In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Linonut
<linonut@xxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:11:04 -0500
<yZydnR80COAlUrvbnZ2dnUVZ_jydnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> After takin' a swig o' grog, Roy Schestowitz belched out this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> MS anti-OSDL [Open Source Development Lab] PR, 2000: "Maureen O' Gara said
>> she was going to call them, so it looks better coming from her"
>>
>> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070417181027290
>>
>> Open source software still fighting FUD
>>
>> http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=42953&cid=11
>>
>> Too late to discredit open source, advocates say
>>
>> http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/030607-too-late-to-discredit-open.html?fsrc=rss-linux-news
>>
>> 'Puppets' Emerge as Internet's Effective, and Deceptive, Salesmen
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601742.html?nav=rss_technology
>>
>> A Wake-Up Call to Microsoft's PR Team
>>
>> http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/a-wake-up-call-to-microsofts-pr-team/
>>
>> | And the astroturf taint continues today.
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/14/google_lobby/
>>
>> | "Some years back, Microsoft practiced a lot of dirty tricks using
>> | online mavens to go into forums and create Web sites extolling the virtues
>> | of Windows over OS/2.
>>
>> http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos/2005/11/2_grassroots_an.html
>>
>> | "We have to outrun this phenomenon [Free software]" he [Ballmer] was quoted
>> | as saying, and " ...if we let up for a minute... then that other stuff will
>> | gain attraction."
>>
>> http://www.thetidenews.com/article.aspx?qrDate=01/31/2007&qrTitle=Understanding%20Open%20Source%20technology&qrColumn=ISSUES
>
> Nice selection there, Roy. This stuff needs to be aired. The people
> who say it is off-topic are full of it.
>
It's way off topic in, say, alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk,:-)
alt.pave.the.earth, or alt.fan.fluffy-things.
But around here? Quite on topic. In any event, I don't
see Windows outrunning free software, though if free
software isn't careful they might slow down and then
Windows catches up.
Of course Windows has all of the speed of a lumbering
tortoise, but that doesn't mean the hare should rest on his
bunny tail, reading alt.fan.fluffy-things on his OpenMoko
or QT Green phone instead of pacing his way to the finish line.
And the hare is really several components.
- Linux: the kernel, which is the hare's heart.
- GNU, the hare's feet.
- X, the hare's eyes. (OK, you think of a better analogy! :-) )
- KDE and Gnome, the hare's arms and legs. (Ditto)
- FreeBSD, the sprinting devil (or bouncing ball with horns,
take your pick) running alongside the hare, encouraging him on.
- HURD, the strange-looking bison thing lumbering next to the hare,
or trying to.
- FreeDOS, the -- whale??! -- swimming next to the hare in the
river alongside.
- MacOSX, the tiger/panther/leopard hybrid running with
the hare, bling around his neck. He tends to favor
the bikepath.
Which one should win? An interesting question; it's
a strange bunch of contenders from a logo standpoint.
I won't mention the Native American hiding in the bushes
selling web pages, or the four-footed animal racing
alongside buying them, or the bird flying above who's
trying to make sense of all this as reports come into
his PDA, or the ship sailing next to the whale with its
captain shouting "Eureka!" on occasion, trying to outrun
a rather toothy sea monster. (For some reason the first
mate is playing a violin and wearing paper garments.
It's a strange ship. [*])
OK, maybe I will mention them.
And then there's the hare's usage of certain substances
such as PHP, Perl, and Python venom. Oh wait, those
are legit.
Did I mention the strange bunch along the road selling
various knickknacks? There's a big booth over there
hawking red hats. Someone right next to him is selling
a blue thing with an "f"; they appear to be arguing.
There's another one selling plush green lizards. Yet
another over there looks like it's seling a spacecraft,
or maybe it's a cow -- hard to tell from a distance.
The hypno-disk is a hot item, as is the blue ball with a
black spot. There's also a blue ball with some mountains,
three dancing people (no, they're neither hens nor French),
a flying star, a vendor hawking a funny little penguin
guy next to a cube with the letters "DSL", a black dot,
and a relatively new entry which is a green trifooted ring
thingy smelling of mint.
Of course, there's a few other contenders; you can guess
what they are, of course.
