Re: [OT Why GB English is different] Re: Mozilla firefox en-gb
On Thu, 27 May 2004 18:34, William Ballard wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 04:27:31PM +1000, Tim Connors wrote:
> > William Ballard <40521.nospam@comcast.net> said on Wed, 26 May 2004
22:34:19 -0700:
> > > Prolly something to do with the commies :-) I didn't even know "In God
> > > We Trust" was added to the money in the 50s, just thought it was always
> > > like that.
> >
> > No doubt the commies.
> >
> > Incidentally, do American's associate more than just communism to
> > their concept of Commies? America seems to be ver disproportionately
> > against the theory of communism, which in my opinion isn't anywhere
> > near as bad as it is made out to be - only that the implementations of
> > it have so far been rife with corruption - much the same as the only
> > implementations of democracy/capitalism so far have also been rife
> > with corruption.
>
> Ah, let's don't start that discussion. Already wasted too much
> bandwidth with this crap :-)
>
> Can't resist one: I was in France at a Compaq facility, and wanted to
> work on a Saturday to prepare for a class I was to teach. This was
> during the height of the dot-com boom, so everybody wanted to let me but
> 5 different people each had to ask their boss if it was okay, and
> finally the last guy called some government official. Then they gave me
> permission to work on Saturday.
>
> That's commie!
Errrm, actually, no, that's bureaucracy - a universal failing. To
attribute every evil to communism is a typically American phobia. <g>
If you want some classic examples of that sort of bureaucracy (and worse) in
a bastion of the 'free world', read 'Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM'. That
bit about the five different people having to ask their boss is
quintessential IBM (as described in the book). And it was all achieved by
IBM themselves, unaided by any Government agency.
I know that recently IBM has been putting some significant cash into Linux
development - for their sake (and Linux's) I just hope their internal
procedures have got a lot more efficient since the days when that book was
written.
cr
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