The iPod has been at the top of the heap for a long time now, for good reason. They have created a seamless hardware/software experience that makes digital music easy enough for non gearheads to understand and enjoy. I have a 10Gb iPod and a shuffle, and use both all the time. They're excellent products, and they've changed the way I listen to music. In fact, the RIAA has even made more money off of me than they would have before, because I buy more music now.
Apple has done a lot right with the iPod/iTunes combo, but it's not a perfect combination just yet. Managing libraries across different computers and different users isn't as easy as it should be, for example. But in a larger sense, I get a bit nervous any time a single company dominates a market. Microsoft's operating system dominance has helped in many ways, but has also arguably hindered to an even larger degree. After it gobbled up Macromedia, Adobe is pretty much the only commercial game in town for graphic design software, Quark being the lone holdout of note, and they're essentially a one-product company. I don't like shelling out big bucks for Adobe product updates as I wonder if their prices would be cheaper and the software would be better if they had some serious competition.
The same is true for Apple. They've done an excellent job so far, and I want them to keep improving the iPod/iTunes combination. They *need* competition to keep them hungry, and when they're hungry, it's better for consumers like me.
I don't think Microsoft will be able to unseat Apple from the digital music throne, but if Microsoft blows this one it won't necessarily be beneficial for the digital music market in the long term.
Re:Web site creators fall into one of three camps
on
Dvorak Rants on CSS
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· Score: 1
You must be some kind of management or HR moron.
Actually, I'm a web development moron. But at least I'm not an AC:-P
Web site creators fall into one of three camps
on
Dvorak Rants on CSS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The people that want it to "look nice" rather than to work are the culprits!!
I disagree. The people at fault are those who still think it is 1990 and design and programming are wholly separate disciplines. Camps 1 and 2 need to disappear. Camp 3 is growing fast.
Camp 1: Designers who want eye candy.
Camp 2: Programmers who would prefer that the Web be reduced to square corners, primary colors, dense copy, and no white space.
Camp 3: People who understand that design and programming have to work together in order to create true usability. Call them interaction designers, web developers, or webphibians. The name is unimportant, but the cross-disciplinary skillset is vital.
It also shows a profound misunderstanding of business.
I disagree. I think it shows a solid understanding of business. In almost all businesses, poor performance gets you a boot in the ass and a trip to Monster.com. In the small percentage of businesses that have large numbers of employees, sometimes poor performance leads to termination, but many times it does not. I've worked in large businesses, government agencies, and small businesses. I've started and managed my own business. Large businesses, in my experience, behave essentially like government bureaucracies. Movement up the ladder is more rapid in large companies than in government bureaucracies, but in neither case do managers carry risk even remotely approaching that borne by managers in small businesses.
There are very important business skills, but I'm not sure that excellent managers are any more rare than excellent programmers. I've seen enough managers to know that most of them are mediocre at best, because in American businesses managers are seldom given truly useful leadership training. MBA programs certainly do not train leaders. The Cult of the MBA is in my opinion one of the worst things to hit American business, because it encourages in-group behavior that leads to debacles like the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Where does the Cult of the MBA reign supreme? Why, in big business, of course. In small businesses, the sheepskin doesn't matter. Results matter.
XHTML and CSS aren't esoteric. They are widely understood and widely used. They also don't lock you into a proprietary content creation tool and a proprietary viewer. I'd rather not put the whole future of the Web in the hands of a single company, no matter how good their products.
Jeez lighten up. It's a rumour. On a site. That barely ever gets anything right.
Indeed, I wouldn't at all be surprised if Jobs has convinced the studios to at least try a purchase model for movies. After all, iTunes has been an excellent vehicle for TV show sales, generating new revenue for the studios. While the media companies obviously see Apple as a competitor, if Jobs can convince them that iTunes is a distribution network that is already proven and ready for action, they may recognize that they'll make more money if they piggyback on the success of iTunes. So far everything they've tried on their own has been rather underwhelming. In the end, these guys will follow the money, and my guess is Jobs has figured out a way to show them the money.
Just a clarification, you make it sound as if the law France passed applies to all the EU. It does not, so while Apple may pull out of France if they cannot find a legal wqorkaround (and why have we not hear more on the outcome from that law?) it does not mean they will pull out of the whole EU.
Thanks for the correction. That was a bit sloppy on my part.
