Okay, I've been reading Slashdot for about two years now, and I don't post very often, mainly because I'm too busy. But this time, this is going way too far.
John Katz is obviously the most controversed writer here on/. I must admit that, myself, I find a lot of his articles to be half-baked ideas and opinions. There's not even any doubt about it : they are! Katz said it himself, he's not a geek. Most of/.'s readers are techies, programmers and so on. As such, we are very focused on logic, we tend to focus on the actual hard facts about something. John doesn't. He always exagerate what he has to say. Actually, he would probably be quite good to whip up a mob into frenzy, throwing his ideas at it. Maybe he should start a cult or something;).
The point I'm trying to make is that you have to take his articles with a grain of salt. Once you've gotten over his hot propaganda, you see that there are often a few concepts of his that are worth talking about. I'm getting sick of seeing each of his articles getting bashed... You know, the "Here's my rant, Katz... Your style blahblah... Your ideas inacurate blahblah..." posts. Hey, remember, this guy's not a geek, he won't write entirely logical and precise articles. Instead, he lets his opinions flame him up. Stop looking at his style and look at what he actually has to say, under all these decorations. You'll find that he has some great things to say, from his point of view.
All right, this is pure Jon Katz. This man seems to hunt for a good event to comment on, put a nail on it and then hit it as hard as he can, as many times as he can (missing the nail as much as hitting it, but that doesn't seem to bother him, as long as he hits something). Okay, so Bezos may not be exactly his best pick for the "Net Person of the Year". Fine, he didn't change my life either. But we can't argue that he somewhat changed the way commerce is done. Hey, we live in a consomation society and, as consumers, we make shopping and buying a central part of our lives. There's hardly a day in the average american's life without him buying something. A lot of people are starting to shop and buy on the internet. IMHO, online shopping is one aspect that helped a LOT of people to familiarize with the internet. So it can make sense to choose Bezos as the Net Person of the Year. Your other choices? Common, man. Linus Torvald : while he certainly did GREAT work to open people's mind to alternatives to Windows, he didn't reach the average net user. Very few of the average computer users ever heard of Linux yet, and even fewer of them have actually seen it running on a box. Same with most GPL programmers : they do a fantastic job, one that will have important repercussions on the future of computing, but still, most people haven't seen or used any of their work. The ICQ creator? That's a good one, I must admit. It allowed people to use the internet to carry converstations, instant messenging style. That had a lot of impact, and of all your proposals, that's the one I like the most. Anyway, all of this to say that you have to consider not only what this guy changed for you, but what he changed for the average net users. Linus Torvald and the guy who created ICQ changed a lot more than bezos for me, but i'm not self-centered to the point of believing that it was the same for most people. As a member of some GPL projects myself, I know that I am doing work to improve the internet and computing community, only I have to admit that Open Source is only beginning to change the way people think. In some future year, why not? But not this year, sorry. Flame away.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I've been reading Slashdot for about two years now, and I don't post very often, mainly because I'm too busy. But this time, this is going way too far.
/. I must admit that, myself, I find a lot of his articles to be half-baked ideas and opinions. There's not even any doubt about it : they are! Katz said it himself, he's not a geek. Most of /.'s readers are techies, programmers and so on. As such, we are very focused on logic, we tend to focus on the actual hard facts about something. John doesn't. He always exagerate what he has to say. Actually, he would probably be quite good to whip up a mob into frenzy, throwing his ideas at it. Maybe he should start a cult or something ;) .
John Katz is obviously the most controversed writer here on
The point I'm trying to make is that you have to take his articles with a grain of salt. Once you've gotten over his hot propaganda, you see that there are often a few concepts of his that are worth talking about. I'm getting sick of seeing each of his articles getting bashed... You know, the "Here's my rant, Katz... Your style blahblah... Your ideas inacurate blahblah..." posts. Hey, remember, this guy's not a geek, he won't write entirely logical and precise articles. Instead, he lets his opinions flame him up. Stop looking at his style and look at what he actually has to say, under all these decorations. You'll find that he has some great things to say, from his point of view.
All right, this is pure Jon Katz. This man seems to hunt for a good event to comment on, put a nail on it and then hit it as hard as he can, as many times as he can (missing the nail as much as hitting it, but that doesn't seem to bother him, as long as he hits something). Okay, so Bezos may not be exactly his best pick for the "Net Person of the Year". Fine, he didn't change my life either. But we can't argue that he somewhat changed the way commerce is done. Hey, we live in a consomation society and, as consumers, we make shopping and buying a central part of our lives. There's hardly a day in the average american's life without him buying something. A lot of people are starting to shop and buy on the internet. IMHO, online shopping is one aspect that helped a LOT of people to familiarize with the internet. So it can make sense to choose Bezos as the Net Person of the Year. Your other choices? Common, man. Linus Torvald : while he certainly did GREAT work to open people's mind to alternatives to Windows, he didn't reach the average net user. Very few of the average computer users ever heard of Linux yet, and even fewer of them have actually seen it running on a box. Same with most GPL programmers : they do a fantastic job, one that will have important repercussions on the future of computing, but still, most people haven't seen or used any of their work. The ICQ creator? That's a good one, I must admit. It allowed people to use the internet to carry converstations, instant messenging style. That had a lot of impact, and of all your proposals, that's the one I like the most. Anyway, all of this to say that you have to consider not only what this guy changed for you, but what he changed for the average net users. Linus Torvald and the guy who created ICQ changed a lot more than bezos for me, but i'm not self-centered to the point of believing that it was the same for most people. As a member of some GPL projects myself, I know that I am doing work to improve the internet and computing community, only I have to admit that Open Source is only beginning to change the way people think. In some future year, why not? But not this year, sorry. Flame away.