From: Mark Kovarski <kovarski@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Re: Bill Gates:  What a weenie...
Organization: ZOOiD BBS
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 06:57:33 GMT

tomh@wes.on.ca (Tom Haapanen) writes:
>>> Mark Kovarski <kovarski@zooid.guild.org> writes:
>>>> [A childish diatribe full of personal attacks deleted]
>
>> tomh@wes.on.ca (Tom Haapanen) writes:
>>> Well, that does it for Mr. Kovarski -- he's the first one to earn his very
>>> own spot in my comp.os.os2.advocacy kill file.  Maybe he won't care, but
>>> at least it'll increase the signal-to-noise ratio in this group for me.
>
>[While Mr. Kovarski is indeed in my kill file, trn kindly showed me a
> followup to my own article, which I duly checked out...]
>
>Mark Kovarski <kovarski@zooid.guild.org> writes:
>> Interesting, indeed. I believe you were the person who send me several
>> "hate" mail messages a few weeks ago.
>
>Really?  I don't send hate mail.  Period.  The only mail I recall sending
>to Mr. Kovarski was a request for some more objectivity a few weeks ago.
>
>> First of all, and most users will not know this. You are a Waterloo
>> student. Mr. Gates invests a lot of money into Waterloo since he
>> recruits many Waterloo students from there. Furthermore, some of the
>> users in your University are very obsessed with the idea that 
>> Microsoft buys their minds as well. No offense, I've been there and
>> I know how it works.
>
>First, I'm not a Waterloo *student* -- I'm an alumni (BMath '86).  Second,
>as far as I know, Microsoft does not invest any special amounts of money
>in Waterloo -- no donations, and only the usual academic pricing for their
>software.  While Microsoft does hire a handful of top grads each year 
>(they are the only major US corporation to do active recruiting here, so
>they get a better choice of grads than they might get hiring at, say, MIT),
>this is quite irrelevant.  While at Waterloo, the only Microsoft-written
>product I ever used was IBM's PC-DOS -- and current computer science
>students don't use even that.  Unix is by far dominant, and there most
>certainly is no Microsoft Bias at UW.
>
>Of course, it appears that Mr. Kovarski would define anyone who doesn't
>drool at the sight of OS/2 and IBM as a Microsoft fanatic.  Sigh.
>
>For the record, we use Windows, OS/2 2.0, Mac and Unix -- we're hardly a
>Microsoft-only shop.
>
>[ \tom haapanen    "i don't even know what street canada is on" -- al capone ]
>[ tomh@wes.on.ca                   "trust the programmer" -- ansi c standard ]
>[ waterloo engineering software      "to thine own self be true" -- polonius ]


I have received some very interesting mail from you and I am 99% sure of
that. You might not know it, I have used Windows/Windows NT and currently
using OS/2 v2. You might believe I am biased, that's your opinion and you
can stick to it. If I would have "Angst," like Mr. Hamilton pointed out
to me in a private message (BTW, Angst is capital. For a Assistant Prof.
you should know it Mr. Hamilton), I would not have purchased any
Microsoft related products. Not to mention the numerous "Microsoft Press"
books. Moreover, I can switch to NT very easily by formatting the HD and
installing it. This won't happen, at least not soon since OS/2 in my
opinion offers much superiority in many areas. And please, I have the
hardware to run NT but I choose not to. What about the people who can
not afford the hardware requirements and would like a stable, reliable,
multi-operating system environment? 

I have watched how Microsofties like to re-define terms. They call Windows
an operating system. They try to define Windows as some new standard in
GUIs. I have used the same interface as Windows since 1985 on an old ST.
Moreover, there is something called Neodesk which loads on top of TOS and
gives it a more sophisticated look to TOS. This is a utility and was never
called a OS even though it does EXACTLY the same thing Windows does. The
fact of the matter is, while some of the Wingagas think that NT and Windows
is something new in terms of look, on other platforms, this has been
available for many years. It might impress people who are newcomers to
computers but certainly not users who have used the same type of interface
for many years. OS/2 and its WP offer something new which allows me to
be much more productive. This is one of the reasons I have switched but not
the only one.

I can show you even instances where Microsoft folks have produced messages
where my only interpretation is that they are scared silly. A few months
ago I have asked a person, Darek Mihocka, who is a programmer at Microsoft
to tell me if his own independant product will work with OS/2. Mind you,
this product has been created by him and his other company. It is called
a GEMulator and is a hardware/software combination that will allow to
emulate the ST on a PC. It is a DOS product. A few hours later his
repl arrived in my mailbox and it was THE message where it showed me that
at Microsoft, people are afraid of IBM taking over the market. He raged
for several pages that OS/2 was not tested, IBM released it with last-
minute hacks and it went on and on and on. Talk about fear of loosing
the market.

Again, you might not like what I say but you have the option not to read
it. It has gotten to the point where, after voicing my opinion on another
network, I received threatening phone calls. Due to the miracle of
technology, this call has been traced and I will take approapriate
action, like I pointed out in a public message on the network. As it
turns out, the user behind it was a Windows user who has been reading my
messages.

I wish you all the best,
Mark K.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy