Not Worth the Cost of Integrity
truth...@yahoo.com
professional cycling. “I look at what those guys did, and I don’t
imagine they feel good or proud about it. But they took things away
from guys like myself, and Darren Baker. I suppose we weren’t
‘professional’ enough. We weren’t into winning at all costs. And the
cost to me was my integrity, I wasn’t going to give that up.”-Scott
Mercier
http://velonews.competitor.com/2011/05/news/scott-mercier-former-postal-rider-says-hamiltons-charges-ring-true_174876
Mike Jacoubowsky
<truth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d3027a03-1f63-4b8f...@j23g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
Life isn't fair. No matter what field you're in, there will be people
cheating to get ahead. There are businesses around me that save boatloads of
$$$ by paying their employees under the table. My lifestyle would be
enhanced were I to do the same, but my ethics won't allow me to cheat like
that. Oh, but it's only the IRS, you'd never get caught, everybody does it.
Yeah right. I know exactly where Mercier is coming from.
But I like who I am, and I wouldn't want to become someone else, even if it
meant I'd be more "successful" by traditional definitions.
We all make choices that reflect upon our values & goals. The tough part,
for many, is living with the ethical standards they're ocmfortable with,
without looking at things in life with a scorecard. I get frustrated at
times, being sometimes less competitive on product because I have
significantly-higher expenses than someone else, but it hasn't driven me to
want to cheat, and when I examine changes to my business to become more
competitive, I always have to look at whether those changes might require
moving long-time ethical boundaries. At some point, the decision could come
that it's just no longer practical to remain in business, just as others
decided they can't remain in cycling at a competitive level. Many would
suggest that the better choice of action, after having invested all these
years in the business (or cycling), would be to do what you have to to level
the playing field. Cheat. But the more-important investment over all those
years is in your ethics.
--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA
truth...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> ========<truthita...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:d3027a03-1f63-4b8f...@j23g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> “I don’t hold any grudges,” Mercier said about his time in
> professional cycling. “I look at what those guys did, and I don’t
> imagine they feel good or proud about it. But they took things away
> from guys like myself, and Darren Baker. I suppose we weren’t
> ‘professional’ enough. We weren’t into winning at all costs. And the
> cost to me was my integrity, I wasn’t going to give that up.”-Scott
Thanks for sharing, MIke. How are the Trek sales going?
Mike Jacoubowsky
news:f857e801-f18e-404c...@k17g2000vbn.googlegroups.com...
Very well, thank you. If you had concerns that anything current regarding
Lance would affect them, I think it's a good three years too late for that
to be an issue. Actually more likely 6 or 7. The "Lance effect" on sales was
strongest during his first three TdF runs. After that it was generally
accepted within the bike biz that Lance had as much effect boosting
competitor's sales as Trek's. Or, to put it another way, Lance was very good
for the cycling biz in a generic sense.
--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
dave a
Integrity is like virginity, once you lose it you can never get it back.
- dave a
Davey Crockett
[SNIP] Lotsa Blah, Blah
Mike, without wanting to belabour the point, coud you chop a few non
essential lines out of your replies to posts?
Some denizens of RBR aree subject to weekly and/or monthly restrictions
as regards bandwidth, and every little Helps
Similarly, some news wires, publishers, or other disssipators of what
passes for news, bitch if one quotes full articles instead of the few
lines permitted as "fair comment" etc. with a hyperlink to the full item.
.
This was another poster, but it does need watching as some - like AP -
threaten court action and Lance can't spare his liar (OOPS) (Lawyer)
right now to defend us.
Rest assured that Davey doesn't want to Pee on Anyones Parade, but perhaps
we could just neaten it up a Tad?
Regards, Davey
--
Davey Crockett
Blast from The Past...
http://azurservers.com/rbr/msr.jpg
Anton Berlin
> Integrity is like virginity, once you lose it you can never get it back.
> - dave a
Dave - I would like to talk to you about Jesus.
William R. Mattil
>
> Integrity is like virginity, once you lose it you can never get it back.
>
Virginity is just a bubble on the sea of life. One prick and it's gone
forever.
Bill
--
William R. Mattil
Frederick the Great
dave a <blkcatRE...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Integrity is like virginity, once you lose it you can never get it back.
Therefore you never transgressed upon another; or you
take whatever you can get whenever you can get it by
any means necessary.