It seems to me this is really about whether governments have the ability to enforce the laws they create. Whether EU legislators truly represent the will of the people of the EU nations is debatable, but the EU is a governmental body that in theory speaks for the people it represents. Here we have a governmental body telling a corporation that it has violated the rules of doing business. The EU isn't telling Microsoft that it can't sell its products anywhere. It is sending a clear message to Microsoft that if the company does business in the EU, it needs to do so under the EU's rules.
It isn't a surprise that collectively the EU prioritizes cultural, economic, and political issues differently than the United States, so it seems absurd to me to expect that they'll change their rules just for you when you do business there. Apple can elect to stay in the EU market and deal with the ramifications of iTunes/iPod-related legislation, or it can stop doing business there. The same thing is true of Microsoft. They make billions of dollars in Europe. They can forgo making those billions, or they can stop whining that they didn't know exactly what the EU wanted, and start complying. It's obvious what the EU wanted, and it's obvious that the EU tired of Microsoft's endless legal maneuverings. Now Microsoft is seeing that the EU is serious. Massive corporations do not have unlimited power, even when they think they do.
..Its called marketing. Put a hare-brained idea out there and get people writing articles mentioning your company name.
I'd call it bad marketing. In Microsoft's case in particular, it just shows how feckless they have become. They can't get their latest OS out the door on time, and their browser is a giant security black hole, but they're on top of the demand for net-enabled dishwashing? Pathetic.
This is so freakin' awesome! Talk about a product everyone has been waiting for with baited breath! I know I'll throw down some serious cash for *that* technology!
Hah! And people say Microsoft is losing its touch.
All we get in the way of innovation is new environments for running around shooting stuff.
Running around shooting stuff indeed. It's the video game equivalent of Tom Cruise movies. The formula works! Stick with the formula! Long live the formula!
All this proves that so called "scientific inquiry" is not only useless, but worse than useless. My faith tells me that the world is only 8,322 years old. My number remains constant, while all of these "scientists" keep changing their minds about important constants. Tell me, which is more believable: A consistent interpretation of reality, or one that changes all the time? The former is infinitely more comfortable, and the latter makes me scared because it means that I have to keep on accepting new information and re-evaluating reality.
But seriously, this is the sort of nonsensical opinion science faces in the United States. Don't be surprised if the Creationists and other antediluvians take these latest scientific inquiries as "proof" that scientific method is inferior to rabid faith. Does anyone know if there any organization that is mounting an effective educational campaign to counter this insanity?
Microsoft has beenkilling the iPod for years now. They need to get their other iPod killers out of the way to give their new device a piece of that tasty iPod flesh that Apple competitors have been feasting on for years.
MySpace tapped into youth culture in a way that cannot be planned for or predicted. The technology was adequate, and the kids were apparently looking for something like MySpace. Don't be surprised if some new service displaces MySpace in a while. After all, youngins have fickle taste.
I'm always finding new capabilites with Quicksilver. It transforms the way you work with your Mac, and it is beautiful in its minimalism and polish. This is a tool that does so much, and actually does so while not only staying out of your way, but also by removing obstacles to flow. Quicksilver gets my vote for #1.
Apple is one of 57 companies being investigated. Who are the other 56 companies? No links, no nothing.
Stock options in the Valley are definitely a problem, and if Apple screwed up, they deserve whatever they get. However, they did inform the SEC, so it seems a bit early to get out the stakes and holy water.
In 1983, Apple's latest and greatest was the Apple IIe. Although Lisa/Lisa II tanked, Apple did OK with a new machine it rolled out in 1984.
As numerous books and articles have detailed, the Macintosh development unit was given preferential treatment, many resources, and an impossible mandate. The result was a computer that radically altered the personal computer industry. The hardware was new, the OS was new, the applications were new - everything about it was new. Nothing like the Mac had been seen in the computer market.
Microsoft already has competitors, in the form of Apple, Linux, Google, and web app vendors who want to kill the desktop altogether. One more competitor, loaded with cash, unencumbered by a requirement to maintain backward compatibility with Windows, and given a well-articulated mission might be able to come up with something radically new and better than anything currently available.
If MS doesn't recognize that their golden goose is fast becoming a lead albatross, they're going to continue to lose their ability to shape the market. Getting by on marketing and control of PC OEMs isn't going to cut it any more. They need to put some of that massive stockpile of money into something truly bold. The question is, are they organizationally equipped to do so? Is it in their DNA, or have they become too atrophied?
