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Dealing with Corporate FUD About Linux?
Lumpy asks: "After this morning's IT conference call, Linux was once again attacked here in the company by the upper management as 'a threat' to our company security. With articles, like the recent one from Information Week, fueling the Upper management with outdated information and half truths, how does an IT professional defend his position and educate upper managers to take those articles with a tiny grain of salt and trust their experts? Should we as professionals expect to be attacked for our decisions, even though Linux has prooven itself (time and time again), for over 5 years in our company? How do you deal with all of the baseless claims, that your superiors may read in the mainstream media?"
Title from TFA: "A report warns of security vulnerabilities, raising the question of whether the open-source model can provide bullet-proof software"
What you might say: We get reports of security vulnerabilities on Microsoft products on a weekly basis, and there is unfortunately no such thing as bullet-proof software. Just recently Microsoft opted not to release an automatic update related to a virus before the virus went active, which would indicate that, contrary to what comes out of the PR department, Microsoft's commitment to security is not significant.
(I know the last sentence can be somewhat deceptive and there's more to the story, but if they're going to flap their lips when they're clueless, I doubt they'll catch it).
Wrap up with: No, Linux isn't perfect. There is a risk of vulnerability in every product. Microsoft, Apple, Unix, Linux, all of them carry some risk. It's our job to assess the risks and find the safest, most secure software that meets the company's productivity needs. It's what we do every day.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
--Mike--
That's pretty much what I tried. The down side is when the boss asks, "OK, so if it's free, how do the people who build the distro make money?"
This isn't quite as pointy-haired as it might sound. With some of the monkeyshines that went on during the dot-com craze, with various companies bragging about their respective cash burn rates, many managers want to have an idea that the company who is providing the software will be around in X number of years.
Of course, another approach is to point out that, "Well, you know, MS-DOS worked just fine, and nobody had complained about the 80-by-25 character cell screen... so how come we aren't still using it? Because [at this point you will want to sigh - DON'T!] Windows 3.1 did things well that MS-DOS was only marginally capable of doing."
Of course, depending on the manager, they might look at you funny when you mention "MS-DOS", but bear up...
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Or, to save time:
"Google uses Linux, and their stock price is $3xx."
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Ask them if they've ever read a media story about something they knew a lot about. Ask them how much of it the media got right. Ask them why they think it would be any different with respect to IT.
-- Alastair
There are many reasons, but the one I've encountered most often is fear.
Upper management, usually, did not get there by taking big risks. They don't want to lead the herd.
They will take any excuse to avoid Linux until enough other companies and people they know are openly using it AND saving money.
Until then, no matter what you say, they will focus on whatever "facts" and opinions "justify" their fear.
The so-called analysts are NOT. Plus, there's the SELinux distribution promoted by the NSA, and it's as secure as Fort Knox. (well that's what you can say. And certainly your boss can't contradict the NSA, can he? ;-) )
It is pretty pointy-haired after all. You don't say "Home Depot" may go out of business in 5 years, and then use it as a reason that you will no longer be able to buy 2x4s.
It's open, anything can be compiled for the version you use, even if there are no versions. Lack of a upgrade treadmill means your apps are safe, even if you have to use 2.6.x linux for the next 20 years. Computers always used we that static, at least until stupid people started using them.
Open source. If push comes to shove, hire a person or two to fix what needs to be fixed, even if Torvalds is gored to death by angry reindeer. Or more likely, as yours wouldn't be the only company that needs this, the costs can be spread out among lots of different companies, probably in the form of a vendor appearing to take over.
It's commodity parts people. Ford might go out of business, but we're always going to be able to buy parts to fix the engine and transmission. Linux is like that too. Microsoft is the one to be worried about, not because they will somehow die next year (I pray every night though), but because if they somehow did, we'd *ALL* be shit out of luck.
That anyone can spin things in such a way contrary to reality is incredible.
Nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM.
:)
Simple as that IBM is pushing it. Linux is so not fringe anymore that anyone with a brain knows that it is a viable alternative for servers.
Companies that sell Linux distributions and offer support.
RedHat
Novell
Companies that sell servers with Linux installed.
IBM
Dell
SGI
Sun
Companies that use Linux
IBM
Google
Oracle
The idea that Linux is some kind of hippie hacker commune is so 90s...
There might be good reasons for your company not to use Linux but security really isn't one of them. If it is you should probably be running OpenVMS or OS/400. I dare someone to hack that
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
You may have to tailor your response to your specific business - and phrase it in terms that they understand.
