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Re: conspiracy theorists and open source

In article <pan.2008.01.05.21.38.32.954827@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Jon Nesbit <nesbit@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> IMO these conspiracy theories and wild ass (unproven) speculation only
> ends up hurting Linux. Microsoft has enough real and documented history to
> go on. People don't need to be inventing crazy theories because in the end
> they end up looking like loons.

I can understand some tendency toward conspiracy theories, because of 
the internet.  The internet makes it easy to for something that starts 
as clear speculation to bounce around from site to site, and the result 
is often like that game where a line of people try to pass an oral 
message from person to person, and it gets totally screwed up.

Example, one that I saw that I know was wrong from the start (because I 
know some of the people involved) ended up going like this:

1. An event happens between company X and company Y.  It's a routine 
event, that happens fairly often between companies--even companies that 
are bitter rivals.

2. Someone notices this, and writes in a blog that maybe there is a 
connection between X and Y.  This is clearly marked as speculation.

3. A couple other blogs pick this up, but it starts warping, saying that 
the first blogger found a connection.

4. Someone brings it up in a comment on a widely read forum.

5. Someone at a blog at a major tech news site (CNET or ZDNet...I forget 
which, so I'll go with CNET for the rest of this) mentions #4.

6. Now people mention that in blogs, but it is now reported in them as 
"CNET reports X and Y are working together".

7. Somewhere in here, it makes Digg and Slashdot.  Schestowitz adds it 
to his group of factoids that he adds to many of his posts, and uses it 
as a basis of many of his arguments against X and Y and companies that 
have worked with X or Y.  The idea that a CNET reported did a news story 
that uncovered some kind of joint project between X and Y becomes part 
of the general knowledge of a heck of a lot of people.

This kind of thing is why I'm now convinced that the idea that amateur 
blogs and the internet will kill newspapers is wrong.

-- 
--Tim Smith

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