USA Today: “When you …

USA Today: “When you have open standards, you don’t fear one vendor,” says Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association in Washington. “You don’t have to buy all of your products from one company.”

Voices From a Slashmouth.

Bob Young from Red Hat explains the open source nature of Linux OS’s:

The best analogy that illustrates this benefit is with the way we buy cars. Just ask the question, “Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?” and we all answer an emphatic “No.” So ask the follow-up question, “What do you know about modern internal-combustion engines?” and the answer for most of us is, “Not much.”

Frank Hecker: Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open-Source Software

www.redhatisnotlinux.org. Oh boy, I can see the journalists misinterpreting this one. [via rc3.org]

Ohmigod! We’re all going to die! [Heh.]

What would happen if…? This reminds me of the time a few years back when Borders Books & Music bought about 20,000 copies of Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead at an extreme discount. (The buyer simply couldn’t pass up such a deal.) This led to the problem of what Borders was going to do all these books nobody wanted. Someone in management decided they’d unload them on the online group. The executive management at Borders.com decided they’d give a copy away with every purchase. From an executive’s point of view, this was an a great solution. Not only would they get rid of these useless excess books, but they’d be giving their customers a free gift. At the time, I was working for Borders Online and several of us immediately recognized that this was an extremely bad idea. Not only would be be accused of being in bed with Microsoft for giving away copies of Bill Gates’ book, but we’d also subject our overworked customer service department with loads of hate mail. We voiced our concerns several times, but the promotion proceeded anyway. About a week later, the promotion was suddenly canceled with no explanation and the books were shipped elsewhere and sold as remainders. What’s interesting is that the customer service department at Borders.com was reporting that a surprisingly high percentage of people were actually shipping the books back to the fulfillment center with notes asking Borders.com not to send them such bad free gifts.

The guinea pig “virus” in The Sims computer game is a stroke of genius. [via Tim O’Reilly]

It’s about damn time…now if only we could get Spielberg to listen. [Waving fistfuls of money.]

Request: You know that TV commercial for Phonefree.com where people are standing on their rooftops holding their burning long-distance phone bills up in the air? What song is playing in the background? And can someone send me the MP3?

Posted by Cameron Barrett at May 3, 2000 03:20 PM

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