... the Soviet Union crumbled, China became a market economy and the standard of living for millions of Chinese has improved dramatically, India became a market economy and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, South Korea continued to flourish while North Korea suffered, and the Vietnamese government abandoned Marxist central planning. Why did Russia, China, India, and Vietnam, all command economies until the 1990s, embrace capitalism?
The only lesson capitalism seems to offer is that under a capitalist system, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
If the rich in America have been getting richer ever since the colonies gained their independence, and the poor have been getting poorer, how come I'm not living in a hovel? It certainly could be argued that we are entering a new Guilded Age, because wealth disparity is definitely increasing. But to say that the current situation is proof that capitalism is fatally flawed ignores the overall movement from poverty to wealth that capitalist societies create over time, and ignores historical evidence that capitalist economies are generally much more capable of righting themselves than socialist economies.
It is worth noting that the settlement came hard on the heels of the 9/11 attacks. The DOJ likely wanted to shift focus and get rid of a case that had been tying them down for years. Likely Ashcroft reasoned that if the American public perceived the DOJ as being hung up on a fight between software companies when they should be going after terrorists, he'd be strung up by his gonads.
Granted, before 9/11 the Bush DOJ was already signalling that it was interested in a settlement. By many accounts, removal of the charges related to bundling killed any hope of nailing MS to the wall.
Seriously, it seems that the entire history of antitrust action against MS in the US and Europe has been a colossal waste of time and effort. All it has done is show that governments don't really have the teeth to cut into Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. I originally thought the DOJ action was going to curb MS, but it didn't.
When push came to shove, the US government wasn't truly prepared to make one of the crown jewels of American business suffer in order to make it change its ways. The EU is likely unwilling to push too hard for fear of invoking the wrath of the US government, which is just further proof that if a business becomes big enough, it can only very rarely be constrained by government.
Market forces are doing a far better job of constraining Microsoft. Perhaps if Microsoft's competitors hadn't relied on antitrust lawsuits to save them, they might have fought MS more aggressively and effectively in the past. Apple learned its lesson. Sun (belatedly) learned its lesson. The lesson is that the government isn't going to help you fight Microsoft, so you have to figure out a way to do it yourself.
This is exactly the sort of pure fluff that masquerades for journalism now. Does Steve Ballmer, the man who runs the most powerful computer software company on the planet, suddenly have no power? Ask his employees. Ask companies that partner with Microsoft. Ask Scott McNealy. Sure, Microsoft is on a downward slide, but that doesn't mean Ballmer is suddenly a garden gnome.
Torvalds? Hastings? Both very, very smart guys with long roads ahead of them. I don't know about the rest of the folks on the list, but Schwartz could surprise a lot of people. If Sun is thriving in five years, ask the knuckleheads at People.. uh... Business 2.0 what they think of Schwartz.
The "what's the flavor of the minute" attitude of the article is made manifestly evident by the Slashdot v. Digg comparison. As others have pointed out, Digg may be hot, but it is absurd to suggest that the level of discourse on Digg compares to that found on Slashdot. Digg is oriented toward instant "hot or not" feedback, while Slashdot is about in-depth discussion of a smaller number of topics.
I suppose they have to come up with something to write about, but the world is full of interesting business and technology stories. This sort of crap is worse than useless, because at least some percentage of the people who read it actually think it is worthwhile information.
Since none of his ideas even remotely make any real world sense, why is he even publicized?
RMS is publicized because he initiated the Free Software movement. The GNU software license, which he and Eben Moglen created, has been used in some software projects you may have heard of: the Linux kernel, CVS, GNU Emacs, MySQL, and literally thousands of others.
More open source projects are developed under the GPL than under any other license, and companies like Red Hat, IBM, and others have built business units or entire buinesses around GNU-licensed software. When is the last time you saw IBM act out of naive idealism?
A lot of people in the open source world don't agree with everything RMS says, but he's incredibly smart, and people respect his ideas enough to pay attention to what he says. Get out from under the bridge and grapple with his ideas, instead of trolling.
Slashdot Mirror
The iPod has been at the top of the heap for a long time now, for good reason. They have created a seamless hardware/software experience that makes digital music easy enough for non gearheads to understand and enjoy. I have a 10Gb iPod and a shuffle, and use both all the time. They're excellent products, and they've changed the way I listen to music. In fact, the RIAA has even made more money off of me than they would have before, because I buy more music now.