--
Old Fritz
Mike Jacoubowsky
news:87k4djo...@azurservers.com...
> "Mike Jacoubowsky" a écrit profondement:
>
>
> [SNIP] Lotsa Blah, Blah
>
> Mike, without wanting to belabour the point, coud you chop a few non
> essential lines out of your replies to posts?
>
> Some denizens of RBR aree subject to weekly and/or monthly
> restrictions
> as regards bandwidth, and every little Helps
>
> Rest assured that Davey doesn't want to Pee on Anyones Parade, but
> perhaps
> we could just neaten it up a Tad?
>
> Regards, Davey
> --
> Davey Crockett
> Blast from The Past...
> http://azurservers.com/rbr/msr.jpg
Davey: Point taken, I'll try to do better. But...
> Mike, without wanting to belabour the point, coud you chop a few non
> essential lines out of your replies to posts?
You *are* referring to rbr, correct? There's so little obvious
"essential" content that I've always assumed the lengthy drivel contains
the real message, written in code.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
Davey Crockett
| Davey: Point taken, I'll try to do better. But...
There was a quite recent (May 6) application by BELL, a major
telephone//internet service provider, To the CRTC (Canadian
Radio-television Telecommunications Commission) which was APPROVED
whereby a nefarious scheme, UBB (User Based Billing) is to be enforced
upon Johnny Kanuk.
Boiling it down, a user will be allotted 60Gb of bandwidth per month if
he is a High Speed user. (5 megabits/second - Davey laughs his ass off
at them having the temerity to call 5 megabits.sec "High Speed since in
France he has a 30 megabit/sec connection with no limit and fibre optic
100 megabits up and down on its way at no extra cost)
But if the user exceeds the 60 Gb, allotted he will be charged $CAD 1.12
per GB for the excess capped at $CAD 22.50 per month.
The kicker howeveer, is that if a user exceeds 300GB/Month, an
additional $CAD 0.75 will be charged making the excess worth $CAD 1.87
per GB which with added taxes in Ontario for example will be $CAD 1,.93
per GB plus the original $CAD 22.50 so if for example a user consumed
400GB in any particular month he would have to fork over $CAD 22.50 plus
187.00 plus let's estimate his bare bones subscription to the ISP at
$CAD 45 == $CAD 254.50 * (tax 13.5%) 0.135 for a hefty $CAD #300.00
roughly rounded out.
The forgoing also assumes the user isn't paying extra for modem rental,
router rental, dry loop surcharge, website hosting, mail reflector or
POP service, access to usenet binary groups or Static IP fee,
Now whilst Davey personally uses his French "Free.FR" ISP for most of
his internet endeavours, he also has two accounts in Canada and one in
the United State and 300GB is chicken feed to Davey. He's used that much
many times in a couple of days or less..
Ergo we must economize on our usage as much as possible,
More pertinently, the scheme is a blatant money grab by Bell since once
the infrastructure is in place, their incremental GB cost is negligible
and once having successfully floated their scheme in the relatively
lightly Internet populated Canadian sphere of operations, they will head
South to pick up some real gravy.
The forgoing is, apart from ettiquette considerations, why I brought the
economy matter up.
It goes much deeper actually and I have, when time and opportunity
permitted, tried to provoke interested North American groups into some
form of action to combat the "Interrnet Two" scenario where users will
pay on the UBB system for ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.
The writing has been on the wall for Five years or more now, but the
punters are still whistling in the dark or saying "They'll never get
away with it" having dismissed Davey and a couple of other Cassandras as
Conspiracy Theorist Cranks.
But the rest of it's another story. Canadians now face these repressive
charges as a "Fait Accompli"
An that's just the Opening Volley in a Total War against the User
Community.
And don't look to the Governments for assistance. Barry Soetoro M'Bongo
(US - Nobody seems to know what his real name is), Stephen Harper
(CAN), David Cameron (UK), Julia Gillard (OZ) and another 100 - 200
countries would close the average Joe's internet connection tomorrow if
they dared.
Its part of a larger plan of course, but I'll not burden you guys with
anything more than this, But believe me, this isn't Johnny Reb
Whistling Dixie and Letting fly a few rounds in the general direction of
Fort Sumter .
