Dog Bites Man? Not News. Linux Booster Can Do Math? Now THAT is News!

2008-03-14T23:19:00.000-07:00

Over at Desktop Linux, optimist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols sees the glass as one-third full:

It's funny how some people are so stuck on the idea that Windows, and only Windows, is the one true operating system that they can't even hear their own words. That's the case with a recent news story with the headline, "Windows XP Will Fill Two-Thirds of Asustek Eee PCs." (This article will only be online until April 13.)

OK, I know almost none of you are journalists, but what's wrong with that headline?

That's right. You didn't need to do paste-up classified ads for your high school newspaper to figure out that the news here is that Linux will be running on a third of Asustek's Eee PCs. Windows being installed on PCs is no more news than "Dog Bites Man." It's "Man Bites Dog" that's interesting.

So, the main news, buried under that misleading headline, is that Asustek plans to sell 5 million Eee PCs in 2008. Which -- let's do the math here -- I think means that the Taiwanese company plans on selling 1.66 million Linux PCs.

Now, that's impressive!

Indeed. Still more impressive, however, are the intellectual gymnastics needed to decide that the headline is "misleading" in the first place. Vaughan-Nichols can clearly subtract, as he's right that taking two thirds from a whole leaves one third. But that's about where the accurate reckoning of reality ends.

He aptly points out that I am not a journalist; however, if he is a journalist, or is even mildly aware of even a fraction of the journalism done regarding the Eee PC, then he should also know that "Windows XP Will Fill Two-Thirds of Asustek Eee PCs" is, in fact, big news.

As he says, "Windows being installed on PCs" is not news. That being said, a great deal of the press about the Eee--from the mainstream to the übergeeky, and from months before launch to the present--has focused on the fact that the Eee, in its original default configuration, runs Linux. Like virtually every major new Linux-running device (and build of Linux itself), the Eee was hyped as though it was the Great White Hope. (And, for that matter, the Great Black, and Blue, Pink and Green Hopes). The Eee was the machine that would put Linux computing in front of millions of new consumers. In this case, that hype is right on, as it seems to be doing just that.

Where Vaughan-Nichols' boosterism goes off the rails is that he ignores this past hype. If "Windows XP Will Fill Two-Thirds of Asustek Eee PCs" occurred in a vacuum, it wouldn't be noteworthy, for the reason he notes. However, if there's one story being told about the Eee PC (besides it's small size, small pricetag, or the surprising adequacy of its underspec'd hardware), it's the fact that it's a Linux device. While Asus and the press have flogged the, "But it can run Windows, too!" angle from the get-go, Linux's primacy on the initial runs of the Eee were a huge story.

In this context, "Windows XP Will Fill Two-Thirds of Asustek Eee PCs" isn't a "Dog Bites Man" story. Imagine there was a government-mandated dog-training program that guaranteed to eliminate the possibility of dog bites. Further, imagine everyone talked about it for months on end--in fact, you couldn't even mention dogs in the press without the program coming up--and then, out of the blue, a doggie graduate of the program bites a man. That would be news; for that matter, if two thirds of all graduates of the program were biting people, in the wake of the all of the hype, that would be huge, important news.

Again, I am no journalist. Still, when a story gets the amount of attention that Linux on the Eee received, a reversal of this size (however inevitable) is completely newsworthy. Particularly in light of the fact that it's not even guaranteed that Eee users who do choose Linux will choose Linux in any meaningful sense in the future, as Foobar wisesly pointed out earlier this week. What if XP was a bundled option on the Eee from day one, and it was sold on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Best Buy rather than from websites like New Egg (and, yes, Best Buy's online store)? In that case, the fact that a third of customers were getting the Linux version would be a huge coup, and there would be no question that the headline above is garbage. That isn't what happened, however; this is a case where the headline's author clearly and correctly identified the context (that "Linux on the best-selling Eee PC" was the story), and saw a big reversal.

Perhaps the "Dog Bites Man" non-story in this case is actually "Linux Supporters Desperate for a Win."

Lossy Algorithm

Dog Bites Man? Not News. Linux Booster Can Do Math? Now THAT is News!