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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.uoknor.edu!news.nodak.edu!netnews1.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!somsky From: somsky@dirac.phys.washington.edu (William R. Somsky) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: 4 May 1996 01:41:35 GMT Organization: University of Washington Lines: 37 Message-ID: <4meckf$fdc@nntp5.u.washington.edu> References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <4mb38b$680@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <4mckp4$34m@rigel.tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de> <4md20d$c2@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: dirac.phys.washington.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:22965 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:919 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3651 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3489 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:18659 comp.os.linux.advocacy:47951 In article <4md20d$c2@solaria.cc.gatech.edu>, Byron A Jeff <byron@cc.gatech.edu> wrote: > > > If somebody sends you a Word 6 attachment, bounce it right back where > > it came from and ask them to save it as ASCII or RTF for you instead. > > [They reply: ???] > With the response "Well everyone else I know can read my Word 6 attachments > as is? Why can't you? I was thinking about using FreeBSD/Linux, but if > it can't even read a simple Word file, why should I?" Then you send them a file in TeX. And tell them: "Well everyone else I know can read my TeX files as is. Why can't you? I was thinking about using Windows, but if it can't even read a simple TeX file, why should I?" (Yes, I know that you can get TeX for DOS/Windows, but that's beside the point. In general, the people who use Word won't know anything about TeX and wouldn't use it if you gave it to them.) This is all a form of arrogance. Not Unix arrogance. Nor Windows arrogance. But general human-being arrogance that we're _all_ guilty of from time to time: "You must accept anything I care to give you, but you must only give me what I want to accept." It's just the way people are. > Pop Quiz: I get a Word 6 attachment. I don't have Word 6 (or Windows for > that matter) on my machine. And the sender has gone out for the weekend. > What do I do? WHAT DO I DO??!! ;-) Well, what about the case where you get a letter in German. You don't read German. And the sender has gone out for the weekend. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO??!! ;-) Is this really any different? ________________________________________________________________________ William R. Somsky somsky@phys.washington.edu Department of Physics, Box 351560 B432 Physics-Astro Bldg Univ. of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-1560 206/616-2954