This has got to drive RMS nuts

[Benjamin Scott]

tongue.insert (head->cheek);

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, at 11:57pm, bmcculley at rcn.com wrote:
> I would not be so quick to dismiss the possibility of conscious acronym
> overloading on the part of a company who supposedly considered the
> application of the HAL naming algorithm (IBM+1) in naming Windows NT
> (VMS+1, kudos to o/s software mage Dave Cutler).

  Given that the whole VMS->WNT thing is a total retroactive fabrication, I
think you're actually arguing my case.  :-)

  I once read an interview with Dave Cutler in which he explicitly said the
whole VMS->WNT thing was a purely after-the-fact invention by somebody with
too much time on their hands.  Alas, I do not remember the specific
magazine, or I'd give you a citation.  It might have been Byte.  I do
challenge you to find anything that's not a bad Usenet joke that says
otherwise, though.
  
>  The hypothetical impact on the psyche of the carbon-based lifeform RMS
> from the silicon-based reference antithetical to his beliefs would
> probably provide great amusement amongst the minions of Redmond...

  You do realize that Microsoft is not, in fact, staffed by physical
incarnations of pure evil, I hope.

  You also error in considering anything MSFT does as a carefully
orchestrated movement.  MSFT is a multi-national corporation and a huge
bureaucracy.  Like all such organizations, MSFT has more departments then NH
has towns.  In any such organization, cohesive, unilateral action is a
practical impossibility.  Put more colloquially: Not only does the right
hand not know what the left hand is doing, the right hand isn't even aware
that there's another arm attached to the body.

  So somewhere in the bowls of Microsoft, the sub-sub-sub group of the
Windows team in the OS unit of the enterprise products division was tasked
with implementing some DRM stuff.  It needed an acronym, because
*everything* needs an acronym.  The acronym *had* to end in "S" for
"Services", because everything in Windows is called a service.  Given that
TLAs are the overwhelming choice for any acronym, and given that Microsoft's 
product naming strategy for the past 20 years has been "Microsoft 
$GENERIC_PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION", RMS is an easy answer.

  Or it's a big conspiracy between Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, George W Bush,
and the Illuminati to punish Richard Stallman by using his initials.

  Occam's razor points out the more likely scenario.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
| The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do  |
| not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. |
| All information is provided without warranty of any kind.              |