Most people are willing to spend a little more money for something that they feel comfortable with. I can only think of three ways to budge them off that position:
- to convince them that it really isn't a "little more money",
- to shake their confidence in the old, or
- to get them to feel comfortable with something new.
As a straw-man example, I do not go to the cheapest gasoline station in my town - I spend a few pennies per gallon at a different station. I know the faces of the staff, they know me, and I've never had a problem with them. It is more convenient for me to stop there, than it is to stop at the cheaper stations. I could move, however, if:As I was composing my example, I was luke-warm at best to the idea of trying something new - I said that "I might shift my business". Simply having Linux in-house and humming along safely falls into that luke-warm category, but it is still easy for upper management to decide that they want to head back to their comfort zone. Thus, it takes one of the other two items (cost or loss of faith in the old) to really get Linux deployed.
I recommend focusing on bottom-line cost. If you can show them just how much money they (can) save by having Linux perform certain tasks (say, 3000 machines x $100 per year in support contracts), then you have something tangible that they can focus on ... money that would otherwise be available to go into their own pockets.
I recommend against focusing on past security problems, as that is assuming that tomorrow's problem will be like yesterday's. Trend analysis is taking previous performance and projecting it into the future - effectively an educated guess about the future. However, much one says about the which OS has a better security record to date, the fact remains that both operating systems are under constant assault, and the next "I had to shut down my business because of the Q13 worm"-type problem could very well be for either OS. The worst-case price of clean-up will be the same, no matter where the problem occurs.
Google is "free" to use as a search engine, but any company that can "report revenue of $1.919 billion" for a single quarter can probably afford to pay the staff. I wouldn't advise asking your CEO when he last made almost two billion in a four month timespan, though.
Linux is "free" (as in price) if you get no assurance and minimal support. If, on the other hand, you want EAL4-rated Linux (certified for commercially-sensitive and confidential information for Government use in Europe and the US) with 24-hour support, fine-tuning of hardware and software, etc, then you pay a bit more. Same software, different parameters.
I'd argue that there are examples even the dimmest PHB can understand - some have been around long enough to just be accepted, others are so stinking rich that the arguments self-evidently don't hold.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Let's face it, your managers gave you a perfectly correct answer when they said: ""We've got Windows, it's easier to stick with that."
.mil adoption of Linux, for example.
It *is* always going to be easier to stick with what you have already.
It sounds to me as if the management are quite happy with what they've got, it works well enough and they have some annoying techie lobbying to change half their infrastructure software. Naturally they are going to be floundering around to find ways to get them out of their hair.
So, what are your reasons for wanting the company to switch to Linux, really? Are you a groupie, or are there solid reasons that will translate to the company's bottom line that you can put to them.
The security issue can be defused fairly easily - present some research into
But the security issue is probably just a smokescreen. You need some damn good reasons that you can set out cooly and rationally, and hopefully with a spreadsheet attached that will convince them of the advantages. "But it's free" probably won't cut it. Factor in third-party support costs, or in-house support for them so that it is NOT free. That'll make them take you more seriously.
Every business exists for one, and only one, purpose. To make money for the owner. (not as cynical as it sounds. Even in non profits, if they run out of cash, they go away.) In all my years of gainful employment, everytime I argued for something because it would be 'better quality' pretty much fell on deaf ears. If I framed the argument that 'we'll make more money' or 'we'll spend less money' ears perked up. Frame the quality argument in 'reduced support costs, reduced maintenance costs, greater server workload efficiency resulting in $xxxxx savings in the first year alone' and I immediately got a reply. I still may not have gotten what i wanted, but at least i was able to present my case. In your case you can add the point that the only company that makes money selling Microsoft is Microsoft. In linux, IBM, RedHat, Novell, and plenty of other companies make money selling Linux. Frame your argument by talking about what your manager is being evaluated on (how much money he/she is making/saving the company) and you will have a much better chance.
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
No wonder it's a losing battle...
Come on. Which is more likely to be in business in five years, Home Depot, or Joe's Contractor Shack?
It's all about probabilities. Microsoft has a FAR higher probability of being around in five years than, say, Red Hat, which is the strongest player. How about Debian? Who knows? Manager Man sure the hell doesn't, and frankly neither does the OSS community.
That's why the whole "but the source will never die!!" arguments come up in the first place. The paid companies are so small that it makes people nervous.