Apple has done a lot right with the iPod/iTunes combo, but it's not a perfect combination just yet. Managing libraries across different computers and different users isn't as easy as it should be, for example. But in a larger sense, I get a bit nervous any time a single company dominates a market. Microsoft's operating system dominance has helped in many ways, but has also arguably hindered to an even larger degree. After it gobbled up Macromedia, Adobe is pretty much the only commercial game in town for graphic design software, Quark being the lone holdout of note, and they're essentially a one-product company. I don't like shelling out big bucks for Adobe product updates as I wonder if their prices would be cheaper and the software would be better if they had some serious competition.
The same is true for Apple. They've done an excellent job so far, and I want them to keep improving the iPod/iTunes combination. They *need* competition to keep them hungry, and when they're hungry, it's better for consumers like me.
I don't think Microsoft will be able to unseat Apple from the digital music throne, but if Microsoft blows this one it won't necessarily be beneficial for the digital music market in the long term.
You must be some kind of management or HR moron.
Actually, I'm a web development moron. But at least I'm not an AC :-P
The people that want it to "look nice" rather than to work are the culprits!!
I disagree. The people at fault are those who still think it is 1990 and design and programming are wholly separate disciplines. Camps 1 and 2 need to disappear. Camp 3 is growing fast.
Camp 1: Designers who want eye candy.
Camp 2: Programmers who would prefer that the Web be reduced to square corners, primary colors, dense copy, and no white space.
Camp 3: People who understand that design and programming have to work together in order to create true usability. Call them interaction designers, web developers, or webphibians. The name is unimportant, but the cross-disciplinary skillset is vital.
It also shows a profound misunderstanding of business.
I disagree. I think it shows a solid understanding of business. In almost all businesses, poor performance gets you a boot in the ass and a trip to Monster.com. In the small percentage of businesses that have large numbers of employees, sometimes poor performance leads to termination, but many times it does not. I've worked in large businesses, government agencies, and small businesses. I've started and managed my own business. Large businesses, in my experience, behave essentially like government bureaucracies. Movement up the ladder is more rapid in large companies than in government bureaucracies, but in neither case do managers carry risk even remotely approaching that borne by managers in small businesses.
There are very important business skills, but I'm not sure that excellent managers are any more rare than excellent programmers. I've seen enough managers to know that most of them are mediocre at best, because in American businesses managers are seldom given truly useful leadership training. MBA programs certainly do not train leaders. The Cult of the MBA is in my opinion one of the worst things to hit American business, because it encourages in-group behavior that leads to debacles like the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Where does the Cult of the MBA reign supreme? Why, in big business, of course. In small businesses, the sheepskin doesn't matter. Results matter.
esoteric markup languages
XHTML and CSS aren't esoteric. They are widely understood and widely used. They also don't lock you into a proprietary content creation tool and a proprietary viewer. I'd rather not put the whole future of the Web in the hands of a single company, no matter how good their products.
Jeez lighten up. It's a rumour. On a site. That barely ever gets anything right.
Indeed, I wouldn't at all be surprised if Jobs has convinced the studios to at least try a purchase model for movies. After all, iTunes has been an excellent vehicle for TV show sales, generating new revenue for the studios. While the media companies obviously see Apple as a competitor, if Jobs can convince them that iTunes is a distribution network that is already proven and ready for action, they may recognize that they'll make more money if they piggyback on the success of iTunes. So far everything they've tried on their own has been rather underwhelming. In the end, these guys will follow the money, and my guess is Jobs has figured out a way to show them the money.
Just a clarification, you make it sound as if the law France passed applies to all the EU. It does not, so while Apple may pull out of France if they cannot find a legal wqorkaround (and why have we not hear more on the outcome from that law?) it does not mean they will pull out of the whole EU.
Thanks for the correction. That was a bit sloppy on my part.
It seems to me this is really about whether governments have the ability to enforce the laws they create. Whether EU legislators truly represent the will of the people of the EU nations is debatable, but the EU is a governmental body that in theory speaks for the people it represents. Here we have a governmental body telling a corporation that it has violated the rules of doing business. The EU isn't telling Microsoft that it can't sell its products anywhere. It is sending a clear message to Microsoft that if the company does business in the EU, it needs to do so under the EU's rules.
