Craig writes:

> > You know John the Baptist is generally portrayed as being a little wacko,
>  > don't you? (I mean literally. He wasn't said to be the sanest guy on the
>  > block).
>
>  If we dig a little deeper, there may be something of worth to find here.
>  John's sanity depended largely on who you asked. John was quite popular
with
>  the general masses. They were eager to hear what he had to say and found
him
>  compelling. John's sanity was never in question by this group.
>
>  On the other hand, he was quite unpopular with people who held positions of
>  common authority. This was mostly because he was honest in publicly
>  proclaiming the hypocrisy of some of these leaders and forcefully demanding
>  that they "walk the talk." Because he had the audacity to publicly
criticize
>  these leaders, eventually to his own detriment, it would not be unthinkable
>  that those leaders assumed that he must be working with less than a full
>  deck.
>
>  Of course, John was motivated by working for a higher cause, and wasn't
>  particularly concerned with what the leaders thought of him.

Forget for a moment that the subject of this conversation is a religious
figure, the problem with prophets (especially those who are both adamant and
charismatic) is that it's very difficult to tease apart those who are truly
holy from those who are merely wholly around the bend.

Everything that Craig writes above could be just as easily applied to David
Koresh -- or (to a lesser degree) Jim Jones*. Evangelists of any stripe are a
notoriously difficult group to fathom. Computer evangelists are no different.

A little rational skepticism goes a long ways -- and if people can't provide
good, clearly enunciated reasons for their support of their platform, reasons
that make good business sense to the people who pay the bills, then all the
evangelism in the world won't make any difference at all in the end.



>  Most prophets met a rather untimely end at the hands of the people who were
>  on the receiving end of their message. I guess it just shows that if you're
>  in the prophet business, you'd better have some pretty good life insurance!
>  :-)

That need of life insurance certainly proved true for Koresh and Jones. But I
would tend to believe that their demise had a great deal to do with the
flim-flammery they were trying to sell. You can't maintain a sham forever.

I really do believe that the truth will set you free eventually (as promised
in John 8:32). While I clearly don't agree with everything DSilva writes,
what he wrote a few days ago, I couldn't agree more with what he wrote then:

     "I think that we want computers that understand the English Language and
can do what we want them to do without any mysteries or high learning curves
or silly syntax. Just our everyday words should be sufficient for the
computer to understand and carry on with the task"

This sentence would get "D" elevated to sainthood among the customers we deal
with everyday. I just taught a 3-day class last week, in this instance to a
room full of Summit credit union users (although that was only by chance, not
design). The  people we deal with never go to HPWorlds nor to local user
group meetings. Indeed, once again, none of them had ever heard of Interex.
But everyone of them listed the reasons they have come to hold the HP3000 in
such high regard: simple English commands, extraordinary reliability, simple
database structure, and a system that's very easy to maintain. No one told
them to say these things. They simply came to these conclusions themselves.

Wirt Atmar


* In the end, Jim Jones had to keep his people within the compound in Guyana
with a shoot-to-kill order for the guards.