Too bad IBM doesn't come out with their IBM-branded distribution that they promise to support forever. That would solve a lot of these problems. I'm not sure what kind of promises they make now on behalf of their Linux partners.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
An interesting and useful thing a headhunter told me recently about looking for jobs - don't tell them what you know and what you're good at, tell them how much money you have saved, and how much income you have generated, in your current/previous jobs.
If you can come up with figures, saying that (eg) "We spend $x per annum on Anti-Virus software for Wintel; we could reduce that to $y by moving to Linux", or "We lose x hours per annum with unscheduled downtime on Wintel servers, costing $XX; we could reduce that to y hours with Linux servers, costing only $YY", you are more likely to get the attention of the beancounters.
A Ferrari is faster than a Volkswagen, but it costs more. It's down to the beancounters to sign-off the outlay. If you can show that you need a Ferrari's speed, and the benefits justify the cost, then they'll get the Ferrari. If you can show that the Volkswagen is quick enough, and is cheaper to buy/run, then they'll get the Volkswagen. Note that I've not gone into any details about the technical differences between the two manufacturers, but I've sold them on whichever option best suits the need.
In some cases, the Ferrari is the best buy; in others, the VW is the best buy.
If I'm in the high-end chauffeur business, then a Ferrari could win on the prestige alone; If I'm in the taxi business, the VW will win on TCO.
I know - I'm using the traditional car analogy, and I am failing to specify which option is Wintel and which is Linux; sorry for going against the mould, but it doesn't work that way in the CEO/CTO/CIO mindset. There is no "best"... we all know that a Ferrari is "bettter" than a VW, but is it better in this situation? If the objective is security, *nix is likely to beat Wintel; If the objective is massive user-acceptance and low training costs, Wintel could beat *nix.
Whether the criteria are right or wrong is a different issue; you could say that it doesn't matter that the users don't need retraining to use the *nix solution, because the Wintel solution is riddled with flaws; again, you can put that into CEO language by costing the (Wintel flaws) vs the (*nix (flaws + training)) to show that training on *nix, whilst an extra expense, is overall lower than the Wintel solution.
If you cannot show that, then you are not actually benefitting the company.
As a simple example, if the proposal is a stand-alone workstation with no external I/O devices, does it really matter (for security) if it runs Windows 95? The security argument doesn't hold up as strong in this case, as compared to a publically-accessible web server.
Think about what it costs, and what it delivers. Don't bother telling non-technical people about technical details - they don't understand, and it's not their place to understand (if they did understand, we'd be out of a job!). We have to translate the technical details into costs.
So if replacing a Wintel server with a Linux server is "better", you have to define "better", even (especially!) when it's obvious. If it's better because the Wintel server was a security issue, then work out the total cost for keeping the Wintel server secure, and the cost to the company if it was breached, along with the likelihood of that occuring. Do the same costings for your proposal, along with any additional costs incurred (new hardware, licenses, training, etc). If it turns out that there's a very low risk if the Wintel server is compromised (eg, it's not connected to the internal network, contains no sensitive data, and is blocked by the firewall from doing anything nasty), and there'd be a large cost in migrating to Linux (eg, retraining, HW changes, etc), then Wintel is the right answer, and all the "but Linux is better than Windows" arguments are ignored, and your credibility is reduced. That reduced credibility will carry on to the next time you propose something, like the boy who cried "Wolf!".
Cost. That's all the business people care about. If they can spend $10k on a
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Winning the argument depends on first explicitly defining the terms in a way that is advantageous to your position.
Start out with a proposition that everyone can agree on, like, "We depend on our operating system to do the following things: Minimize support costs through superior uptime, minimize hardware costs by providing more computing power per CPU cycle, realize long term cost benefits by providing superior computing resources throughout the company at a lower cost per seat." This is just an off-the-cuff example.
Then use metrics from your own organization (if they're not available, guesstimate), comparing the cost of meeting each of those goals. Historical data presented in a before and after comparison format can be quite valuable in showing people that you're not advocating Linux because you have an ideological attachment to it, but because it does the same job less expensively. Arguments about quality will go right over their heads. Intangibles such as, "It makes us all happier to use Linux because we don't have to run around fighting fires all the time," don't register with most O-level folks. Stay focused on apples to apples comparisons, and always compare costs.
