Standard response: E-Mail protest has no effect whatsoever. Write a letter. On real paper. Even better, write it by hand. This is how you get attention.
If 10 people send a million "fuck you" messages each, this is wrong and childish, but if 10 million people each send 1 "fuck you" email, there is nothing wrong with that.
Yes, but I was talking about mail bombs (few people sending oodles of mails), not individual protests (oodles of people sending one mail).
If you want something done, make some noise.
Yes. Silent protest is inefficient.
But polite protest is certainly better than "Fuck you Morons! You're all gonna die! I know where you live!" And from what I was told on the phone, that was about the tone of the mails they got.
So, I think the site in Germnay is much more than a operator, a PR agent, a few marketters, and a few lawyers...
Sure, I was only talking about my impression after talking to Adobe Germany on the phone. I could be perfectly wrong.
You see, whatever you do when you call the official German number (not the toll-free number, but the office location), the receptionist always transferred me to the call center operators.
The public relations department is outsorced and done by an external company.
There was noone available for comment at Adobe Germany, no matter what. Not just for me, a customer (I hate it, but I understand it when they treat customers that way), but also for a journalist I asked about this matter and who also tried in vain to get any Adobe Germany official on the phone.
And -- I must admit that I am reading between the lines -- what the PR woman told me sounded to me like "we cannot do a thing unless Adobe USA allows us to do it"...
being in Germany, I called Adobe Germany and told them -- in a polite way -- that I am unhappy with their way of dealing with a free software project. And that I, being the guy who decides what software to buy in my little brandnew software company, have chosen not to buy any Adobe products as a form of protest because I do not want to support this business behaviour.
After a bit of dialing and transferring, I finally reached an Adobe PR official instead of a clueless call center guy. And speaking to her, it was obvious that Adobe Germany was in a big mess there and that they were very nervous what to do.
This whole stunt appears to have been originated at Adobe USA and these German lawyers, I was told, were appointed by the US company.
Adobe Germany is more or less just a little call center for user support and a few marketing and sales people for the local German market. I have the impression that they are not allowed to act without approval from their US mother.
However, Adobe Germany was not told by Adobe USA that they would go after the Killustrator team. And since you Americans had a National Holiday last week right during the incident, the German officials were unable to ask their US superiors what to do about it until the end of the weekend.
Meanwhile, Adobe Germany was amid a storm of a roaring protest, beginning with mail bombs of "fuck you" messages and angry phone calls all day. My polite call must have been a very unusual thing that day.
The German article speaks about "packaging" as in "box", and the author points out: Yes, these lawyers think that Killustrator is a packaged product in a cardboard box. They want these boxes to be destroyed.
in Germany, you're not allowed to use unfair adverts; 'unfair' is considered anything comparative
You are (now) allowed to use comparative advertising. However, you must be able to back up your statements about the other product you compare your own product to.
So you cannot make a generic comment such as the American Coke/Pepsi ads, you have to be very specific when you use comparative claims.
I understand the need to save space, but you don't need to get THAT small.
I can think of quite a few applications for this device. As a commuting freelancer, it'd be a full portable workstation and still be easier to store and carry than a similar laptop.
But more interesting is something I read on Slashdot a while ago. Someone used these boxes for presentations on exhibitions, sticking them right behind the LCD screen. (I have been doing such presentations, too, and with a full size computer, setting up the exhibition booth is a true pain.)
Maybe somebody will turn one of these puppies into a time-shifting video recorder?
It'd be nice, but the device lacks a video-in and I doubt that there is a decent video-in using USB.
I have the impression that in the past year, US politicians and US political advisors looked at the spam issue and started to think of unsolicited email as their future tool in election campaigns.
Now, they are trying to make it legit. For political campaigns, of course. They may outlaw it for commercial spam, but there will be attempts to legitimize political spam.
