definition for clarification

[Thomas Stivers]

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Because of all the confusion of late regarding Kevin's post I thought it
might be prudent to refresh all our memories about the meaning of one
particular acronym.

- From Jargon File (4.3.0, 30 APR 2001) [jargon]:

  FUD /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own
company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill
in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl]
products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear
rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was
traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people
who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors'
equipment or software. See {IBM}. After 1990 the term FUD was associated
increasingly frequently with {Microsoft}, and has become generalized to refer
to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.

The messages from Kevin may not exactly fit this definition, but the way they have confused or at least frustrated many new linux users seems to make it fairly applicable. 

I apologise for another off topic message, but c'mon people stop
beating a dead horse and just implement Chuck's procmail solution. 

- -- 
Unix is a user friendly operating system. It just picks its friends more
carefully than others.
Thomas Stivers	e-mail: stivers_t at tomass.dyndns.org	gpg: 45CBBABD
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