Interested in entering our competition and winning a (sealed) brand new copy of Xandros Business Desktop 2.0? (priced at $129 USD). All you have to do is write an article that could interest OSAlert readers (might be an interview, an editorial, a tutorial, a feature, a review etc). Read more for details.Regarding the Competition
Basically, all you need to do is write an article that is more or less in accordance with our article guidelines and email it to us. Some additional notes:
You have a bit less than a week to finish up your article and send it over to us in order to be elligible for the prize. Last day of accepting entries will be the 11:30 PM of 31st of March 2004 (Pacific time) (Update: The competition is now over). Of course, you can always submit your article for publication on a later date if you are not interested in the competition.
We will receive the article submissions and our team of editors will pick the most interesting/well-written/original one. The winner will be announced at the end of next week. Must have a normal snail-mail address to send the prize (no P.O. boxes please).
Regarding the Prize: Xandros Business Desktop 2.0
Xandros Business Desktop 2.0 is the complete solution for desktop computer users who require authentication against a Windows PDC or Active Directory server to get access to the network. It includes the full version of CodeWeavers CrossOver Office and Plugin for running key Windows applications, the ability to resize NTFS partitions during installation, Sun StarOffice 7, an additional applications CD and 350 page User Guide. 90 days of installation technical support via e-mail. For complete product information see here.
The box includes an illustrated 350-page manual, a “getting started” leaflet guide, two CD-ROMs (CD1: Xandros, CD2: additional apps) and a Xandros-logo sticker for your PC.
Special thanks to Xandros for sending over the retail product so we can offer it as a prize to an OSAlert reader.
I already love xandros to death! I’m going for it
I was in the middle of writing an article for publication hopefully. Here is to making it even better.
I’ve often considered submitting articles for publication in OSAlert, but each time the policy of restricting my ability to publish the article elsewhere (on my own web site’s tutorial section, for example) changes my mind.
Remove this restriction, or make it a little more specific (such as no re-publishing on other on-line periodicals or commercial sites, or allowing re-publishing after an amount of time has passed) and I’ll be happy to contribute.
> or make it a little more specific (such as no re-publishing on other on-line periodicals or commercial sites, or allowing re-publishing after an amount of time has passed) and I’ll be happy to contribute.
That’s exactly what it is now (in the bottom of the article guidelines page): You can re-publish your work on another site/medium after the pass of 30 days of being published on OSAlert.
We only ask that you tell us if you are going to do so, so we can have a clue when seeing another meduim being re-publishing under your permission or if they are stealing (we have had such an incident a few months ago with an Australian printed magazine, so you can never be too careful
Xandros Business Desktop 2.0
Oh wait I have to win it first.
…if I could write I would. Just too busy with my dissertation (and I’m sure you won’t want publish that – “Evolving a behavioural control architecture”
Thanks Eugenia and other contributors – i always enjoy reading osnews!
>”Evolving a behavioural control architecture”
If that has to do with neural nets, AI and any other such technology that can “learn”, we would _love_ to publish it! OSAlert is not only about operating systems per se, you see.
Thank you, Eugenia, for calling me on my mistake. I did read down to the bottom of the page, but stopped paying as close attention when I reached the highlighted “Articles submitted and published on OSAlert are not to be re-published elsewhere,”
So I missed the 30-day proviso. My apologies. I’ll see if I can whip something up by the deadline.
Heh, write another Xandros review
I would like to see an article on Mandrake Linux 10.0 that covers more then just the installation, it would especially be nice to find out whats new since Mandrake 9.2 and what the pros and cons one might find after upgrading from an older version.
Some of the more interesting articles on OSAlert were the Mac ones, they tend to have more interesting information imho but that might be because I have never used a Mac so everything I hear about Mac’s is news to me .
Just send me the copy of Xandros and I’ll write the review for it… deal?
Yes,that OSAlert not only about operating system…that’s one I lov OSAlert.May Osnews prosper!