- Microsoft Windows: an old, decrepit, and yes lumbering
tortoise whose shell looks more like a patchwork quilt,
staggering along the road. But lo, the shell is nice
and shiny looking, polished to a smooth, reflective gloss
(the bits that haven't fallen off, anyway), as opposed to
the hare's slightly grungy appearance -- but try looking
good in Speedos or a bikini after running a 5km marathon
(especially with lots of body fur) -- and that's assuming
someone looks good in Speedos or a bikini *before*
the marathon :-) (this may be a matter of opinion).
And someone has thoughtfully attached roller skates on
top of the shell, to, erm, make the tortoise go faster
when it inevitably tips over. The tail of the tortoise
is pulling a toy duck squeaking "Get The Facts! TCO!
Get The Facts! TCO! Get The Facts! TCO!". Someone's
also attached a flag standard to the top of the shell;
it's a four-color affair -- with big square holes in it.
Rumors of the tortoise's demise are greatly exaggerated,
as are rumors of its capabilities.
- MS-DOS: a now-dead fish floating beside the whale, but
it was a darned big fish.
- 4DOS: another dead fish floating beside the whale.
- GEM: yet another dead fish.
- OS/2: a bouncing colored cube -- well, it was a bouncing
cube, until the tortoise decided to kick it into the
river after riding in it for awhile. It's now somewhere
on the bottom.
- AmigaOS: a white-and-colored deflated ball, lying
somewhere along the road, waiting for someone to pump
it back up. (A pity. It had great bounce. The hare
took one look at it and muttered "UAE" enigmatically.)
- BeOS: a dead bee.
- z/OS: a rocket-powered skateboard underneath the hare,
but only on certain road sections (did I mention the hare
can run on various paths the tortoise can't even enter?).
- VmWare/QEMU/coLinux: a hamster ball allowing one or
more tortoises or the hare's friends -- usually the
whale -- to be pulled along by the hare (or the hare or
one of his friends by the tortoise).
- Cygwin: fluffy bunny ears, false glasses, white paint
for his feet, and a cotton ball stuck on the tortoise's
shell to make it look a little bit like a hare, in a
darkened room anyway.
The problem here, of course, is that there are thousands
of chickens, all of them pretty decrepit, along the side
of the road. But the hare tends to trip over them on
occasion, as they cross the road. Sometimes the tortoise
can tell a chicken to trip up the hare, and that chicken
tells another chicken, and ... well, you get the idea.
They do often get in the way of the tortoise, but that's
OK with the tortoise; he moves slowly enough.
After all, that's how 4DOS died. It was pecked by a
chicken after the tortoise patched his shell while giving
birth to Win3.1 beta. (The child's shell was patched
immediately afterwards to disable the chicken code,
but the code itself was left in. Makes the shell look
slightly discolored in a region around the left foot.)
And then there's Win3.1's son, nicknamed "Unix Killer".
This tortoise was equipped to move in many directions at
once -- as long as it didn't have to move too fast --
and the hare's uncle, Cisvee, was laughing too hard to
really do the tortoise all that much damage. Of course,
that was before the Web started to snare everything; Cisvee
is now somewhere in a spider's lair. But we hear from him
now and again; he's comfortable, and the spiders give him
a nightly shot of Old Bandwidth, as they discuss things.
He might even have a daughter (the hare's cousin) who
stands to inherit his fortune. She's after, all, the ...
wait for it ... sole heiress (since the current hare is
not exactly a recognized descendant, but Cisvee calls him
nephew anyway).
No word on what happened to Beatrice D, one of the hare's
aunts. Scuttlebit suggested the tortoise used a hunting
rifle and then made a sort of stew, but don't believe
everything you hear. I'm not even sure how a tortoise
can operate a hunting rifle. This may be one reason why
there's a devil at all; the supernatural elements were
not happy.
And then there was the bombed-out lighthouse. I'm not
sure I want to know exactly how *that* happened, though
I understand it had something to do with a tortoise
blocking the building's intake.
Deliberately.
Later on, of course, the tortoise complained about damage
to his nice shiny shell from blocking the intake. The odd
thing is, the exploding lighthouse then launched an egg
into the river, which hatched the toothy sea monster now
roaming therein.
I should lastly mention the tortoise got a huge head start
though. But he's not moving very fast at all...even with
the help of the chickens.
[*]
http://www.google.com/search?q=hakase&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
coughed up Taro Hakase, a Japanese musician who specializes
as a violinist. If one adds Kaze, one gets a pop star
and a mention of a paper jacket.
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-9y-77-cn-49-en-15-Super+Paper+Mario-70-1le3.html
I think the analogy broke at this point. :-)
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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