Re: Article in Kalamazoo Gazette

[Adam Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>I was just curious if KLUG was going to write back to the editor and give KLUG 
>>side....
>> In the last couple of months KLUG has been getting alot of good press from 
>>the Gazette. I would hate to see the Gazette go from good press of KLUG to
>>just a place where people complain about KLUG in it.  I wish that KLUG as a 
>>group would send a letter back to the editor
>>I think an even better response than a retort letter would be a Viewpoint 
>>article by a KLUG officer.  Certainly the many positive points and aspects 
>>of not only Linux but KLUG could be emphasized.
>Since I wrote the letter that is the target of Mr. Starling's attack, and
>since I am the Publicity Director of this organization, you can rest assured
>that it  will not go unanswered.

I'm rather disappointed that the Gazette would print a clearly "ax to
grind" letter.  It is so obviously such that it matters little to me if
KLUG responds or not.  Someone fuming at KLUG (and this guy ain't the
first) will do less damage to our public image than a public
tit-for-tat.  If we respond, lets be the "bigger man" and take the
sky-high road.  Just my 2 cents,  since it looks like I played a part in
this somewhere.

>At the moment, I am still looking around for some specifics, and have so 
>far found the text of the message he wrote, and one response to it, from
>Adam Williams, who wrote exactly three lines of text:
>------------------------
>There is exact information about Linux on this laptop at the following 
>URL.
>{text of the message}
>http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~he/linuxsolo.htm
>------------------------
>This was posted at  21:03 EST on 14 Mar 2000

You could *paraphrase* the above as:  "Do it yourself or you'll never
learn."  So it could very well be that he means this message,  I have
been flamed several times for responses like the above,  and called
things worse than a "punk".  Unfortunately I don't keep that much of my
mail (I only have 1857 messages in my KLUG box?!) so I don't know if he
ever responded to me,  and the NeoMagic thing was a popular topic for a
time.  I will, however, continue to post responses like the above. 

Years ago I lived across a street from a punk-commune,  I found them to
be quite friendly and never had any problems with them.  They used to
bathe in their front yard too,  which was rather amusing.

>Adam sent this reply to Mr. Starling, and cc'ed the KLUG webmaster, which
>indicates to me that it may not have been sent to this mailing list at all.
>It is not in the KLUG mailing list archive.

I am usually annoyed by people who post questions to the "webmaster",
and post more terse replies than normal.  You email the "webmaster" with
problems or questions about a web site,  organizations have list servers
for asking questions.

>It is quite possible that the reply that stirred up Mr. Starling so was sent 
>via private e-mail. Since e-mail to "webmaster" goes to a VERY small list,
>I ask the people on that list (and you know who you are! :) ) to look at your
>own mail and see if you have this message, especially if you sent it! :)
>Someone who sits on this kind of resentment (or makes choices about operating
>systems based on it), and then writes this kind of commentary 15 months after
>the event has clearly not availed himself of several opportunities to resolve
>any misundertanding. I'm sure the comment he refers to is taken out of context,
>and I will not permit this to go unanswered. The exact form of my reply will 
>be a topic of discussion with people at the Gazette, as soon as I can 
>formulate it.

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