20MB was a common HD in those days, hell, I remember 5MB. These were considered "toys" compared to arrays of "massive" 200MB mainframe drives that were the size of washing machines. As I recall, PC hard drives were commonly backed up [if at all] by the floppy disk method, which was a real nightmare, even with the best utilities available at the time. MS-DOS backup.exe was the absolute worst choice (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Those of us privileged to play in the mainframe world could run 9-track tape backups and watch the tape move at about 12 feet per second. Kind of cool, so long as you don't mind paying $30,000 for a tape drive.
The 32MB limit I was referring to was a limitation of MS-DOS. No matter what size drive you might have, the partitions were not going to exceed 32MB. This became an issue as soon as 40MB drives were available, which was (as usual) long before M$ was prepared to deal with the problem.
For a while, the time sharing world looked pretty damn good compared to the cheesy workarounds that PCs required to break the 32MB disk and 640K memory limits.
I agree; we won't see the revival of timesharing anytime soon.
The PC revolution was based on the desire to get replace dumb terminals with something that could do color graphics, fancy fonts, and WYSIWYG word processing. This evolved into a more user-friendly interface for data manipulation.
For data-intensive applications, timeshare computing was economical, and it worked over low speed connections. Back in the 80's, it didn't take much data to qualify as "data intensive", either. I seem to remember something about a 32MB hard disk limit, for those PC users lucky enough to have hard drives. In general, data was never shared with anyone unless a mainframe was involved. File servers eventually brought data sharing to the PC, but even then, record locking was a joke compared to mainframe capabilities. You could run quite a few dumb terminals over a 9600 bps line, but that is inadequate for even one web surfer today.
OK, what has changed? Is there some new generation of CPU-intensive applications that requires far more CPU power than desktop computers have? I think this is yet another case of a solution in search of a problem. The NetPC was supposed to run apps without the need for a hard disk. The concept died when people discovered that hard disks were cheap and broadband Internet was not living up to the advertising claims. Along the same lines, who needs supercomputer resources when none of our applications are really CPU-bound in the first place? Aside from specialized stuff like ray tracing, animation, and possibly busting DRM algorithms, I don't know how timesharing would become a mainstream product.
I fully agree. The volume of sales calls I get makes the phone pretty much useless as a business tool. I screen as many calls as I can through voice mail.
Among the worst calls I get are surveys. As soon as I realize it's a survey, I say "We don't respond to surveys" and then hang up. The clueless morons at Harte-Hanks have called me about 10 times in the past six months.
I wonder if I should just tell all the teletrash callers that the company is going out of business, just to see if it reduces the call volume.
For those times when I need to explain the advantages of Open Source software.
The cost of licenses, activation nonsense, BSA audits, and "software assurance" make open source look better by the minute. Add in this latest example of vendor's granting themselves the right to meddle in corporate affairs, and I'm ready to [figuratively] open fire on the next enemy sales droid that crosses my path.
In theory, that is true. But the crippleware industry has such a poor track record, RIAA will simply blame any decline in sales on pirates who must have broken the protection (true or not). After all, it's not like sales are declining because of crappy, overpriced music that nobody wants, right?
RIAA has a tough time of counting the votes. If you buy crippleware, that counts as a "yes" vote for crippleware. If you don't buy crippleware, it's not really a "no" vote for crippleware, because any "no" votes are considered piracy.
An honest comparison would be the sales of otherwise identical albums, selling the crippled and uncrippled side-by-side for the same price. Until that happens, it's really like Saddam running against nobody in the Iraqi "election".
It looks great, and you could solve the Windoze problem by running Linux, but what about the Porsche name? Sure, Porsche means "cool design and high performance", but it also means "looney-tunes pricing". Considering how many laptops are corporate purchases, I can imagine these things drawing unnecessary sniper fire from the gods of corporate cost cutting. Even a CEO might think twice, wanting to "set a good example" by using something a little less "sexy". Unless, of course, the company is assigning Porsches as company cars.
My IBM Thinkpad actually costs more than Porsche's laptop, but it has that plain IBM style that says, "Worth the price because it takes a beating and always works."
Unfortunately, I'm not so sure any of this is illegal. Getting campaign contributions from the widget industry association and then proposing laws that are favorable to the producers of widgets is not a crime.