--
Davey Crockett
Flying the Flag of the English
The Flag of Hengest and Horsa
http://usera.imagecave.com/daveycrockett/englishdragon.jpg
Simply Fred
> Some denizens of RBR aree subject to weekly and/or monthly restrictions
> as regards bandwidth, and every little Helps
Pity the usenet protocol can't use yenc compression for text posts as
well as binary ones as there would be much higher compression on text.
Simply Fred
> Integrity is like virginity, once you lose it you can never get it back.
rbr has high integrity.
Davey Crockett
>
| Virginity is just a bubble on the sea of life. One prick and it's gone
| forever.
No it's not
Read the Talmud
Kethuboth 11b
Anton Berlin
That's an awful porn habit you got there.
Trey
wrote:
> ========<truthita...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:d3027a03-1f63-4b8f...@j23g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> “I don’t hold any grudges,” Mercier said about his time in
> professional cycling. “I look at what those guys did, and I don’t
> imagine they feel good or proud about it. But they took things away
> from guys like myself, and Darren Baker. I suppose we weren’t
> ‘professional’ enough. We weren’t into winning at all costs. And the
> cost to me was my integrity, I wasn’t going to give that up.”-Scott
You seem to have some ethical flexibility. You stand on high moral
ground by not cheating the IRS but are perfectly fine selling a bike
brand whose sole reputation was built on a the use of public monies to
finance a doping program to end all doping programs. Do you see your
hypocrisy? Wake up bro.
Trey
wrote:
>
> - Show quoted text -
Denial is a river in Egypt bro.
Mike Jacoubowsky
"Trey" <treyp...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ac133996-19f3-4217...@l14g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
On May 21, 12:37 pm, "Mike Jacoubowsky" <Mi...@ChainReaction.com>
You seem to have some ethical flexibility. You stand on high moral
ground by not cheating the IRS but are perfectly fine selling a bike
brand whose sole reputation was built on a the use of public monies to
finance a doping program to end all doping programs. Do you see your
hypocrisy? Wake up bro.
========
Hey "bro", I was selling carbon Trek bikes in greater numbers pre-Lance
than during his reign. We were often derisively referred to as "that
road bike shop" and for about 5 years running, from 1992-1997 or so,
sold more carbon Trek bikes out of just two stores than any other dealer
in the country. What Lance did was encourage *everybody* to sell road
bikes, including shops that really didn't have a clue about high-end
product, with a resultant dilution of market for those who had done very
well in the past.
I will also argue that Trek did not do a very good job of tying Lance
into marketing. Sure, you got big posters of Lance, lots of ads with
Lance in Bicycling Magazine or whatever, lots of pictures of Trek bikes
in Sports Illustrated. But they never personalized Lance. They never
used Lance to tell stories that "normal" people could relate to. They
never, for example, used Lance's kids in any ads for Trek kids bikes.
They never used Lance to sell hybrid bikes, even though he's been known
to play around with them.
None of this is news; I've spoken about it before, long before any of
this current stuff was hitting the fan.
But I will give Lance credit for one thing. If not for Lance and Trek's
interest in promoting their relationship with him, I likely would have
never traveled to France, my first time out of the country (don't think
stepping a toe over the border in Mexico counts), in 2000. 43 years old
and I'd never traveled, and Trek offered me the opportunity to ride the
E'Tap du Tour and see a few stages of the race. I became hooked, and
have been to see the TdF every year but one ever since. I love France, I
love travel in general, and I really love going someplace where I can
ride my bike and people don't think I'm in their way. So yes, I owe
Lance for that one.
Mike Jacoubowsky
>Denial is a river in Egypt bro.
Been there, done that.
https://picasaweb.google.com/ChainReactionBicycles/Egypt#5547414263107202706
Simply Fred
> to finance a doping program to end all doping programs.
I'd say Gewiss and Festina's programs were just as well financed.
Plano Dude
Probably not.
Testing was relatively unsophisticated. No EPO test, testosterone to
epitestosterone ratio was higher, no test available for exogenous T.
Research to avoid positives generally consisted of giving lesser
riders the product and use them as test pilots to see if they cleared
testing. Soigneurs and mother in laws were driving across the
continent trafficking in doping products, including veterinary grade
pharma. R&D was much lower, resulting in handfuls of riders dying in
their sleep.
The only thing that could have made Gewiss and Festina's doping
budgets comparable would have been a greater amount of doping products
used.