As many others have pointed out, some managers simply won't listen. However, giving up isn't the answer either. At least present your case firmly, without rancor, and in as broad a forum as possible. Don't go behind the manager's back, but try to get other people in on the meeting. That way even if this knucklehead doesn't listen to you, you'll probably convince a few people. When they run off to other companies after the knucklehead brings the company crashing to its knees, you'll have a decent chance of connecting up with one or more of the smart ones who listened to your pitch and understand what you were conveying. The way I look at it, you're playing a long-term game here. It's not just about convincing the knucklehead, or saving your company's IT department from waste and annoyance. It's also about clearly establishing that you know what you're talking about, and you're able to clearly and professionally articulate your knowledge.
Regardless of whose advice you take, I wish you good luck! It's never fun trying to manage up.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
5 years ago, when Bush came into office, he shut down the FBI from giving out information about cracked system except where required by law (basically, if a customer's CC is stolen). Just before that, a friend and I were going to start a web site that tracked these and then showed the relative risk to users. Since 40% of the https space was windows, then you should expect somewhere around 40% of all the stolen CCs. But it turned out that Windows accounted for more than 99 % of all stolen CCs (and this was in 2002; I think that windows now accounts for about 1/3 of https space).
So, pick up the report from Netcraft that shows the % of OS on the https sites (you have to pay for it). Then go to news.com and look for all the past stories of stolen CCs. All of the ones that I check for the last couple of years, turned out were Windows (more than hundred over the last 5 years).
Here is one other interesting test. Look at the netcraft of all the major banks and CC shops. Then look at all the CC processing sites that lost 100's of thousands of CC's. A few of the processing sites that were cracked (one in arizona, Florida, and nebraska) were running MS. Yet the CCs companies run *nix. Says a lot right there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
NO
S/He won't understand, it'll come across in the same way as the garage mechanic saying "... ooh, your Big End's gone, that's gonna cost ya". It's some mumble-mumble jargon with no real meaning, just a huge bill.
The CEO doesn't get that kind of stuff from the Wintel team, they just say "It's okay, MS produce patches, we'll check them out an install them".
The CEO, not understanding any of this, will have more faith in the Wintel team than in the *nix team. Because the Wintel answer is more understandable, acknowledges flaws, and has a plan to fix them (yes, I know it's just one sentence, but it does contain all that, if you have no knowledge of the underlying issues).
The CEO is busy doing many deals with customers, suppliers, potential customers and suppliers, internal management, etc. Your post would be chucked straight into the bin. Accurate and detailed as it may be, it's just so much jargon to the CEO. The CEO speaks a different language, and it's actually very easy to learn. There are only two questions to answer:
- What does it cost me?
- How does it improve my income?
Speak that language, and it's very simple. Speak any other language, and you are seen as just another back-street garage mechanic talking about big-ends.The business are only concerned about money (it's called Capitalism, it's fairly common in the western world, you might have heard of it - it pays your salary). They don't care about "better", they care about "cost-effective". Show them that, make sure that you can deal with the details (because that's your job, and it's not their job (you know they'd fsck it up!)), and propose the best solution, in simple terms which the CEO will understand. That will improve your credibility, which is a virtuous circle. If you fsck it up, your credibility goes downhill, so be clear up-front about any assumptions, risks, worst-case-scenarios (as well as best-case-scenarios) for all options (your preferred option, as well as the one you are "resisting")
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
... will never listen to anyone beneath them in the corporate food chain.
Making a lot of obstructionist noise will only paint a bulls-eye on yourself, as a malcontent and troublemaker -- probably a security risk as well.
How to distinguish between ignorant top management and the clued-in variety
Good top management would have asked down the org chart to the IT group whether there was anything to the issues raised in those articles, and would have done so off-line rather than during a conference call. After all, they should have confidence in the abilities of their IT staff, and should reasonably expect them to know more about this area than they do. Ignorant doofus top managers assume that they are the ultimate in every regard, and have no need to consult anyone -- after all, that's why they're paid the "Big Buck$".
In the words of Roy Schieder (Chief Brodie in Jaws), "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
Go and get an IBM marketeer (or a pack of them) to educate your top management about the virtues of Linux in the corporate environment. They have credibility that you will simply never possess, and are well-trained in the fine art of "Account Control". Just ask your top management for an opportunity to bring in a representative from a Fortune 50 company to put on a small presentation about Linux, in order to get a "business perspective" on the matter.
The downside is that you will give up any voice in what kind of hardware you run. But that's not such a big downside, as IBM makes good stuff. And with the sort of management you have, any thoughts you might have about your influence is an illusion, anyhow.