None of this is new -- it has been going on for centuries. Perhaps not so blatant as today's situation, but the sleaze is practically a tradition.
The voters could take back the power if they were so motivated. Then again, apathy is what creates the vacuum that is filled by contributions and requests from special interests.
Most people will vote for the candidate with the slickest 30-second commercial. Once we get smart enough to see past that and begin to care about the issues, we could start with campaign reform and go from there. Too bad we are so dumb.
To understand my comparison to the world of work, you must realize that I work in management. As such, I often make deals. Many times, to get cooperation from others, I have to agree to things that I would rather not agree to. Sometimes, I feel lousy about what I agree to do, but the reality is I get something in return. You either play the game and try to make a difference, or firmly stand for your principles every single time and get stonewalled by your opponents, thus accomplishing nothing. Maybe there is some issue that Berman cares about. Perhaps he "throws a bone" to the entertainment industry to stay in office and "fight the good fight" for some other worthy cause. It's not completely impossible for him to think "Gee, no matter what Congress does, music will eventually be shared and the Internet will eventually be free. I can keep myself in office and push for health care, tax relief, and school prayer if I simply agree to some wacky stuff that even if it passes will quicky become meaningless." On the other hand, maybe Berman, Fritz, and associates really are as sleazy as they look.
Berman works for his employers (the entertainment industry), who have him stationed in Washington, almost like a consultant/outsourcing kind of deal.
His job is to push custom-designed legislation, as designated by his employer. He may realize it's dead-on-arrival. He scores brownie points for making the sales pitch, even if he can't "close the deal".
Think of your job. Haven't we all been involved in some sort of management-led initiative that we were less-than-thrilled about? I can think of a handful of instances, and I shed no tears when such things crash and burn.
Berman, Fritz, and others are paid to push these "suicide bomber" initiatives, in search of a "compromise" that is pretty much the real target to begin with.
Personally, I can't wait for the first wave of P2P vigilantes. The reprisals ought to be spectacular. The whole concept of a technologically-challenged industry battling against the world's top hackers is like Saddam Hussein sending the Iraqi navy to invade New York City. The RIAA battleship will be on the ocean floor, US law regarding the Internet will be as meaningless as a UN resolution, the net result being freedom through anarchy.
I suspect that DMA is mostly concerned with short-circuiting the indvidual state anti-spam laws, overriding them with a watered-down Federal law that offers less protection.
I live in Connecticut, where the state's "Do Not Call" list has been a spectacular success (at least for me). Considering how thoroughly the state DNC lists have zapped the telemarketing industry, I think DMA is simply defending against a state-by-state implementation of "do-not-email" lists.
Like health care? Like law enforcement? Like rescue services?
LIKE PHONE SERVICE? "I'm sorry, but your account is past due -- no service for you. If you pay us all of the access charges, universal service charges, 911 charges, number portability charges, in addition to our wildy overpriced monthy rate, we'll be happy to restore your poor-quality analog line. Wonderful.
We subsidize certain services (Police Fire, sometimes health care) as a matter of public policy. Why should we subsidize a nice-to-have-but-not-essential service if it wasn't a public service to begin with, especially if it impairs the adoption of better technology that would probably cost less than the crap we have now? Investors bought telco stocks and bonds, knowing that certain risks were involved, premature obsolescense being damn near the top of the list.
For the most part, the US economic system does a wonderful job of purging itself of obsolete companies. The death of such companies creates opportunities for better competitors.
We think nothing of closing a factory and moving it to Mexico or China in search of cheap labor; how is this any different? It's tragic for individuals in the short run, but in the long run, we're all better off when people migrate to more competitive industries. If the telcos have to die anyway, get it over with. If we grant European-style subsidies to every industry that has a problem, we'll have sky-high unemployement, and a reduced standard of living (like the Europeans do). Once everyone is getting a subsidy, the tax burden will choke off any possibility of economic growith.
My retirement plan may be adversely impacted by the telcos demise, but it will have time to bounce back. Having subsidized telcos won't change my expectation that they will continue as a underperforming investment. Thanks, Uncle Sam, but no thanks.
Jesse Helms as a white hat? I never thought he would be fighting for the rights of individuals and small business, but we'll take the help from wherever it comes from, right?
