*BSD News Article 42780


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From: vttoth@vttoth.com (Viktor T. Toth)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux thoroughly insulted by Infoworld!
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 03:25:47
Organization: Viktor T. Toth
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <vttoth.529.0ACD9B80@vttoth.com>
References: <950116203411@lambada> <3fv5jm$ie6@plato.simons-rock.edu> <Pine.SOL.3.91.950216133112.16710E-100000@ion1>
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In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.950216133112.16710E-100000@ion1> "Benjamin J. Lumen" <blumen@ion1> writes:

>        Uhh, I don't think you would have to worry about the Trabant
>lawn mower motor. It probably wouldn't go very fast.

Okay, so I open myself to rightful flaming regarding off-topic stuff, but what 
the hell?

I remember reading many years ago an April 1 (I think) issue of a West German 
car magazine, in which it reviewed the Trabant just as if it was a 'real' car 
like a Porsche or something. In the data sheet, under acceleration, 0-100km 
was marked as 'no data', with a footnote that explained that it was impossible 
to go faster than 80 kph with the thing :)

The sight of abandoned Trabants and Wartburgs on Hungary's western highways 
during the 1989 exodus of East Germans was more than a bit depressing. A few 
short weeks earlier those same Trabants, now abandoned, represented the life 
savings for many people. Good riddance, you say, but I could not help but 
think of all the human labor that went into those miserable things, which were 
now lying on the side of the road, already picked clean by thiefs of anything 
of value that was removable, like wheels and such.

This was one of the biggest crimes of Communism: how it wasted human labor and
ingenuity on mass-producing nearly useless garbage.

And if Trumpet allowed me to set followups, this is when I would set followups 
to /dev/null. Or alt.advocacy.trabant, perhaps? :)

--
Viktor