[ale] More AJC Stuff

[Matt McMillin]

As of last Friday, my feeling about the unwillingness of AJC staff to cover the 
ALE expo was pretty neutral: as a Linux enthusiast, I was disappointed that
the AJC wasn't going to help get the word out, though, on the other hand, I
accepted the argument that the AJC has the right to determine their market 
and compose their paper most appropriately to that market.

Then I read the Personal Technology section this past Sunday.  (I wish I had it
with me, so I could refer to it more effectively, but alas....)  Mr. Dobbs, in his
post to this mailing list detailing the decision of the AJC not to run an item 
about Linux, began with the reasoning (in essence) that few readers of the 
AJC are Unix-lovers, and in fact most readers have never even heard of Unix, 
thus it makes little sense to write an article about a Unix-derived operating 
system.  Next, he stated that any mention of an operating system would cause
readers to be confused, and that Bill Husted had noted that whenever he
uses the phrase, he has to use an undue amount of space to explain himself.

There were two columns in the Personal Technology section this past Sunday
that were interesting to me solely for their relevance to this issue.  The first
was Bill Husted's column, "Technobuddy," the subject of which was ham radio!  
Now, if ham radio has become more mainstream than the Unix operating 
system, then it has done so without my noticing it.  (Please let me know if it
indeed has.)  The second column was the one concerning the Macintosh they 
regularly run in this section.  It mentioned the phrase "operating system" twice
and the only explanation the columnist saw fit to give was something to the 
effect of, "the software that gives the computer its look and feel."

My complaint is still not with AJC for not running a piece on Linux.  Instead,
it's with those people representing the AJC for not being entirely honest about
their reasons for not running such a piece.

In any case, I tend to agree with much of Mr. Feigenblatt's discussion of (what
I interpreted as) the need for refinement of the "public relations" effort in the 
Linux community.  Good PR would appear to be a necessary evil for getting
good press, at least in my experience.

Frankly, though, I'm really amazed that more people aren't showing an interest
in Linux purely for the reason that it's an operating system with abilities more
or less similar to Windows NT (for example), and yet it's _freely distributable_!
To me, the history and method of its development is at least as interesting as
its unusual copyright statement, and could easily work as the substance to an 
article that started off mentioning the (lack of) cost of Linux to grab people's 
attention.

-M