This is the first sign I have seen of the Republicans using copyright and/or DMCA as an issue against the Democrats. If ever there was an issue that shows an anti-consumer side of the Democrats' agenda, this is it. If the Republicans have any brains at all, they will make sure only Democrats are associated with the ever-more-desperate RIAA/MPAA initiatives. The wackier they get, the better it works!
Back in my VAX/VMS days, the powers that be decided to name the machines after planets. The limit was six characers, so the names were "VENUS", "MARS", and "PLUTO". So far, so good.
Certain conditions, (such as a reboot) were generally accompanied by broadcast messages that would (in our case) be sent to hundreds of dumb terminals in about 12 different cities.
*** Reply received from operator on MARS *** System shutdown in 5 minutes
"Note that this plan doesn't care if Microsoft wins the contest or not, it simply intends to discredit Microsoft."
Microsoft is not discredited UNLESS they intend to use Palladium to enforce software licensing and chose to LIE about it.
IF M$ intentions are as-advertised, then the patent is meaningless, since it covers something they said was not part of their plan. On the other hand, if M$ challenges the patent they will be discredited because they deserve it.
The use of stock photography doesn't prove ugliness, just a desire for anonymity. If someone gave me an XP laptop and told to write an article that made me look like an ordinary customer switching to XP, I would be anonymous too!
My guess is that she looks average, and would have fit in better with the whole "switch" concept with a real photo. I don't see any of the Apple "switchers" working as letter-turners on "Wheel of Fortune".
IMHO, this whole "switch" fiasco is an example of Microsoft's "embrace and extend" strategy:
[Embrace] Take something the competition does well (Apple "switch" campaign)
Find something to improve upon (average-looking people)
[Extend] Emulate the competitor, but make an improvement (use good-looking model)
Spin-up the marketing machine (publish on web)
Make excuses when people discover that the embraced/extended thing is nothing new, and is in some ways worse than what the competitor started with
Cell phones are never going to be anything other than giveaways to sell the service. Once you start to charge real money, the phones have value and the theft rate makes the whole concept questionable.
Have them distribute a few thousand phones with some prepaid minutes in the DC area, so if anyone sees the sniper, they can grab a photo and transmit to police. Even if nobody uses their phone to catch the sniper, the media will talk about it for a while.
After that, they should have no problem finding real people for a "switch" campaign. "Sure I switched because it was a corporate giveaway, but then I discovered all these neat things I can do with the phone, so I'm keeping it."
I can easily believe "Don Funk" as a generic name for all kinds of examples. However, if you think about the context in which it was used for this article, someone would have to log on to a computer as "Don Funk" in order to have that folder show up in "Documents and Settings". Maybe that's exactly what was done.
I don't think it's a total lie, but it's not a story about someone who voluntarily decided to switch, paid full street price for everything, figured out the details on her own, and enjoyed the process. As the truth leaks out, it looks more and more like an "Astroturf" campaign. Someone should send her a set of Red Hat 8.0 CDs for that laptop of hers. RH 8 works great on my IBM Thinkpad.
I think the "switch" was heavily subsidized by M$, and someone other than Ms. Mallinson may have assisted with the technical details of "switching". I don't mean to belittle her technical skills, but the article was a bit more detailed that I would expect from a freelance writer who is supposed to be an XP newbie.
OK, she had an 8 year old Mac, and discovered that her status as an M$ contractor made her eligible for a discounted laptop and software at near-Linux prices.
That explains how her laptop was pre-loaded with XP Home Edition and yet she upgraded to XP Pro. At full sticker price, this isn't going to happen very often. I figured it was either a corporate giveaway or perhaps she made a trip to China.
I'm not an Apple fan, but I can't wait for a "Switch the switcher" counteroffensive. I predict that when Ms. Mallinson has outlived her usefulness at M$, she will write a series of articles for Apple about her misguided adventure behind enemy lines.
(1) Ms. Mallinson may be the "switcher", but did she actually write the article? If so, who is "Don Funk" and why is it his folder that is shown in the screenshot?
(2) Did she actually buy XP Pro and Office XP, or did she get that for free as an M$ contractor? That's some pricey software; she must be one hell of a freelance writer to afford it.
