____/ [H]omer on Sunday 17 February 2008 23:40 : \____
> Imagine if the battle between Linux and Windows were a soccer match...
>
> The Linux team is owned and managed by a conglomerate of companies and
> the Windows team is owned and managed by Microsoft.
>
> The players are Linux developers on one side and Windows developers on
> the other.
>
> The field is the IT industry.
>
> Surrounding the field are soccer fans, with Linux fans on one side and
> Windows fans on the other.
>
> Ostensibly this seems like a fair game. However, it is rigged in many,
> sometimes subtle ways.
>
> Of all the vicious; clandestine; boiler-room deals that Microsoft uses
> to fix matches, the one that has the most obvious manifestation is the
> presence of soccer hooligans in the terraces. These thugs throw coins
> at the referee; blast horns at inopportune moments, trying to disrupt
> the match; shout abuses and make obscene gestures to the opposing team
> and their fans; whilst singing racists and sectarian slurs.
>
> For years Linux was the underdog, with Microsoft continuing to rig the
> game with almost complete impunity. But in recent years, the Microsoft
> team's vice-like grip on the game has been slipping, their popularity
> is waning, and they are losing supporters at an accelerated rate. More
> recently they seem to be having financial trouble too.
>
> As Microsoft's reign of terror weakens, the voices of their fake fans,
> the soccer hooligans, become ever more shrill, and ever more debase.
>
>
> Now consider this...
>
> The Football Association maintains league tables of all the teams, the
> final scores in each game, and various other statistics.
>
> Should the FA maintain and publish statistics of how many coins soccer
> hooligans threw at the referee, or the precise number of toilet rolls
> that littered each field, at the end of each match?
>
> Should the FA record and publish the racist songs sung during matches,
> or the sectarian chants used to taunt the opposition?
>
> Is the FA guilty of censorship by refusing to publish such statistics?
>
> No?
>
> Then why should anyone expect me to publish statistics, and details of
> the Trolls' thuggery in COLA?
This thuggery that you speak of Microsoft calls "balance", especially when it
starts bribing people to edit Wikipedia and do what it calls a Slog. It's
sabotage. Plain and simple. Microsoft uses words to try to justify its act
("trusted Computing", "evangelism", "marketing help", "grossroots"). This
should not be tolerated. In fact, one blogger who suffers from the Microsoft
AstroTurf squad published a post last night only to say that the tolerance
threshold is now 0. He is being attacked by anonymous shills because of OOXML,
which Microsoft clings on to for financial survival.
It's disgusting. It's scandalous.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | United States: #1 in spam export
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