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Skewered by the Linuxtistas

05.12.2005
Emiliano Zapata was the best known leader of an early twentieth-century "Mexican Revolution" which sought to overthrow US hegemony. His famed fanatical followers became known as "Zapatistas," and the suffix "-tista" has been used to describe diehard fanatics of whatever stripe. Nowadays, the most popular variety are the "Linuxtistas": a diverse bunch whose main point of agreement is their collective affinity for open source software and Linux-based operating systems.

The CWHK editorial staff got a taste of Linuxtista enthusiasm when one of us moderated a panel discussion at Linux Forum Asia 2005. The panelists: Dan Powers from IBM, Tham Joon Nam from Novell and Jon A Hall, Esq (better known as "Maddog") from US-based Linux International. As intriguing as the panel seemed, they were eclipsed in the opening moments as an audience member seized a microphone and praised Computerworld Hong Kong for its coverage of Hong Kong enterprise IT over the decades.

Our moderator, perched on a stool with frozen smile and corsage, waited for the rejoinder: "So, why does CWHK post your online electronic edition in a format that can only be read by Internet Explorer?". This comment, which was popular with the Linux-friendly audience, is correct: mea culpa, our slick flip-through electronic issue flips fab on IE, but fire it up in Firefox and you get a page that includes:

"TrueEBook is runned as following specifications.

Microsoft Windows Family

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 above"