(3) Was the "switch" voluntary or was it part of a requirement for the campaign?
Maybe it was easier to crop out the watermark from Getty. They sure don't want to mess with Corbis (and risk a BSA audit)! Then again, maybe Getty just has better-looking women.
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20MB was a common HD in those days, hell, I remember 5MB. These were considered "toys" compared to arrays of "massive" 200MB mainframe drives that were the size of washing machines. As I recall, PC hard drives were commonly backed up [if at all] by the floppy disk method, which was a real nightmare, even with the best utilities available at the time. MS-DOS backup.exe was the absolute worst choice (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Those of us privileged to play in the mainframe world could run 9-track tape backups and watch the tape move at about 12 feet per second. Kind of cool, so long as you don't mind paying $30,000 for a tape drive.
The 32MB limit I was referring to was a limitation of MS-DOS. No matter what size drive you might have, the partitions were not going to exceed 32MB. This became an issue as soon as 40MB drives were available, which was (as usual) long before M$ was prepared to deal with the problem.
For a while, the time sharing world looked pretty damn good compared to the cheesy workarounds that PCs required to break the 32MB disk and 640K memory limits.
I agree; we won't see the revival of timesharing anytime soon.
The PC revolution was based on the desire to get replace dumb terminals with something that could do color graphics, fancy fonts, and WYSIWYG word processing. This evolved into a more user-friendly interface for data manipulation.
For data-intensive applications, timeshare computing was economical, and it worked over low speed connections. Back in the 80's, it didn't take much data to qualify as "data intensive", either. I seem to remember something about a 32MB hard disk limit, for those PC users lucky enough to have hard drives. In general, data was never shared with anyone unless a mainframe was involved. File servers eventually brought data sharing to the PC, but even then, record locking was a joke compared to mainframe capabilities. You could run quite a few dumb terminals over a 9600 bps line, but that is inadequate for even one web surfer today.
OK, what has changed? Is there some new generation of CPU-intensive applications that requires far more CPU power than desktop computers have? I think this is yet another case of a solution in search of a problem. The NetPC was supposed to run apps without the need for a hard disk. The concept died when people discovered that hard disks were cheap and broadband Internet was not living up to the advertising claims. Along the same lines, who needs supercomputer resources when none of our applications are really CPU-bound in the first place? Aside from specialized stuff like ray tracing, animation, and possibly busting DRM algorithms, I don't know how timesharing would become a mainstream product.
I fully agree. The volume of sales calls I get makes the phone pretty much useless as a business tool. I screen as many calls as I can through voice mail.
Among the worst calls I get are surveys. As soon as I realize it's a survey, I say "We don't respond to surveys" and then hang up. The clueless morons at Harte-Hanks have called me about 10 times in the past six months.
I wonder if I should just tell all the teletrash callers that the company is going out of business, just to see if it reduces the call volume.
For those times when I need to explain the advantages of Open Source software.
The cost of licenses, activation nonsense, BSA audits, and "software assurance" make open source look better by the minute. Add in this latest example of vendor's granting themselves the right to meddle in corporate affairs, and I'm ready to [figuratively] open fire on the next enemy sales droid that crosses my path.
In theory, that is true. But the crippleware industry has such a poor track record, RIAA will simply blame any decline in sales on pirates who must have broken the protection (true or not). After all, it's not like sales are declining because of crappy, overpriced music that nobody wants, right?
"I have already voted, several times..."
RIAA has a tough time of counting the votes. If you buy crippleware, that counts as a "yes" vote for crippleware. If you don't buy crippleware, it's not really a "no" vote for crippleware, because any "no" votes are considered piracy.
An honest comparison would be the sales of otherwise identical albums, selling the crippled and uncrippled side-by-side for the same price. Until that happens, it's really like Saddam running against nobody in the Iraqi "election".
How about a ghost-written testimonial about a Middle East dictator who switches from Mac to XP? At least the photo could be real this time.
It looks great, and you could solve the Windoze problem by running Linux, but what about the Porsche name? Sure, Porsche means "cool design and high performance", but it also means "looney-tunes pricing". Considering how many laptops are corporate purchases, I can imagine these things drawing unnecessary sniper fire from the gods of corporate cost cutting. Even a CEO might think twice, wanting to "set a good example" by using something a little less "sexy". Unless, of course, the company is assigning Porsches as company cars.
