would be to CC those comments to letters@theage.fairfax.com.au as this a place to submit comments to their daily reader column for the printed version.
The Age does carry a lot of influence in Australia, and if they had the reactions of the rest of the world pushed at them, along with a valid reason as to why this should be an issue,then we could maybe get some press involvment and some proper public understanding (guaranteed to be followed by contempt) of what the Australian government has just done.
Make it happen. M@T
Heheh.... you forgot to mention language too!
The US decided that the English language was a tad too complicated so they bastardi(s/z)ed it, irrespective of everyone else.
Their version of which, they're now pushing on the rest of the world....
self-confessed flamebait,
M@T
Wouldn't this be a good opportunity for competitors of GeoCities steal customers by offering a service that ensures that your content remains "your content"?
... Would Yahoo step in and say "Wow! Cool idea! Thanks for that - but we'll take it from here" ? (of course, with windows containing banner adds popping up every 10 seconds, it'd likely piss too many people off to get on a roll like that :)
After all, if it doesn't cost them anything to move, and the incentive is there, wouldn't it make sense to move - just in case you happen to hit upon a money-spinner down the track?
I wonder what the situation would be if a GeoCities user came up with a winner like slashdot
M@T
I took ESR's comments to read that the "OSI
Certified" logo would refer to the type of
licence that you used. ie. Provided the license
has the blessing of OSI, you could slap the logo
on any piece of software that you've slapped the
license on.
M@T
Actually GMT would have been nicer... At least that gives everyone a reference point - getting tired of working out what the timezone differences are for live performances etc on the net. At least with GMT you only need to know what the time diff is between you and GMT (which most people know)...
matt.
I would like to make a couple of points about the conversation so far.
First, I am a little discusted that what started out as a plea for support against a fairly ill-informed and poorly motivated piece of legislation, to do with Internet censorship, turned into a round of US-based Aussie-bashing.
This is particularly disturbing when coming from Slashdot subscribers, which, until this point, I had considered fairly open-minded and intelligent.
Second, I find the notion that Australia's restrictions on gun ownership and Internet censorship being related in any way absolutely ridiculous. The fact is that a large majority of Australians fully and passionately support the gun control that Australia has, and the issue has been debated heavily though the media and in public.
However, what has not been debated or even explained fully is this legislation on internet regulation. The current government (in Aus.), is trying to ram through a piece of legislation aimed solely at satisfying a poorly-informed independent senator on a morals campaign, in order to get his crucial vote on tax legislation. It has nothing to do with the good of the people, nor have they checked whether or not the legislation is actually capable of achieving its goals. Its a pity this situation gained no sympathy from Slashdot, given the stand they have taken on CDA.
BTW, if a half-hour, grossly-inaccurate, though somewhat funny Simpsons episode is all you know about Australia, then please refrain from commenting on it. To the rest of the world you merely look ignorant (and arrogant).
Matt.
As happened here. Just about all of the 100 or so replies on ZDNET trashed the article, Mr. Cuban's rationale, and questioned his motives.
I would have thought this would be one of the collective purposes of the slashdot community -
to promote the values of a piece of technology worthy of promotion, and provide logical and
well-reasoned opposition to the FUD tactics of others who would otherwise benefit from its demise.
If fact, slashdot comments are probably better utilised on sites like ZDNET rather than here - as most of the time on slashdot you're preaching to the altar boys, not the masses.
Perhaps an ongoing ZDNET pressence by slashdotters
will turn ZDNET - ie. if every FUD article they write gets hammered (thoughtfully), they'll get the message. They do have a comercial interest in their articles after all - so public perception is paramount to their continued success.