Extra “points” for editors submitting articles that we haven’t posted so far (e.g. an OpenBSD review…
Why is there’s a lack of BSD reviews? I have been wanting to read BSD reviews, especially OpenBSD and NetBSD.
I’m writing a paper for a class, and wasn’t planning on posting it anywhere other than the site where we have to turn it in. Would that count?
If your teachers are ok with it and if it is indeed material that would interest our geek/tech readers (and in the right format), sure, go ahead and submit it.
Spelling seems to be important for submitters but not for the writer(s) of the guideline. Look at the word that is supposed to be ‘send’.
Excerpt from guidelines:
…
Nevertheless, OSAlert is not Usenet; Capitalization, punctuation, and good spelling are required. Please run your article through a spellchecker before submitting it to us,…
…
However, please do not semd your article in anything else but text files (.txt or .html)…
The original version of the guidelines article was written by David who is a native english speaker. But since 2002, I have changed/added/removed stuff from that guide directly in our database a gazillion times, so it hasn’t seen any spellchecking (because it was not needed to be sent to our proof readers as that guide was not exactly a ‘current article to be published’), so some typos are normal to be found on it with all the changes I have done throughout the years.
I just found it interesting I have a question on the article submission – I have been working on a tutorial for Samba lab setup with Windows policies and it is currently in rough form on my site. Does this mean that to submit a finished version I would have to remove the rough version from my site, submit the finished version to OSAlert, wait 30 days after publication (if published) before it could go back up on my site? Or is it ineligible because of prior partial posting on my site?
I can’t answer this exactly as I don’t know how much different/larger the final version will be over the one you got on your site currently. I guess this is something to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Give me a URL of the existing and a draft/proof-of-concept of a “final” version and will let you know.
I’m going to throw my hat into the ring. May not be ready in time but it’s nice that we have a venue.
recently i was thinking of posting an article on osnews well great opportunity for me. also another question is there any specific word limit for min or max words? i have came up with a wonderfull idea for an article (never seen before) however it might be a short one so egunia does such min or max word limit exist? if yes pls specify
who will decide as who is the winner? i.e readers or jury?
As it is mentioned in the guidelines page, your article should have be a minimum of 5 KBs of text (that is probably a minimum of about 5500 bytes with the HTML tags in it).
>who will decide as who is the winner? i.e readers or jury?
As it is written in the article (you did read the “read more” part, right?), it will be the main editors of this site.
oops sorry i was exited about the compitition that i forgot to read more. sorry i will read all the guidelines carefully
Those who ever wins it, share it with rest of the osnews regs ;-).
After all, we are here for helping others
nothing like a little bribary to get people to write stuff about xandros business edition. you all know you’re only gonna write good stuff about it in order to get a free copy. if that isn’t bias, then what is?
Wouldn’t it be a better idea to attract proofreaders and editors? It doesn’t seem like OSAlert is suffering from a dearth of content, but rather one of quality control. As pointed out above, a number of documents on the site (including some of the guidelines for the contest) are embarrassingly bad–possibly bad enough to deter potential contributors. It appears to me that a “Help Wanted: Editors” notice might be warranted, moreso than a call for new writers.
– If you are not a native english speaker don’t worry too much,
we can have it proofread.
– You can send more than one articles.
one articles (?) have been proofread I guess…
“nothing like a little bribary to get people to write stuff about xandros business edition. you all know you’re only gonna write good stuff about it in order to get a free copy. if that isn’t bias, then what is?”
I guess you didn’t read the article.
They are looking for people to write an article or a review PERIOD.
They didn’t mention the subject had to be Xandros.
And in fact, I don’t honnestly think someone someone already familiar with Xandros will want to win Xandros, so I expect the winning article to be about something else.
That article was so bad I had to write a letter to the newspaper:
Dear Mike,
I am writing to complain about this article: “Cutting-edge chips to transform computing
64-bit processor can handle more games, DVD copying
March 25, 2004
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA”
This article is fraught with inaccuracies. The whole premise is false.