My IBM Thinkpad actually costs more than Porsche's laptop, but it has that plain IBM style that says, "Worth the price because it takes a beating and always works."
Unfortunately, I'm not so sure any of this is illegal. Getting campaign contributions from the widget industry association and then proposing laws that are favorable to the producers of widgets is not a crime.
None of this is new -- it has been going on for centuries. Perhaps not so blatant as today's situation, but the sleaze is practically a tradition.
The voters could take back the power if they were so motivated. Then again, apathy is what creates the vacuum that is filled by contributions and requests from special interests.
Most people will vote for the candidate with the slickest 30-second commercial. Once we get smart enough to see past that and begin to care about the issues, we could start with campaign reform and go from there. Too bad we are so dumb.
To understand my comparison to the world of work, you must realize that I work in management. As such, I often make deals. Many times, to get cooperation from others, I have to agree to things that I would rather not agree to. Sometimes, I feel lousy about what I agree to do, but the reality is I get something in return. You either play the game and try to make a difference, or firmly stand for your principles every single time and get stonewalled by your opponents, thus accomplishing nothing. Maybe there is some issue that Berman cares about. Perhaps he "throws a bone" to the entertainment industry to stay in office and "fight the good fight" for some other worthy cause. It's not completely impossible for him to think "Gee, no matter what Congress does, music will eventually be shared and the Internet will eventually be free. I can keep myself in office and push for health care, tax relief, and school prayer if I simply agree to some wacky stuff that even if it passes will quicky become meaningless." On the other hand, maybe Berman, Fritz, and associates really are as sleazy as they look.
Berman works for his employers (the entertainment industry), who have him stationed in Washington, almost like a consultant/outsourcing kind of deal.
His job is to push custom-designed legislation, as designated by his employer. He may realize it's dead-on-arrival. He scores brownie points for making the sales pitch, even if he can't "close the deal".
Think of your job. Haven't we all been involved in some sort of management-led initiative that we were less-than-thrilled about? I can think of a handful of instances, and I shed no tears when such things crash and burn.
Berman, Fritz, and others are paid to push these "suicide bomber" initiatives, in search of a "compromise" that is pretty much the real target to begin with.
Personally, I can't wait for the first wave of P2P vigilantes. The reprisals ought to be spectacular. The whole concept of a technologically-challenged industry battling against the world's top hackers is like Saddam Hussein sending the Iraqi navy to invade New York City. The RIAA battleship will be on the ocean floor, US law regarding the Internet will be as meaningless as a UN resolution, the net result being freedom through anarchy.
I suspect that DMA is mostly concerned with short-circuiting the indvidual state anti-spam laws, overriding them with a watered-down Federal law that offers less protection.
I live in Connecticut, where the state's "Do Not Call" list has been a spectacular success (at least for me). Considering how thoroughly the state DNC lists have zapped the telemarketing industry, I think DMA is simply defending against a state-by-state implementation of "do-not-email" lists.
Like health care?
Like law enforcement?
Like rescue services?
LIKE PHONE SERVICE? "I'm sorry, but your account is past due -- no service for you. If you pay us all of the access charges, universal service charges, 911 charges, number portability charges, in addition to our wildy overpriced monthy rate, we'll be happy to restore your poor-quality analog line. Wonderful.
We subsidize certain services (Police Fire, sometimes health care) as a matter of public policy. Why should we subsidize a nice-to-have-but-not-essential service if it wasn't a public service to begin with, especially if it impairs the adoption of better technology that would probably cost less than the crap we have now? Investors bought telco stocks and bonds, knowing that certain risks were involved, premature obsolescense being damn near the top of the list.
For the most part, the US economic system does a wonderful job of purging itself of obsolete companies. The death of such companies creates opportunities for better competitors.
We think nothing of closing a factory and moving it to Mexico or China in search of cheap labor; how is this any different? It's tragic for individuals in the short run, but in the long run, we're all better off when people migrate to more competitive industries. If the telcos have to die anyway, get it over with. If we grant European-style subsidies to every industry that has a problem, we'll have sky-high unemployement, and a reduced standard of living (like the Europeans do). Once everyone is getting a subsidy, the tax burden will choke off any possibility of economic growith.