And trust me, unless there is a real outcry against it, there will be political spam in the future. Already now, despite the fact that nobody likes telemarketing (do you?), the Bush campaign relied heavily on it, even used pre-recorded messages and questionable procedures that are usually considered a bad thing in telemarketing - and the Bush team later called it a valuable and working tool.
There have already been a few small incidents of US politicians spamming. Most of these attempts backfired, but from what I read, it appears to me that even after some "net oldtimers" protested, the political campaign teams did not actually think they did something wrong.
Linux does have power management (I'm working on my Linux laptop right now) and my laptop runs 4 hours on Linux, less than 3 hours on Windows.
However, your mileage may vary.
Yes, only a slide show. As I said, it could still have been a hardware mockup prototype.
However, I've seen a lot of prototype hardware on CeBIT yesterday and this one certainly was the best one I had a chance to get my hands on. Most of the otheres weren't even allowed to be touched and those that were felt shabby or had obvious manufacturing problems and looked, well, "homemade".
It was made from the right material, felt like a real product.
Definitely not cardboard and certainly more than vaporware. But if it will become a real, working product - I have no idea.
Most of all, they are not ergonomic. I use a laptop as my primary computer and I am sick and tired with the "keyboard firmly stuck below the screen" design paradigm. It forces me to a bad working position.
You can run a real, OS(W2k/Linux, etc.)
Same for this device.
Is it me, or are geeks getting even too weak to carry around a 5 lb notebook...?
Oh, that old argument again. I did carry a 3 kg laptop with me until a few years ago. I do not have a car as I live in a city with no parking space and a very good public transportation system and also have a bike.
I was surprised myself that carrying a "normal" laptop with me *is* a major strain, both because of its weight and of its size.
I am glad that the industry makes subnotebooks. My current laptop is 1.5 kg and I can carry it with me all the time without even noticing that it's there. Taking off half of the weight is a major difference.
According to the laptop's hardware developer I spoke with at CeBIT, the device contains regular PC-compatible components. He himself is not a Linux-fanatic, but he sees no problem running any x86 OS on it.
Maybe "shoot" was the wrong choice. While that word was used, it wasn't used in its literal meaning. More like "German army targets Microsoft" or "pinpoints Microsoft".
Even "farts in the general direction of Microsoft" would have been appropriate.:-)
There is of course also a (huge) German representation of Microsoft in Munich, one that probably dwarfs the size of Redhat USA HQ...
While it's true that SuSE is huge and popular in Germany, I (a German) never considered it "German" software (which the Spiegel article calls for).
Someone else in this thread pointed out that the whole idea of this maybe to strengthen German software businesses, just as the US requires the use of US software on government computers.
Question is, who made the US the "mother" of Europe, in charge of educating its allies? The US does this because it is the one current superpower and knows it can get away with it.
That still doesn't make it right since the very same things that Woolsley critizies are done by the US as well.
I am pretty confident that the German secret service does not snoop on Boeing headquarters to make sure that Airbus (a company co-funded by the German and several other European governments) gets hold of the latest deal.
At least, there hasn't been any report about such scandals here or in other country's news media, unlike many reports of such behaviour about the US secret service.
Given the fact that the German secret service is probably (surely) far less competent than their American counterparts and the additional fact that German news media are very critical of our government and love to dig up such stories, it seems that Germany is not among them.
Slashdot Mirror
Standard response: E-Mail protest has no effect whatsoever. Write a letter. On real paper. Even better, write it by hand. This is how you get attention.
If 10 people send a million "fuck you" messages each, this is wrong and childish, but if 10 million people each send 1 "fuck you" email, there is nothing wrong with that.
Yes, but I was talking about mail bombs (few people sending oodles of mails), not individual protests (oodles of people sending one mail).
If you want something done, make some noise.
Yes. Silent protest is inefficient.
But polite protest is certainly better than "Fuck you Morons! You're all gonna die! I know where you live!" And from what I was told on the phone, that was about the tone of the mails they got.
------------------
So, I think the site in Germnay is much more than a operator, a PR agent, a few marketters, and a few lawyers...
