From: soh3@quads.uchicago.edu (min-woong sohn)
Subject: Re: microsoft employees
Reply-To: soh3@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago 
Distribution: comp
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 06:35:09 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.2712.2729@dosgate> "bill dehaan" <bill.dehaan@canrem.com> writes:
>
>Exactly what net do  you think you're on?  This is USENET, Min.  Despite
>the number  of government  employees and  sites you  see, this  is NOT a
>government funded net. Your university is, but Usenet is a bit more than
>a plaything for universities.

This sounds as if there is not rule of fairness governing news posting on the
USENET.  I sincerely hope it is not.  USENET may be more than the plaything
for universities but still USENET news is routed to the Internet and read
by lots of people on the Internet.  Well, when you post to the USENET, if you
think you can really reach out to people only on the part of the net where
people shell out their own money to subscribe, then your logic holds good.
But I do not think neither you nor microsoft employees do not know that
your/their posts are fed into Internet, reaching out many people the moeny
they pay for the UUNET cannot reach.  More complex than you ever imagined, huh?

>Ah, it  was "at  the expense  of Borland".  Presumably Borland  has some
>favoured status so that their products can be discussed on the net,  but
>not Microsoft's?  Wrong. Anybody  can post  anything, anytime.  The only
>restriction (by either convention or moderator) is that the post  should
>be relevant  to the  group in  question. A  comment on  the pricing of a
>C/C++ compiler in a comp.os.* newsgroup is certainly relevant.

Well, you should have read my subsquent post regarding this point.  I am not
a Borland employee and so when I talk about Borland software I talk about it
as a customer not as a Borland employee.  No, I have never ever even implied
that Borland has any favored status.  You don't follow my logic/rationale
very well.  MS and Borland are competitors, especially in language market.
When a MS employee posted a news that says their c compiler can be had 
for less **in the context** when people were talking about Borland c
compiler, it doesn't sound innocent.  It sounded as if the MS employee was
either desperate or out of sense.  Remeber, I clearly stated that I do
not object to MS employees posting news to any group as long as they do not
promote their products and demote their competitors'.  I still think
it is shameful if MS employess do these two things on the net.


>So it's acceptable that people badmouth MS, saying that they can't write
>code, but you don't think that MSers should be able to respond by asking
>what people consider good code? I followed the thread in question,  Min.
>Nobody from Microsoft  published anything out  of line (at  least that I
>saw).

As a user, you can express your anger/dissatisfaction to a particular vendor
or software developer.  As a user of a IBM product, MS employees can discuss
down sides of the IBM software they are using. But given that these two
companies are competitors in os/2 and windows 3.1 war, I think posters
from these two sites should follow a minimum net rule of fairness and
decency.  Their (IBM employees as well as MS employees) posts that conveys
distinctly negative messages against their competitors' product do not
sound a fair use of the public forum.  I hope this clears the misunderstanding
you might have of my post.

>You're right. People should only  use the net to ***demote***  their own
>companies and themselves. Like you're doing.

Well, I really think you should have read my post a little bit more closely
before you switch to a not-so-elegant flame mode.  I do not appreciate it
at all.

>Speaking as someone  who just spent  two years at  IBM: yes. Constantly.
>You want their names? If I were an IBMer, I'd be one of them.

Nope.  I am not even a professional programmer.  I have never been employed
by an software publishing house, and I even started to use os/2 a couple of
months ago.  But seriously count the number of posts from any of the IBM
sites and compare it to the number of posts from microsoft.com.  I didn't
even started this thread.  People seriously think MS employees go sometimes
over the board to the point of abusing the net.  That's why there were
several posts that questioned whether MS employees were "ethical" in their
use of the net.  Also I want to remind you of the thread that was running
a couple of months ago that also questioned whether MS employees were abusing
the net.  ***This (that is, MS employees _appear_ to abuse the net.) is not 
my own perception.  This perception is shared by my people on the net.****

>
>MS>                                                    Also have you seen
>MS>many people other than microsoft employees defending windows?
>
>Constantly. I *am* one of them.

You are only the second person.  The first person said that he/she was 
defending windows only occasionally. On the other hand, there are three or
so MS employees who post news almost everyday (except for weekends, of course
:-)) that defend windows or promote (no this is not a loaded term) NT on
the net.  Count the number of people who jump in, for example, in this thread,
who are not from any of the ibm sites.  That is a very strinking contrast.

>
>Min, I hope you don't take this  as a flame.

Nope.  I don't, but as I said above, you should respond when you think
you at least minimally digested what the original poster wanted to say.

> It isn't intended as  such.
>But I think you should learn  a LOT more about Usenet

See above.  This was not really abut USENET.  Actually, when it comes
to USENET, I did my homework and fairly competent how it works and what
should be minimum etiquette to observe.  For example, I don't think it is
highly recommended that you use .sig file as yours.  It will just waste
bandwidth for no advantage to the multitude.

>and  the behaviour
>of newsgroups  before you  start casting  the type  of aspersions you've
>been saying here.

I don't remember I cast apsersions to anybody on the net.  I was making 
my point.  I am truly sorry that you have only the level of understanding
you have about other's posts.  

>
>----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
>Deus Ex Machina                   | Internet:   bill.dehaan@rose.com
>Software Consulting and Gator Pit | I'm a brain in a vat. What about you?
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Min