*BSD News Article 66529


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From: Bryan Seigneur <freds@gramercy.ios.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 03:41:52 -0400
Organization: SONETECH, Inc.
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References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <4l5k51$3fg@dyson.iquest.net> <4l663t$1ajq@news.missouri.edu> <tporczykDq3C55.4zE@netcom.com> <4l96pm$mrt@nnrp1.news.primenet.com> <4lecrd$155@taco.cc.ncsu.edu>
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Kevin P. Neal wrote:
> 
> Josh Stern (jstern@primenet.com) wrote:
> :
> : Anecdote:  There is a free online news service, NandoNet
> : (http://www.nando.net) that has a section called
> : InfoTech which publishes daily 'news' regarding
> : doings in the information technology sectors, including
> : computers, telecom, electronics, etc.  So far as
> : I know, this service has no direct connection to
> : MS, though naturally, Microsoft is frequently a topic.
> 
> NandoNet was started by the local newspaper here in Raleigh, NC.
> The paper is the "News and Observer" (also known as the
> "Nuisance and Disturber" because it's run by a bunch of
> liberals (IMHO) and also has this nasty habit of making articles
> that are very very one sided).

Great, if their libs in that they hate megacorps, than we could
have the whole operation running on free unix in a month, if
we come at them from the right angle! ;)  Have you seen LaParanoia?
They're running Linux and Apache; as the homepage says,
'Yeah, we've got it bad.'

> They divorced themselves from the paper, thankfully, and are
> standalone.
> 
> If NandoNet has a MS connection, they are being terribly quiet about
> it. Meaning, I doubt there is one.
> 
> : Anyway, one day I counted that out of 34 stories
> : in this section, 12 (i.e. over 1/3) were specifically
> : about Microsoft activities.  Most of these stories
> : were not anything that could be right categorized
> : as news - they were things like MS plans such
> : and such multi-media initiative for somewhere
> : down the road, MS hopes to turn out some great
> : internet products doing something or other,
> : etc.  In short, they were mainly just marketing propaganda
> : that MS had sent to the authors of these collumns.
> 
> You also have to deal with people like my parents, who believe
> that if it appears in the paper, it MUST be true.
> 
> : btw - I am not an MS-basher;  I am simply appalled
> : by the putrid state and direction of 'journalism'
> : in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere).  I don't
> : find that there is anything particularly unusual
> : about the NandoNet in this context. PC Magazine
> : and the like are much worse, but in their case,
> : it's not even clear that they pretend to print
> : news.
> 
> Hear Hear! Glad somebody else noticed this.
> 
> : and even backdated technologies.  If the
> : business consumer cannot turn to PC Magazine,
> : Byte, or even the Wall Street Journal or
> : the New York Times for unbiased coverage
> : of technology directions, it's likely
> : that their perception of the extant realities
> : will be quite biased as well.  Bill Gates
> : is a shrewd man - he understands these things
> 
> Unbiased journalism is a crock. It does not exist (as far as I can
> tell).
> 
> The most unbiased source of info that I have found is usenet, because
> you get everybody's bias (which is more honest than "Really, we're
> not biased! Trust us and buy our paper!").

Yes!
As long as everyone is able to exchange all the information they want
to, and no one has anything close to a monopoly on any type of
information, that's a good thing.  Decentralization can be a very good
thing.

> --
> XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Sophomore, Comp. Sci. \    kpneal@interpath.com
> XCOMM  Frue, Secret Agent of Smerp (shh!)   \   kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu
> XCOMM Visit the House of RetroComputing at  /      Perm. Email:
> XCOMM  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kpneal/www/   /    kevinneal@bix.com

Bryan
-- 
   __   _
  / /  (_)__  __ __ _  __
 / /__/ / _ \/ // /| |/ /
/____/_/_//_/\___//_/|_|...priceless.