Stewart Honsberger wrote in a message to Jack Stein:

 SH>>    IBM is quietly exceeding its own OS/2 sales expectations.

 JS> Not by much I hope, or they will be forced to take even more overt 
 JS> actions to kill it, and insure earthlings remain with MS crap stuck 
 JS> firmly up you know where....

 SH> Why are you being so harsh on them? What have they ever done
 SH> to you? 

They deprived me of getting a trip guide with a CD in it with software that
runs under OS/2, rather than WIN95.  They made sure when one goes to Kmart,
Babbages, or work, that one will see nothing but WIN95 crap.  

 SH> After their own anti-trust trial, they pulled back. 

You mean that 1956 suit?  

 SH> When they found out that people were more interested in MSs
 SH> "pretty" interface (without much structure behind it), and
 SH> the fact that they could make money hand over fist with only
 SH> half the work - they made the obvious choice. Why try to
 SH> change market perception, when you can ride the wave?

That does not explain why IBM pulled the plug on OS/2 just days before the
release of WIN95. Just when OS/2 was gaining tremendous momentum in the market 
place.  Sales where just hitting 1 million copies per month, when IBM switched 
tactics from non-support, to overtly telling folks OS/2 was NOT for them, that 
they should NOT use OS/2. 

 SH>>    While IBM always has maintained that it continues to
 SH>> actively support    its OS/2 operating system, 

 JS> IBM is a pack of liars!

 SH> You're an uninformed pest.

I don't think so.  I don't need "informed", I watched it happen.  

 SH> FixPack 11 for OS/2 Warp 4 - Dated July 1, 1999
 SH> Fixpack 41(?) for OS/2 Warp 3 released about the same time.
 SH> Latest beta Netscape Communicator for OS/2 Warp - Dated
 SH> August 9, 1999 

You consider this support?  Give me a break.  I'm not talking about providing
some updates to OS/2, I'm talking about support in the market place.  You
know, things like advertising, making sure retail stores have copies of OS/2
to sell, cooperating with developers, things like that.

 JS> IBM NEVER supported OS/2, not for one day.

 SH> I hope you're taken to court for libel.

IBM would not stand a chance, unless they used theirmoney, power and influence 
to stack the deck.

 JS> IBM's next move, if I read them correctly will be to attempt to 
 JS> kill LINUX.

 SH> You know even less about Linux than you do about OS/2. 

And you know that because..?

 SH> Linux can NOT be "killed" by any corporation. Not even IBM and
 SH> Microsoft combined. You can't kill a product that's source
 SH> code is available on millions of sites worldwide.

Linux has been freely available for many years now.  It's only recently begun
moving slowly forward with the likes of Slackware and RedHat providing the
package.  RedHat appears to be the one most likely to have any effect on the
market in general, and the cartel seems to be moving in on them. You can
choose to think thats to insure the can "ride the wave", I'm not so sure thats 
their motivation.

 SH> Take your FUD elsewhere. I don't want the likes of you in an
 SH> echo for support of one of my chosen OSs.

What you like and what you get are not always the same thing. You should know
that by now...

                                              Jack 
--- timEd/2-B11