It isn't a surprise that collectively the EU prioritizes cultural, economic, and political issues differently than the United States, so it seems absurd to me to expect that they'll change their rules just for you when you do business there. Apple can elect to stay in the EU market and deal with the ramifications of iTunes/iPod-related legislation, or it can stop doing business there. The same thing is true of Microsoft. They make billions of dollars in Europe. They can forgo making those billions, or they can stop whining that they didn't know exactly what the EU wanted, and start complying. It's obvious what the EU wanted, and it's obvious that the EU tired of Microsoft's endless legal maneuverings. Now Microsoft is seeing that the EU is serious. Massive corporations do not have unlimited power, even when they think they do.
I'd call it bad marketing. In Microsoft's case in particular, it just shows how feckless they have become. They can't get their latest OS out the door on time, and their browser is a giant security black hole, but they're on top of the demand for net-enabled dishwashing? Pathetic.
This is so freakin' awesome! Talk about a product everyone has been waiting for with baited breath! I know I'll throw down some serious cash for *that* technology!
Hah! And people say Microsoft is losing its touch.
All we get in the way of innovation is new environments for running around shooting stuff.
Running around shooting stuff indeed. It's the video game equivalent of Tom Cruise movies. The formula works! Stick with the formula! Long live the formula!
All this proves that so called "scientific inquiry" is not only useless, but worse than useless. My faith tells me that the world is only 8,322 years old. My number remains constant, while all of these "scientists" keep changing their minds about important constants. Tell me, which is more believable: A consistent interpretation of reality, or one that changes all the time? The former is infinitely more comfortable, and the latter makes me scared because it means that I have to keep on accepting new information and re-evaluating reality.
But seriously, this is the sort of nonsensical opinion science faces in the United States. Don't be surprised if the Creationists and other antediluvians take these latest scientific inquiries as "proof" that scientific method is inferior to rabid faith. Does anyone know if there any organization that is mounting an effective educational campaign to counter this insanity?
Google "ipod killer" -> 1,160,000 results.
We've seen iPod killers from Sony, iRiver, Dell, Nokia, and of course Creative.
Microsoft has been killing the iPod for years now. They need to get their other iPod killers out of the way to give their new device a piece of that tasty iPod flesh that Apple competitors have been feasting on for years.
How many hits from the cluestick does it take? Make it usable and people will, amazing as it sounds, use it.
There's probably thousands or even millions of cases being treated by the judicative at once, why should the DoJ be incapable of handling a few tens?
Of course the DOJ could handle it. I was referring to perception, which in politics trumps reality.
MySpace tapped into youth culture in a way that cannot be planned for or predicted. The technology was adequate, and the kids were apparently looking for something like MySpace. Don't be surprised if some new service displaces MySpace in a while. After all, youngins have fickle taste.
I'm always finding new capabilites with Quicksilver. It transforms the way you work with your Mac, and it is beautiful in its minimalism and polish. This is a tool that does so much, and actually does so while not only staying out of your way, but also by removing obstacles to flow. Quicksilver gets my vote for #1.
Apple is one of 57 companies being investigated. Who are the other 56 companies? No links, no nothing.
Stock options in the Valley are definitely a problem, and if Apple screwed up, they deserve whatever they get. However, they did inform the SEC, so it seems a bit early to get out the stakes and holy water.
In 1983, Apple's latest and greatest was the Apple IIe. Although Lisa/Lisa II tanked, Apple did OK with a new machine it rolled out in 1984.
As numerous books and articles have detailed, the Macintosh development unit was given preferential treatment, many resources, and an impossible mandate. The result was a computer that radically altered the personal computer industry. The hardware was new, the OS was new, the applications were new - everything about it was new. Nothing like the Mac had been seen in the computer market.
Microsoft already has competitors, in the form of Apple, Linux, Google, and web app vendors who want to kill the desktop altogether. One more competitor, loaded with cash, unencumbered by a requirement to maintain backward compatibility with Windows, and given a well-articulated mission might be able to come up with something radically new and better than anything currently available.
If MS doesn't recognize that their golden goose is fast becoming a lead albatross, they're going to continue to lose their ability to shape the market. Getting by on marketing and control of PC OEMs isn't going to cut it any more. They need to put some of that massive stockpile of money into something truly bold. The question is, are they organizationally equipped to do so? Is it in their DNA, or have they become too atrophied?
