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Posted in FUD, Microsoft, Standard at 8:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Several readers have independently pointed out that Slashdot took the good news about the release of OpenGL 3.0 and put a spin on it so as to attack OpenGL and promote Microsoft DirectX. Regular readers probably know that trust in Slashdot is gradually being lost as the site gets gamed and trustworthy long-time posters reportedly get cornered and attacked by groups of disruptors. There’s a new type of ‘mob’, a corporate subculture perhaps. So, the old Slashdot is replaced with glorification of an ‘open source’ Microsoft. They ‘sell’ Microsoft to geeks.
=> gradually | lost | corporate subculture perhaps | glorification
There have been numerous coverages of OpenGL 3.0′s release (not too many to keep track of). They were all moderate, positive, and they delivered the news. They did not attempt to stir things up or to present a controversy, even a confrontation.
Fortunately, not only have professionals noticed what Slashdot had done, but there are detailed rebuttals to it too.
So, it was with some interest to read on TheRegister and Slashdot that the release of OpenGL 3.0 was met with heavy resistance by existing developers. Strangely, Wikipedia user Paeator Alpha’s post seemed to be the most balanced immediate report on OpenGL 3.0, and lets face it, Wikipedia isn’t known for being accurate.
It was even stranger to read then from one of the developers actually attending SIGGRAPH that the backlash reported by Slashdot and TheReg, just wasn’t happening. The OpenGL BoF went really well, I think. Nobody showed up with torches or pitchforks. Of course, the free beer may have helped. The most useful part of it for me was the mingling period after all the presentations. I talked with quite a few people and, contrary to the /. reports, nobody was furious. Whew!
[...]
So, Khronos has run into the exact same problem KDE ran into. A lot of people are simply armchair analysts with no actual graphics experience. That’s why the actual developers at SIGGRAPH responded so differently than the reports from TheReg and SlashDot would have people believe.
Why would Slashdot support the skewing of public perception against open standards and open source? Remember that Slashdot is now indirectly being paid by Microsoft. With money on the table, trust is simply lost.
=> indirectly being paid by Microsoft
If Slashdot chooses to depress readers and draw them in on an emotional basis, then it’s simply begging to undo itself.
Here is the press release and here are balanced and objective coverages of the latest OpenGL 3.0 news:
PhoronixPositive reaction from NVIDIABeyond3DElectronista
The few sources which highlight friction directly link to Slashdot for ‘support’ of the claim that developers were “furious”. The picking on Slashdot is a response to a pattern, not an isolated incident.
Some time ago it emerged (and was also noticed) the people who never write for The Register suddenly appear out of nowhere and ‘plant’ an article that’s favourable to Microsoft (this was pointed out in the IRC channel the other day). Remember how Maureen O’Gara and Microsoft agents were scheming to sabotage a big OSDL announcement [1, 2]. There are ‘smoking guns’ (court-verifiable E-mails) to show very clearly.
To Microsoft, OpenGL is a big threat. Rivals like Sony (with PlayStation) and even Macs and GNU/Linux rely on it for adoption. How far would people go? █
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