From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Dec 1 4: 2: 2 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [206.29.169.15]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9EEA937B405; Sat, 1 Dec 2001 04:01:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from tedm.placo.com (nat-rtr.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [206.29.168.154]) by mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id fB1C1kR63199; Sat, 1 Dec 2001 04:01:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" To: "Anthony Atkielski" , "Mike Meyer" Cc: "Andrew C. Hornback" , "Mike Meyer" , , "Eric Melville" , "Randall Hamilton" , "GB Clark II" Subject: RE: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 04:01:45 -0800 Message-ID: <002e01c17a5f$f2b34040$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 In-Reply-To: <010d01c17a44$98b491e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org >-----Original Message----- >From: Anthony Atkielski [mailto:anthony@freebie.atkielski.com] >Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 12:46 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt; Mike Meyer >Cc: Andrew C. Hornback; Mike Meyer; chat@freebsd.org; Eric Melville; >Randall Hamilton; GB Clark II >Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) > > >Ted writes: > >> But they did. > >As I said, urban legends die hard. > It's kind of hard to kill a legend based on truth. >> Microsoft got in because of luck and because of >> underhanded practices, not ethical management. > >The same claim has been made about every company in history that >ever reached a >position of leadership. Some people just resent the fact that other >persons/companies are more competent or successful than they are, and cannot >accept the possibility that the success of the latter could be do to anything >except some sort of cheating. > This is frankly rediculous. Sure there are many large companies that are competent and successful and didn't get that way by cheating. But we aren't talking about large successful companies in general, we are talking about a specific large company, Microsoft, which has been found guilty of anti-trust violations. You seem to think that anti-trust convictions are some sort of normal thing for large companies and that every large company has them routinely. This is stupid and insulting to the many large companies that do follow the law. I frankly cannot understand this attitude. Does something have to smash you in the head to get attention or what? Microsoft was found guilty of breaking the law, they are beyond cheaters, they are criminals. Many, many other large companies (Intel comes immediately to mind as a matter of fact) many even larger, have never gone through this. If the statement that Microsoft cheated to get where they were was nothing more than a claim, then no evidence would have existed to convict them. But it's not a claim, it's a statement of fact. They didn't lose some sort of popularity contest here - they lost a legal court case, a loss that even survived an appeal by them, in a court where they had unbelievable opportunity to disprove the claims, during a trial that was conducted according to defined and fair rules. You seem to forget that in a trial the burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message