Going from 32-bit to 64-bit is in no way inherently 2X faster. No way. Memory paths are still only 32-bit wide, you can’t speed up the memory copies. There already exists 64-bit floating point math, it’s called the SSE instructions and they are already used today.
Gamers will not benefit greatly from going to greater than 4GB of RAM. Most of them are only using 512MB today, if the benefits were so great why don’t they ugrade to 1 GB? The reason is that there no huge lurking benefit.
And although you can convert DVD’s on today’s 64-bit CPU’s there is only a marginal benefit for the reasons previously mentioned.
The author really needs to check his facts. He’s dead wrong on this article.
Best regards,
Andrew
is TWO copies of Xandros!
How the hell do you think you can enforce that 30 days term? The Author of a work is normally in his/her rights to do whatever with the work he/she wants, including but not limited to: republishing, selling, relicensing. The rights over the published work here are NOT yours when it is posted here. The work which is published here is copyrighted by the Author, not by you. Therefore i don’t see why it is your job to search for any copyright infringement. With the 30 days rule, you reduce the rights of the Author over the work in an extend that he/she has not got any normal rights over his/her work for 30 days. He/she may not even publish it on his/her own website. This sickens me. It is a common practice in magazines, but Authors who publish their work in such a magazine get paid for publishing their work in contrast to the practice on this site.
I must say I completely disagree with you.
If someone has an invention and agrees to bring it to the market with some company, how fair would it be if he/she then moves to another company with the same idea?
If one had a pre-posted long paper, howto, or such and would like to enter the contest. Could they write a one page overview of the existing work, and submmit that?
Also:
As for the 30 days, how long can you hold the paper before publishing it?
Do you give an ‘expexted print date’ to the author within a week of recipt?
What happens if:
Day 1 Submitted
Day 40 Not yet printed
Day 41 Printed but missed by Author(setting up Day 45)
Day 45 Re-Printed on other site
Is the Author OK (45>30) or not (5<30) ?
If you want to post your writing on your own site, by all means do so. You can send Eugenia an email and if it is any good she will link to your site. She does this routinely.
>Could they write a one page overview of the existing work, and submmit that?
Not really.
>As for the 30 days, how long can you hold the paper before publishing it?
You start counting from the moment it gets published.
How the hell do you think you can enforce that 30 days term?
Well one means of enforcement would be to no longer consider any future works by the Author.
The Author of a work is normally in his/her rights to do whatever with the work he/she wants, including but not limited to: republishing, selling, relicensing. The rights over the published work here are NOT yours when it is posted here. The work which is published here is copyrighted by the Author, not by you.
The rights to the work are whatever are negotiated between the Author and the Publisher.
You can look at the stipulation in this light: “In compensation to OSAlert for exposing your work, publishing your work, hosting your work, allowing comments on your work and paying for the bandwidth used in the distribution of your work, you grant us a 30 day exclusivity license.” How is that unfair? And if you feel it is unfair, then don’t submit anything.
Therefore i don’t see why it is your job to search for any copyright infringement. With the 30 days rule, you reduce the rights of the Author over the work in an extend that he/she has not got any normal rights over his/her work for 30 days. He/she may not even publish it on his/her own website.
It is OSAlert job to enforce their contract with the Author, otherwise it is meaningless. The Author submits these articles freely and enters into an agreement with OSAlert.
By granting exclusivity to OSAlert, OSAlert get a modicum of benefit in that if an article become remote popular, the traffic for that article is basically guaranteed to go through OSAlert site, and traffic through the site is how OSAlert maintains its existence. It’s also a medium for OSAlert to gain new readers (for example, from a cross link on Slashdot).
An Author may consider entering into this arrangement because publishing on their own site may well mean it never gets read at all. The Author is attracted to OSAlert by the readership and, ideally, wants his article to be read. By getting it posted on OSAlert, he has a far better chance of that than by posting it on his own site.
I would imagine that the 30 Day limit doesn’t particularly chafe against most authors, and OSAlert probably has to rarely enforce anything. Somehow I doubt that OSAlert has an elite Special Force of ex-SAS member scouring the net for infringments of its Submission Agreements.
