[wplug] Hate-on Linux TV ads

[John Harrold]

Sometime in September David Ostroske assaulted the keyboard and produced:

| And if the kid's so smart, how come he don't say nothing?!

i don't know if i would draw a correlation between speech and intelligence.
sometimes you can say a lot by not saying anything at all.

| There is nothing to be proud of in this antiseptic piece of drudgery!
| IBM's ad agency could just as well have shot footage of a tape reel
| rewinding. At least their basketball ads from a couple of years back
| showed some enthusiasm! ("Why's he play for free?" "Because *he loves
| the game!*")
| 
| What do you all think? Am I wrong?

while i understand your criticisms, you need to look at the goal of the ad
campaign to determine if it's any good. i think this is a way to help
normal people, who are not technical, understand how linux can help them.
at least from my expirence, it's not easy to explian the benefits of free
software to people not familiar with the issue.

i personally think this approach was better than taking someone with a
beergut and a beard so long that birds are living in it (no offense to
anyone who might fit this description) and have them present their treatise
on the benefits, to individuals and society as a whole, of Free software.
one reader pointed out stallman, he would have been so busy explaining why
the GNU/ prefix was soo important that people would have just gazed through
the tv in confusion. regardless of how you or i stand on the "gnu/" issue,
i think using colloquial language to help people understand is a much
better first step.

-- 
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                                               | /"\
 john harrold                                  | \ / ASCII ribbon campaign
      jmh at member.fsf.org                    |  X  against HTML mail
           the most useful idiot               | / \
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 What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
 whether the mad destruction is brought under the name of totalitarianism or
 the holy name of liberty and democracy?
 --Gandhi
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