Sure, I was only talking about my impression after talking to Adobe Germany on the phone. I could be perfectly wrong.
You see, whatever you do when you call the official German number (not the toll-free number, but the office location), the receptionist always transferred me to the call center operators.
The public relations department is outsorced and done by an external company.
There was noone available for comment at Adobe Germany, no matter what. Not just for me, a customer (I hate it, but I understand it when they treat customers that way), but also for a journalist I asked about this matter and who also tried in vain to get any Adobe Germany official on the phone.
And -- I must admit that I am reading between the lines -- what the PR woman told me sounded to me like "we cannot do a thing unless Adobe USA allows us to do it"...
------------------
Hi,
being in Germany, I called Adobe Germany and told them -- in a polite way -- that I am unhappy with their way of dealing with a free software project. And that I, being the guy who decides what software to buy in my little brandnew software company, have chosen not to buy any Adobe products as a form of protest because I do not want to support this business behaviour.
After a bit of dialing and transferring, I finally reached an Adobe PR official instead of a clueless call center guy. And speaking to her, it was obvious that Adobe Germany was in a big mess there and that they were very nervous what to do.
This whole stunt appears to have been originated at Adobe USA and these German lawyers, I was told, were appointed by the US company.
Adobe Germany is more or less just a little call center for user support and a few marketing and sales people for the local German market. I have the impression that they are not allowed to act without approval from their US mother.
However, Adobe Germany was not told by Adobe USA that they would go after the Killustrator team. And since you Americans had a National Holiday last week right during the incident, the German officials were unable to ask their US superiors what to do about it until the end of the weekend.
Meanwhile, Adobe Germany was amid a storm of a roaring protest, beginning with mail bombs of "fuck you" messages and angry phone calls all day. My polite call must have been a very unusual thing that day.
------------------
about destroying the package
The German article speaks about "packaging" as in "box", and the author points out: Yes, these lawyers think that Killustrator is a packaged product in a cardboard box. They want these boxes to be destroyed.
Funny, isn't it?
------------------
in Germany, you're not allowed to use unfair adverts; 'unfair' is considered anything comparative
You are (now) allowed to use comparative advertising. However, you must be able to back up your statements about the other product you compare your own product to.
So you cannot make a generic comment such as the American Coke/Pepsi ads, you have to be very specific when you use comparative claims.
------------------
Too bad you did not give a link to your work, I'd love to have a look at it.
It is possible that your art was poorly reviewed not because it was computer-generated but because it was - well, sorry - not up to their standards.
------------------
Oh, that was unintentional. :-) I make that error all the time, too.
Worse yet, I often write HTTP protocol.
------------------
I understand the need to save space, but you don't need to get THAT small.
I can think of quite a few applications for this device. As a commuting freelancer, it'd be a full portable workstation and still be easier to store and carry than a similar laptop.
But more interesting is something I read on Slashdot a while ago. Someone used these boxes for presentations on exhibitions, sticking them right behind the LCD screen. (I have been doing such presentations, too, and with a full size computer, setting up the exhibition booth is a true pain.)
Maybe somebody will turn one of these puppies into a time-shifting video recorder?
It'd be nice, but the device lacks a video-in and I doubt that there is a decent video-in using USB.
------------------
I have the impression that in the past year, US politicians and US political advisors looked at the spam issue and started to think of unsolicited email as their future tool in election campaigns.
Now, they are trying to make it legit. For political campaigns, of course. They may outlaw it for commercial spam, but there will be attempts to legitimize political spam.
And trust me, unless there is a real outcry against it, there will be political spam in the future. Already now, despite the fact that nobody likes telemarketing (do you?), the Bush campaign relied heavily on it, even used pre-recorded messages and questionable procedures that are usually considered a bad thing in telemarketing - and the Bush team later called it a valuable and working tool.
There have already been a few small incidents of US politicians spamming. Most of these attempts backfired, but from what I read, it appears to me that even after some "net oldtimers" protested, the political campaign teams did not actually think they did something wrong.