This sickens me. It is a common practice in magazines, but Authors who publish their work in such a magazine get paid for publishing their work in contrast to the practice on this site.
If it sickens you, try some Mylanta.
The compensation Authors get by posting on OSAlert is simply exposure and perhaps recognition. The compensation OSAlert gets for hosting the article at their expense is a continuing flow of content that keeps readers regularly coming back to the site.
It’s hardly a draconian agreement, its certainly not mandatory, and you can always try and get your article submitted to a plethora of other places.
Thank you Will, very well said.
> The compensation Authors get by posting on OSAlert is simply exposure and perhaps recognition
Last year we had someone finding a job in an OS company after the boss of that OS company read his article here at OSAlert.
It’s actually common practice for many magazines to apply and enforce a period of exclusivity for any submitted articles. Many, in fact, restrict submissions to other magazines until such time as they have accepted or declined the article in question. Think of such things as first serial publishing, etc. which rights are negotiated and either accepted or declined by the author.
There is nothing unusual, and certainly nothing “sickening” about the limitations placed upon submissions to this contest.
If you don’t like it, take the well-advised Mylanta (or Pepto-Bismal, if your mood is dismal) and get a grip.
reviews about Xandros, but now prices encourage further articles about it. Is osnews dependant on donations from Xandros? I’m not saying anything about the dist, but again I’d like to just breifly point out that there are other OS out there. And I second the opionion about getting more BSD reviews there. Like, NetBSD vs. FreeBSD vs. OpenBSD. Which to pick?
What are you talking about Daniel? Your comment reads really silly.
Noone said about writing more Xandros reviews, we clearly ask for reviews about other things. You obviously did not read the full article.
…or is the mobile sister site (whos name and URL I can never remember) likely to have a similar competition?
>…or is the mobile sister site (whos name and URL I can never remember)
http://www.NMCx.com
>is likely to have a similar competition?
I don’t think it will.
I could do an interview with the former editor of Maximum Linux (if you guys and gals remember that mag) get his thoughts and ideas on linux and the direction it is heading in. What linux has over other OS’s what it lacks… things like that…
hey if you win this you need to seed it on bittorent or share it in some form
“By getting it posted on OSAlert, he has a far better chance of that than by posting it on his own site.”
Sorry, i disagree. Well put information spreads well anyway. Perhaps slower when not posted on a popular website. I learned that myself after i wrote articles for small websites; later i discovered a few of them popping up in other on-line e-zines and newssites.
There are a lot of (small) websites which don’t have this clause
like you put it: a better deal. I’d like to point that out and i believe i’m Free to do so.
“It’s actually common practice for many magazines to apply and enforce a period of exclusivity for any submitted articles. Many, in fact, restrict submissions to other magazines until such time as they have accepted or declined the article in question.”
Uhm. I basically said that too, didn’t i?
There is a huge difference which both Will and you haven’t bothered to think about. Instead you claim the newsposter gains something which he/she already gains on other websites as well. I addressed: those magazines PAY their authors! On OSAlert.com, authors get NOTHING of the revenue OSAlert.com makes.
Here, take Newsforge:
http://www.newsforge.com/write.tmpl
“We pay $50 – $300 for news, reviews, case studies, HOWTOs, and feature articles directly related to Linux, Open Source, or Free Software. We expect a “30-day exclusive” on paid articles. Look at what we’re already publishing to get an idea of the kind of stories we like, but don’t be afraid to submit an idea that’s unlike anything else we’ve ever published. We love originality.”
(Notice the word “expect”; it implies negotiations are open.)
If it is a Good article you have a high chance of getting your fame on (sites like) Slashdot (or OSAlert
, too. Overal, a much better deal if you ask me.
A repeat as summary: What you assert is: “You get the fame and the possibility to share your information using our popularity and we grab all the money ourselves” and including a the 30-days term which i never stumbled across _without_ a compensation in the form of money.
If you still haven’t understood it: there is a huge difference.