Subject: Re: A few questions, Alan Turing and LISP?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/02/12
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3127773903580669@naggum.no>

* "Gary H. Merrill" <ghm48805@glaxowellcome.com>
| Wow!  What a huge organization!!

  just what _is_ your problem, Gary?  I'm trying to answer your hostile and
  stupid questions, and all you do is prove you're an asshole.

| I concede it must have been difficult dealing with the complex management
| and organizational structure of such a company.  55 million dollars of
| revenue in 1997.  Offices in 10 (!) nations.  Very impressive.

  why do you talk in terms of "impressive"?  whoever wanted to impress?
  and in particular, why the hell would anyone want to impress _you_?  you
  asked a simple question, you got a simple answer.  look at your reaction.

  if you believe that bureaucratic management problems are linear in the
  size of the corporation, you must _really_ be lacking in intellectual
  capacity.  my experience is that some of the worst run small companies
  that don't grow large because of their management style.  (yes, these are
  also companies most in need of consultants, and they are also the most
  likely to give consultants hell and not pay them.  it's vital to a small
  consulting shop to know such people.  based on the available evidence, I
  retract my offer to help any company Gary H. Merrill might work for.)

| > | I sense the wounded response of the true Linux fanatic.
| > 
| >   I sense a moron who needs to see fanatics when he knows he's in the wrong.
| 
| I bow to your intellect.  While knowing nothing about my company, its
| organization, or my role or position in it, you have deduced that:
| 
|      1. I am stupid (well, now in fact a moron).

  that you're a moron has nothing to do with your company.  I concluded
  that you're a moron because you invoked "Linux fanatic" just because I
  showed you how a Linux system was very, very inexpensive compared to the
  stuff you said could not be beaten in price/performance.  I beat your
  price/performance by a large factor.  after you had published your false
  statement of unbeatability, you kept adding requirements that you never
  told anyone about.  you turned around and threw _new_ arguments against
  the suggestion in order to invalidate it.  I'm sure this is necessary on
  a personal level for you to avoid looking like an idiot to said possessed
  boss, but it really has nothing to do with the fact that Linux runs on
  dirt cheap hardware.  you got an answer to what you _said_, not what you
  _thought_ at the time.  keeping vital information secret so you can beat
  up anyone who corrects you is simply not intelligent behavior.  it's what
  morons do.  that you now have to pretend that you're a moron for some
  _other_ reason where _you_ obviously couldn't be a moron, just goes to
  show that I'm pretty accurate.

  incidentally, the choice of Linux was not at all made out of fanaticism,
  but out of a desire to waste as little money as possible because we had
  to reimplement a system that some incompetent fools in a large consulting
  company had charged a lot of money for, and we needed a lot of resources
  to get it right.  instead of wasting 60-70 grand on computers, and _then_
  100 grand on software, we figured it would be better to re-use old iron
  and get the software at a much lower price.  and that we did.

  getting Linux past the sometimes very conservative, yet sometimes very
  liberal, management took quite some time and effort, precisely because of
  the nature of Linux _support_, which you appeared to bring up as an
  argument, but then it turned out to be the _hardware_ vendor who had to
  sell it.  well, I'm just shaking my head at your insecure and stupid
  responses.

  incidentally, reusing old iron made it possible to use Common Lisp, and
  we've done _much_ more with the money saved on the hardware than merely
  fixing a broken system.  because the money could all be spent on new
  software, we now have a system that enables the company to advance into
  new markets.  we could not have done this with the old system, provided
  we had been able to survive at all with its dangerous instability.  I'm
  sure you'll scoff at this to, and find some more stupid things to attack.

  I don't know what you need to prove or to whom, Gary H. Merrill, but I do
  know that your need to prove _something_ completely overshadows whatever
  technical merit there could have been to this discussion.

| Well, I am having quite an emotional reaction to this.

  as has been quite obvious for some time.  all I did was show you a much
  cheaper system, and you went postal.  I think I'm fully entitled to judge
  you as a moron, Gary H. Merrill.

| As someone who claims to work as a consultant, this is an interesting
| approach to making one's abilities, skills, and attitudes known to a
| wide audience of potential employers.

  well, you're the kind of client I could not afford to take on -- with
  such a moron as you in there who would do nothing but sabotage anything
  that threatens your personal space, and Lord knows that's _anything_, the
  chances of success are miniscule.  I'm sure you have done a great job in
  promoting yourself, as well, but I actually thought it was more than just
  bad netiquette to attack people's livelihood.  you really are quite a
  remarkable asshole.  good luck with your Alpha.  I sympathize with Compaq
  who actually has to support you.

#:Erik
-- 
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