On Thu, 27 May 2004, jdow wrote: > From: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > in short, he's a whore. what's the problem here? > > I prefer the term mercenary. For some of us it's a little less emotionally > charged. For example, that you would call him a whore brings to question > whether you would employ his services as a whore. man, i didn't realize things were going to get so touchy, so let me clarify the point of my very, very original post here which, in response to the article about chris sharp jumping from red hat to MS and, as the article describes it, "slagging off open source to anyone that will listen," was (in its ***entirety***): > big deal. the world is full of chris sharps. they're called "whores." as hard as it may be to believe, i wasn't personally attacking mr. sharp. the whole point of my one line response was, in fact, to *downplay* the thought that this whole thing was somehow newsworthy. as i said, the world is full of chris sharps. in other words, let's go, move along, party's over, nothing to see here. certainly, there was some entertainment value in it, but beyond that ... so what? that's the whole point i was trying to make. maybe we need to invent an emoticon for eye-rolling indifference. :-) rday p.s. and it's still "whore", not "mercenary". the difference? i'm glad you asked. if i can use the example of a hit man in place of a mercenary (just watched "grosse pointe blank" the other day -- john cusack is a god), a hit man does a job strictly for the money. there's no need to work up a dislike for the target, you don't need to agree with your employer that the target really has it coming. it's a job, take the money, and do it. if sharp was moving from red hat to MS to act as, say, human resources director, that's cool -- that would be mercenary. and it would be fine. but when he openly tears down open source in public to a journalist, he's clearly trying to give the impression that his heart's really in this -- that he genuinely dislikes open source, that he's embracing this new philosophy. that he *likes* what he's doing, and really means it. and *that's* what makes him a whore. can we go back to arguing about nvidia now?
