I'm beginning to understand.
Bill Gates is the Enemy, the great Satan, the Red (Yellow, Blue, Green)
Menace, He who would make our Precious Bodily Fluids Impure.
He must be stopped at all costs. Any friend of Bill's is a Zombie
Puppet, a Stooge, a Fellow-Traveler.
> "Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will
not
> last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn't be peace at any cost
but
> peace based on principle, on justice." - Corazon Aquino
I actually blushed in embarrassment for the author when I saw him
quoting this.
But wait, he's been outdone (I just had this forwarded to me):
Witness to history: Apple and the France of 1940
By Sam Whitmore
August 6, 1997 2:22 PM PDT
ZDNN
In June 1940, a World War I French general, Marshal
Henri-Philippe Petain, was tapped to be the figurehead of a puppet
government which became known as Vichy France. The French loved and
revered Petain. Although Petain had deep-seated misgivings about his new
masters, he put on a brave face. War itself was the enemy, he said. The
French should listen to and trust their liberators. Peace in France was
worth any price.
Today, Apple is led by an interim leader who is also the
hero of previous wars, Steve Jobs. As with Petain, the faithful cannot
doubt Jobs' credibility, his talent or his allegiance to the cause. So
when Jobs dropped the bomb on Tuesday that Microsoft bought $150 million
in stock and access to every technical secret Apple has, and that
Internet Explorer had become the official Macintosh Web browser, the
sanctity of the moves had to be believed. Marshal Jobs had spoken.
That didn't stop the underground -- Apple developers and
other partisans -- from booing the news. Marshal Jobs responded quickly
and ruthlessly on behalf of his new masters. Jobs demanded "gratitude"
for the news that Microsoft would continue to develop a Mac version of
Microsoft Office until 2002. He reminded the partisans that their
conditions of subjection were of their own making, saying that "when you
don't do a good job, it's not somebody else's fault -- it's your own
fault."
Petain said the same things to France in 1940. Its
leadership had failed the French people, Petain said. The Maginot Line
was a dumb idea. The reparations demanded of Germany in World War I
sowed the seeds of this war, and it was all France's fault.
ZDNN reported today that Jobs was the one who went to
Microsoft for an investment -- not the other way around. Fair enough.
Did Jobs offer up the priceless patented technology that will inexorably
make its way into Windows? Did Jobs say, "Hey, Bill, let's give Netscape
the boot and make Internet Explorer the default browser for the Mac."
Not likely.
Will the underground triumph like it did last time? Or
will Apple become a Vichy brand, the toast of the lip-service crowd and
a sad memory only for those old enough to remember a different time?
Time will tell. But I'm a history major, and to me it looks for all the
world that, more than half a century later, history is repeating itself.
Sam Whitmore, the former editorial director of PC Week,
is vice president, editorial director of Integrated Media at Ziff-Davis
Inc.
Let me know when Gates starts killing Jews. Until then, get a FUCKING
grip, people.
To compare OS "wars" with the horrors of WWII is to grossly, obscenely,
unforgivably trivialize the latter.
- Joe
Joseph S. Barrera III <joebar@microsoft.com>
<http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar/>
Phone, Office: (415) 778-8227; Cellular: (415) 601-3719; Home: (415)
588-4801
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views and do
not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.