"The People Moan"

Thought the list would appreciate this:

>"The People Moan"
>
>From:  Harold Horsman, IBM Netherlands
>
>This weekend I read an article in the NRC Handelsblad, a respected Dutch
newspaper, about a noteworthy occasion in Paris.
>It was in Dutch and since not many of you can read it, I will do my best
to transcribe the most important parts of it here, as it is
>interesting to all of us who embrace JAVA and other standards.

>The title of the article is "The people moan"
><begin transcript>
>Recently, Paris witnessed the most bizar business conference in years.
More than 1200 SW developers were invited by SW >moloch Microsoft to view
the latest Internet Explorer 4.0. A mere 50 made it to the end of the
conference day. The rest were >already gone, in anger and disgust.
>
>Until lunch nothing special was happening.  But when everyone sat down
again, Microsoft's marketing director in France took >the stand to say
'something about JAVA'. And he began a long and fierce 'filippica' against
this even newer -and therefore a little >less stable- but much promising
programming language.  It didn't work, was no good, everybody could look
into the sourcecode,
>etc.. But the audience understood very well what Microsofts real objection
 against JAVA was: it's not made by Microsoft.
>
>And the audience didn't buy it. All those well-dressed 'IT-specialists',
like schoolboys, began to make sissing and booo-noises.
>So much that everybody was shocked by himself and the others; an
embarrassed silence set in. The Microsoft staff on the stage
>was looking baffled into the audience, the audience looked back in
despair, until somebody shouted couragiously "Allez JAVA*"
>(french for "Come on, JAVA").  A big applause and chear was raised.
>
>After this happened the majority of the audience left the building.
>
><end of transcript, not of the article, which goes on about the monopo-
listic style of Bill Gates and Microsoft, comparing him with >Richard III
(Shakespeare).  The artice ended with the observation that the people moan,
like in Paris and starts to hope for some >sort of Richmond (also
Shakespeare) to steam up to Redmond and make an end to this immature
nonsense>.
>
>Harold Horsman
>IBM NL
>Brand Manager OS/2 - Direction du Logiciel
>T©l : 33(0)1 4905 8204   - Mobile : 0611 823 266
>Fax: 33(0)1 4905 7021   - email : milcent@fr.ibm.com








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