On Tue, Mar 24, 1998 at 05:12:51AM -0500, Kit Cosper wrote:
> With regards to email from the masses, I have a couple of
> thoughts. The first thought is visceral, and says email them into
> oblivion. I think we can all agree that there are better ways to get
> the word out, but that's still my first reaction. :-) The second
> thought agrees with the well constructed, factual, professional response.
> This is probably the best way to disseminate information, but it assumes that
> the reader will take the time to read messages of considerable length.
Linux is now where Unix was when I got into it 18 years ago: the best
solution available for a wide variety of problems, but perceived as
the domain of the lunatic fringe because it isn't associated with
The Big Names.
I hate to say it, but there are a *large* number of people, notably
those in the corporate world, who WILL NOT GET IT. Sorry to shout, but
my point is that these people won't get it if you schmooze them with
PR, innundate them with benchmarks, pummel them with sound arguments,
or anything else: they are simply too dense and/or too stupid to understand
what is being said to them. They will continue having their little
meetings and working on their silly Y2K projects and spouting nonsense
phrases like "three-tier client-server intranet" and will happily buy
any piece of junk that says "Microsoft", "Lotus" or "Novell".
Some of them will write to Byte. Some of them write *for* Byte.
And PC Week, and Network World, and Information Week, and so on.
There's a long tradition of idiotic writing targeted against Unix,
starting with Don Norman's "The Trouble With Unix" in Datamation
back around 1981. (Look it up, if you get a chance; I take great
joy in the fact that there is a howling error or incorrect
prediction in nearly every sentence in that article.)
It is therefore pointless to argue with these people, and I say that even
though I myself have done it on numerous occasions. ;-) The best solution
that I can think of to deal with these creatures is to out-evolve them.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
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