From: bill.stewart@pobox.com
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 07:41:20 +0800
To: Declan McCullagh <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Microsoft Metaphors
In-Reply-To: <v03007808b0e3d6ab4a0f@[204.254.22.155]>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980116153614.00838100@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 09:51 AM 1/15/98 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>Skip the misleading metaphors and simply describe what the Web is (duh!), 
>what a browser is, and what Microsoft is bundling with their OS.
>Anybody who by now doesn't know what these three items are is too 
>stupid to grasp metaphor, anyway.
>
>(Unless it's this: "Like, think of a beer company. The company wants to
>include a can opener with the beer. Like, they even want to include an
>automatic opening thing they call a "pop-top." Netscape, a maker of can
>openers, wants the Justice Department to force Microsoft to remove this
>pop-top feature so that more people will have to buy their can opener.")

Actually, to continue twisttied analogies,
MS is a maker of those plastic 6-pack-holder straps, and has 
recently discovered that beer is an important market (!) and 
added canned beer to their list of things they can hold 
(along with MS NewCoke, MS OEM-Cola.RC, MS Canned OJ, MS Canned News,
and MSBeans.)

Netscape, a maker of bottled beer (available singly, in cases, 
or in cardboard sixpack holders), wants the Feds to stop
Microsoft from selling their plastic straps integrated with beer.

All of us old geezers who remember drinking Home Brewed Real Beer
and the younger hackers who were exposed to beer from kegs in college
   (even if they buy canned Rolling Rock at home because it's cheap)  
have been telling people for years that canning beer is a Bad Thing
and that Microsoft wouldn't know beer if it bit them on the wallet.

Bottles aren't a bad way to store beer, if you must sell it packaged,
though Netscape's got a lot of gall complaining that MS makes dealers
of MSBeerCans and MSBeerCanRings sell MSBeer along with them,
seeing as how Netscape got their start giving away free beer
in paper cups using the Computer Science Department Recreation Fund,
and got the idea for Beer from those Europeans anyway, even if they did
add the innovation of selling it in cheap one-drink-sized containers....


[OK, it wasn't very good, but at least it was better than
doing yet another bunch of Java metaphors.
Hmmm - there _are_ several brands of canned coffee,
most of which taste like Microsoft made them.... :-]
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639