From: Kai MacTane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Text written by Adam D. McKenna (and some other folks) at 07:31 PM 3/25/99
> -0500:
> >
> >> >Sendmail is not a Unix program. It is an NT program that someone
> >> >ported to Unix twenty years ago.
> >>
> >> Hmm...I can't quite see the humor in this, though it strikes me as
> >> a bit funny, and not entirely untrue.
> >>
> >> But, I'll ask anyway: did you really intend to suggest that Sendmail
> >> was originally written for Windows NT over twenty years ago?
> >
> >Yes. Sendmail was written for NT 0.01 pre-beta in 1979. It was ported to
> >UNIX by Bill Gates in 1981.
>
> Wow. You say that with such a straight face -- no smileys, nada. I'd
> normally consider it deadpan humor and wind up on the floor laughing.
>
> Unfortunately, MS' various departments and spokesthings have foisted
> nonsense of a similar level of ludicrousness on the public too many times.
> They say, in their deadpan way, "NT is at least as robust and scalable as
> Linux", and "We integrated IE 4 with the operating system to benefit
> consumers" and "We are winning our court case with the DoJ", and you can
> only laugh uproariously at such things so many times before it sinks in:
> these whackos are *serious!*
>
> Then it stops being funny. It gets kind of ominous, in a Big-Brother-esque
> kind of way, and that starts to infect your (or at least, my) view of
> similar statements.
>
> In fact, seeing such a thing on the Qmail list would probably be a bit
> creepy, if I weren't sure you know better. :)
>
> "Bill Gates? Isn't he the guy who invented the Internet, back in 1995?"
> <shudder>
Would you believe me if I told you that you grasped the exact sentiment that I
was trying to convey with that joke?
That was pretty... surreal :)
--Adam