------------------
"...I have to say something positive about the open source and FSF stuff or the mob will come after me and mutilate me..."
------------------
Linux does have power management (I'm working on my Linux laptop right now) and my laptop runs 4 hours on Linux, less than 3 hours on Windows.
However, your mileage may vary.
------------------
Only a slide show?
Yes, only a slide show. As I said, it could still have been a hardware mockup prototype.
However, I've seen a lot of prototype hardware on CeBIT yesterday and this one certainly was the best one I had a chance to get my hands on. Most of the otheres weren't even allowed to be touched and those that were felt shabby or had obvious manufacturing problems and looked, well, "homemade".
It was made from the right material, felt like a real product.
Definitely not cardboard and certainly more than vaporware. But if it will become a real, working product - I have no idea.
------------------
What's wrong witha regular, full-featured laptop?
Most of all, they are not ergonomic. I use a laptop as my primary computer and I am sick and tired with the "keyboard firmly stuck below the screen" design paradigm. It forces me to a bad working position.
You can run a real, OS(W2k/Linux, etc.)
Same for this device.
Is it me, or are geeks getting even too weak to carry around a 5 lb notebook...?
Oh, that old argument again. I did carry a 3 kg laptop with me until a few years ago. I do not have a car as I live in a city with no parking space and a very good public transportation system and also have a bike.
I was surprised myself that carrying a "normal" laptop with me *is* a major strain, both because of its weight and of its size.
I am glad that the industry makes subnotebooks. My current laptop is 1.5 kg and I can carry it with me all the time without even noticing that it's there. Taking off half of the weight is a major difference.
------------------
According to the laptop's hardware developer I spoke with at CeBIT, the device contains regular PC-compatible components. He himself is not a Linux-fanatic, but he sees no problem running any x86 OS on it.
------------------
I'd like to see how that lovely screen actually looks with something running on it.
The device I saw had a pretty regular LCD screen running at 1024x768. Nothing spectacular, just a screen.
------------------
It isn't. I (the one who submitted the story) had this cool device on my hand, twiddling with it, yesterday on CeBIT at the Transmeta booth.
It had the polish of a ready-to-market product, with all connectors in place.
It did not run any applications, only a slide show, so it could still be be a hardware mockup. But definitely not cardboard.
------------------
Microsoft said Linux is un-American! It must be true!
------------------
...I am not familiar with the US system.
What is a "reply brief", who writes it and what is it for?
------------------
Maybe "shoot" was the wrong choice. While that word was used, it wasn't used in its literal meaning. More like "German army targets Microsoft" or "pinpoints Microsoft".
:-)
Even "farts in the general direction of Microsoft" would have been appropriate.
------------------
Thanks. I stand corrected.
------------------
"Die Bundeswehr sagt, dass Microsoft Software verboten ist."
------------------
There is of course also a (huge) German representation of Microsoft in Munich, one that probably dwarfs the size of Redhat USA HQ...
While it's true that SuSE is huge and popular in Germany, I (a German) never considered it "German" software (which the Spiegel article calls for).
Someone else in this thread pointed out that the whole idea of this maybe to strengthen German software businesses, just as the US requires the use of US software on government computers.
------------------
Question is, who made the US the "mother" of Europe, in charge of educating its allies? The US does this because it is the one current superpower and knows it can get away with it.
That still doesn't make it right since the very same things that Woolsley critizies are done by the US as well.
------------------
I am pretty confident that the German secret service does not snoop on Boeing headquarters to make sure that Airbus (a company co-funded by the German and several other European governments) gets hold of the latest deal.
At least, there hasn't been any report about such scandals here or in other country's news media, unlike many reports of such behaviour about the US secret service.
Given the fact that the German secret service is probably (surely) far less competent than their American counterparts and the additional fact that German news media are very critical of our government and love to dig up such stories, it seems that Germany is not among them.
Not yet.
------------------