[OT] TV, Internet, and Democracy

[JoeHill]

Evan Leibovitch left a post-it on the fridge:

> JoeHill wrote:
> > Ten years ago, the people at the Ice House would have been instantly
> > arrested and portrayed in the media as some kind of whacked out doomsday
> > cult. 
> 
> FWIW: Ten years ago, a bunch of Toronto-area Linux advocates designed
> and bought a bunch of hockey shirts emblazened with Tux and the words
> "Team Linux" on the front, and wore them while giving Red Hat and
> Caldera  CDs out to literally thousands of people at an IT event. They
> even paid a little more than the cost of each shirt, so we could make an
> extra one with the number 1 and "TORVALDS" on the back, which was
> shipped off to Linus after the event. (He eventually wore it during his
> first speech in Toronto some years later, though he suggested that he
> might be the only Finn who hated hockey.)

And I must be the only Canadian, at least it feels that way sometimes.
 
> > I dunno, keep in mind the crowd you hang out with. A *lot* of the people I
> > meet on a daily basis really haven't the faintest clue 'what' the hell I'm
> > talking about when I start babbling about 'why'.  
> How many have the authority (and desire) to purchase more than one PC
> per year?

Enough that if I extrapolate, following a guess at how many people each of us
knows, and how many people *they* know, I figure they outnumber the pen
pushers a million to one.

Remember who yer talkin' to here...power to the people...all that?
 
> > That's the thing, though, right? Guaranteed is someone is committed enough
> > to stand outside in the cold distributing CD's next to a giant inflated
> > penguin, there's a very good chance that they are going to have the same
> > level of commitment to more grassroots activities such as the ones you
> > allude to. 
> One can hope. The history in this regard has not indicated this
> willingness for gruntwork. People want the instant gratification element
> which doesn't exist for the back-room activities.

I know the people you're talking about, believe me, I once worked for
Greenpeace. However, I don't think you can necessarily make a definite
connection between 'demonstrators' and those interested in only instant
gratification. Notice I said 'necessarily' ;)
 
> > I think that perhaps I got the impression in the earlier discussion that it
> > was an either/or thing, or that the giant penguin people were just
> > completely wrong.
> >     
> It's never either/or. All is good. But, given the relative scarcity of
> people willing to do grassroots advocacy, it is fair game to suggest
> that certain activites are more efficient than others at increasing use
> of FOSS -- and that the person-hours spent on the stunt could have been
> more _effectively_ deployed in less flamboyant activities.

Efficient?? I know you're right, logically, but then I think of Jonathon Swift
and the thing about eating children...

/runs for cover

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
 Leela: Bender, maybe you can interface with the Femputer and 
   reprogram it to let them go. 
 Bender: Maybe you can interface with my ass... by biting it.
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