Verily I say unto thee, that spinner spake thusly:
> On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:31:12 -0800, Tim Smith wrote:
>> In article <1fid55-4g4.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>, "[H]omer" <spam@xxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>> It's an American slang word often used by "carnie" (carnival)
>>> workers to describe their "marks" (victims, suckers, i.e.
>>> "customers"). The word is also less predominantly used by other
>>> forms of conmen.
>>
>> Did you really mean to imply that carnies are con men?
I'm merely citing the provenance of the word, which in this case is a
stereotype. I don't claim to subscribe to that stereotype, however I
don't claim to deny it either. I'm sure there are actual documented
cases of carnival workers who were in fact conmen, since it would be
statistically improbable that any such stereotype could exist without
precedent. However, that in itself does not imply that all carnival
operators are conmen. The fact that the word "rube" is indicative of a
victim, suggests that those who would use the term, in reference to a
customer, do indeed have criminal intent, or at least the predisposition
to unethically exploit another's naivety.
> Worse, did he mean to insult carnies by associating them with the
> likes of Microsoft?
Unlike carnies, Microsoft's criminal and unethical behaviour is not a
matter of speculation:
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/index.html
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
03:56:23 up 19 days, 1:32, 5 users, load average: 0.30, 0.20, 0.12
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