I expect that some sales minions have already managed an end run up the org chart, and the source of all the anti-Linux FUD propaganda is either Microsoft, or some Microsoft-oriented consulting firm plotting to seize a firm grasp on your company's IT budget.
You need to fight fire with nuclear weapons. Bring in IBM.
Update your resume. When you get an offer, talk to the pinhead's supervisor and make it very clear why you're leaving. You'll be doing the next guy a favor.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Always leave the enemy an escape route.
Otherwise even if you win it will be very costly - since the enemy will know there's no retreat and will fight to the end.
Well...
I've played this game before. Twice actually.
The first time, the boss wanted to convert from BSDi to WinNT. Bad choice, I said, but I was a lowly tech then.. I ended up leaving after the migration was done. Not too long afterwards, they started migrating back. The company, on the verge of failure, sold.
The second time, we had a decent size network running Linux. I was happy with my happy network. It did it's thing very well.. One of the boss-type people wanted Windows. He likes Windows. We should have a Win2k AS network.. I refused. I refused. I refused some more. Luckly, I was in more of a position to refuse now.. It was a battle of wills. I gave all the reasons not to. I gave the few reasons to switch. In the end, I grew tired of the battle. "Fine, we'll switch over to Windows. Licensing will cost $xxx. We'll need x extra techs, and y more boxes, and z more space."
You know, all those damed x's y's and z's add up. He was reconsidering.
"We can have everything migrated over in a month, and stable sometime after that. I strongly recommend against it, but we can start the migration as soon as you get the licenses, and hire staff to do the migration and support the whole mess."
It never migrated.
Sometimes you just have to give them exactly what they want, and let them realize the mistake all on their own. If the company fails because of it, but you had given strong reservations against it, it's not your fault. When the company dumps, buy the machines from them for pennies, and start your own hosting company.
Just kidding about the hosting company. Get on board with the next company, and see if they're any smarter. At very least, you can use your experience as a warning to them.
"Oh, you want to migrate to Windows? That's why the last company I was at failed. Here's all the reasons....."
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
First they hire you as a professional, then they treat you as an ignoramous. This can't be. Tell the suit that if he doesn't trust your judgement, the very one he hired you for, he should resign giving his own bad judgement as the reason.
The saddest thing is that this would probably work a lot better with a PHB than any amount of technical reasons about viruses, worms, security, cost of licenses, etc
If you want your PHB to shell out money for a car so your techs can get around quicker, do you explain to him the inner workings of a combustion engine and the anatomical reasons for not being able to walk as fast as you could drive a car, or do you just tell him "we'll get there faster if we have one"?
Free as in mason.
Whoops, I need to add a little bit...
Yes, I know that Stallman is not 'the face of Linux'. But he is a very public figure that will NOT appeal to most businesses/governments. (Which he is undoubtably happy about.) But he does given the Open Source movement a lot of its 'hippy freaks' reputation.
Secondly, getting people involved in decisions is important. Hell, where I work they can't even move the water cooler without causing some sort of big uproar...and with good reason, because when they tried it, the new location didn't work for a couple of reasons that nobody anticipated.
While server software seems like something that only the IT group needs to worry about, businesses/governments are just used to getting a larger concensus for every decision. They have learned this through time as being an effective method of operation. It may not be as efficient, but it is far less risky.
If you want to really make inroads, you need to know how to play the game.
No reason to lie.
Reality Master 101 wrote:
.NET or whatever, too bad, you have to upgrade, or work around it.
"Come on. Which is more likely to be in business in five years, Home Depot, or Joe's Contractor Shack?
"It's all about probabilities. Microsoft has a FAR higher probability of being around in five years than, say, Red Hat, which is the strongest player. How about Debian? Who knows? Manager Man sure the hell doesn't, and frankly neither does the OSS community. "
Any competent building contractor can fix your house. Your house is not "closed source". Similarly, any sufficently competent programmer can fix Linux (or other application). Nobody can fix Windows except Microsoft-- and they do it when and how they want to. Maybe they won't ever fix your problem.
If RedHat goes out of business, there are lots of consulting firms you can hire. If Windows decides to quit supporting Windows 2000 or NT or
Debian is another animal entirely, and if you use Debian, you need to explain exactly what it is to your boss.
A Ferrari is pretty exotic to be a common computer, maybe it's more like a high-end Sun.
From Neal Stephenson's essay about computers, "In the beginning was the command line":
---
Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.
There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.
The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.
Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.
Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.
On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.
One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.
Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.
The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a