In the last twenty years...
... the Soviet Union crumbled, China became a market economy and the standard of living for millions of Chinese has improved dramatically, India became a market economy and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, South Korea continued to flourish while North Korea suffered, and the Vietnamese government abandoned Marxist central planning. Why did Russia, China, India, and Vietnam, all command economies until the 1990s, embrace capitalism?
The only lesson capitalism seems to offer is that under a capitalist system, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
If the rich in America have been getting richer ever since the colonies gained their independence, and the poor have been getting poorer, how come I'm not living in a hovel? It certainly could be argued that we are entering a new Guilded Age, because wealth disparity is definitely increasing. But to say that the current situation is proof that capitalism is fatally flawed ignores the overall movement from poverty to wealth that capitalist societies create over time, and ignores historical evidence that capitalist economies are generally much more capable of righting themselves than socialist economies.
'given to the copyright holder.'
Which one? Bono or Spielberg?
If the directive came from a Bush-insider, or at least a Bush appointee, then your insinuation has some theoretical founding.
Congresscritters wanted it.
There have been allegations of White House involvement but nothing was ever proven.
It is worth noting that the settlement came hard on the heels of the 9/11 attacks. The DOJ likely wanted to shift focus and get rid of a case that had been tying them down for years. Likely Ashcroft reasoned that if the American public perceived the DOJ as being hung up on a fight between software companies when they should be going after terrorists, he'd be strung up by his gonads.
Granted, before 9/11 the Bush DOJ was already signalling that it was interested in a settlement. By many accounts, removal of the charges related to bundling killed any hope of nailing MS to the wall.
... spoil the megacorp.
Seriously, it seems that the entire history of antitrust action against MS in the US and Europe has been a colossal waste of time and effort. All it has done is show that governments don't really have the teeth to cut into Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. I originally thought the DOJ action was going to curb MS, but it didn't.
When push came to shove, the US government wasn't truly prepared to make one of the crown jewels of American business suffer in order to make it change its ways. The EU is likely unwilling to push too hard for fear of invoking the wrath of the US government, which is just further proof that if a business becomes big enough, it can only very rarely be constrained by government.
Market forces are doing a far better job of constraining Microsoft. Perhaps if Microsoft's competitors hadn't relied on antitrust lawsuits to save them, they might have fought MS more aggressively and effectively in the past. Apple learned its lesson. Sun (belatedly) learned its lesson. The lesson is that the government isn't going to help you fight Microsoft, so you have to figure out a way to do it yourself.
... I mean, Business 2.0.
This is exactly the sort of pure fluff that masquerades for journalism now. Does Steve Ballmer, the man who runs the most powerful computer software company on the planet, suddenly have no power? Ask his employees. Ask companies that partner with Microsoft. Ask Scott McNealy. Sure, Microsoft is on a downward slide, but that doesn't mean Ballmer is suddenly a garden gnome.
Torvalds? Hastings? Both very, very smart guys with long roads ahead of them. I don't know about the rest of the folks on the list, but Schwartz could surprise a lot of people. If Sun is thriving in five years, ask the knuckleheads at People.. uh... Business 2.0 what they think of Schwartz.
The "what's the flavor of the minute" attitude of the article is made manifestly evident by the Slashdot v. Digg comparison. As others have pointed out, Digg may be hot, but it is absurd to suggest that the level of discourse on Digg compares to that found on Slashdot. Digg is oriented toward instant "hot or not" feedback, while Slashdot is about in-depth discussion of a smaller number of topics.
I suppose they have to come up with something to write about, but the world is full of interesting business and technology stories. This sort of crap is worse than useless, because at least some percentage of the people who read it actually think it is worthwhile information.
Since none of his ideas even remotely make any real world sense, why is he even publicized?
RMS is publicized because he initiated the Free Software movement. The GNU software license, which he and Eben Moglen created, has been used in some software projects you may have heard of: the Linux kernel, CVS, GNU Emacs, MySQL, and literally thousands of others.
More open source projects are developed under the GPL than under any other license, and companies like Red Hat, IBM, and others have built business units or entire buinesses around GNU-licensed software. When is the last time you saw IBM act out of naive idealism?
A lot of people in the open source world don't agree with everything RMS says, but he's incredibly smart, and people respect his ideas enough to pay attention to what he says. Get out from under the bridge and grapple with his ideas, instead of trolling.