My retirement plan may be adversely impacted by the telcos demise, but it will have time to bounce back. Having subsidized telcos won't change my expectation that they will continue as a underperforming investment. Thanks, Uncle Sam, but no thanks.
Jesse Helms as a white hat? I never thought he would be fighting for the rights of individuals and small business, but we'll take the help from wherever it comes from, right?
This is the first sign I have seen of the Republicans using copyright and/or DMCA as an issue against the Democrats. If ever there was an issue that shows an anti-consumer side of the Democrats' agenda, this is it. If the Republicans have any brains at all, they will make sure only Democrats are associated with the ever-more-desperate RIAA/MPAA initiatives. The wackier they get, the better it works!
The ultimate fun would be to take the output of $SHOW DEVICE/MOUNTED and ask sysadmin or operations job applicants to explain what it means.
Back in my VAX/VMS days, the powers that be decided to name the machines after planets. The limit was six characers, so the names were "VENUS", "MARS", and "PLUTO". So far, so good.
Certain conditions, (such as a reboot) were generally accompanied by broadcast messages that would (in our case) be sent to hundreds of dumb terminals in about 12 different cities.
*** Reply received from operator on MARS ***
System shutdown in 5 minutes
"Why would Microsoft every want to challenge the patents when they have enough money to buy this guy's soul outright?"
What happens if Lucky sells his patent to someone else with deep pockets who hates Bill. IBM? Sun? Apple? Oracle?
"Note that this plan doesn't care if Microsoft wins the contest or not, it simply intends to discredit Microsoft."
Microsoft is not discredited UNLESS they intend to use Palladium to enforce software licensing and chose to LIE about it.
IF M$ intentions are as-advertised, then the patent is meaningless, since it covers something they said was not part of their plan. On the other hand, if M$ challenges the patent they will be discredited because they deserve it.
The use of stock photography doesn't prove ugliness, just a desire for anonymity. If someone gave me an XP laptop and told to write an article that made me look like an ordinary customer switching to XP, I would be anonymous too!
My guess is that she looks average, and would have fit in better with the whole "switch" concept with a real photo. I don't see any of the Apple "switchers" working as letter-turners on "Wheel of Fortune".
IMHO, this whole "switch" fiasco is an example of Microsoft's "embrace and extend" strategy:
How about a "celebrity endorsement" after they get caught?
"We were doing just fine until those people with their damn phones started taking pictures."
Cell phones are never going to be anything other than giveaways to sell the service. Once you start to charge real money, the phones have value and the theft rate makes the whole concept questionable.
Have them distribute a few thousand phones with some prepaid minutes in the DC area, so if anyone sees the sniper, they can grab a photo and transmit to police. Even if nobody uses their phone to catch the sniper, the media will talk about it for a while.
After that, they should have no problem finding real people for a "switch" campaign. "Sure I switched because it was a corporate giveaway, but then I discovered all these neat things I can do with the phone, so I'm keeping it."
I can easily believe "Don Funk" as a generic name for all kinds of examples. However, if you think about the context in which it was used for this article, someone would have to log on to a computer as "Don Funk" in order to have that folder show up in "Documents and Settings". Maybe that's exactly what was done.
I don't think it's a total lie, but it's not a story about someone who voluntarily decided to switch, paid full street price for everything, figured out the details on her own, and enjoyed the process. As the truth leaks out, it looks more and more like an "Astroturf" campaign. Someone should send her a set of Red Hat 8.0 CDs for that laptop of hers. RH 8 works great on my IBM Thinkpad.
I think the "switch" was heavily subsidized by M$, and someone other than Ms. Mallinson may have assisted with the technical details of "switching". I don't mean to belittle her technical skills, but the article was a bit more detailed that I would expect from a freelance writer who is supposed to be an XP newbie.
OK, she had an 8 year old Mac, and discovered that her status as an M$ contractor made her eligible for a discounted laptop and software at near-Linux prices.
That explains how her laptop was pre-loaded with XP Home Edition and yet she upgraded to XP Pro. At full sticker price, this isn't going to happen very often. I figured it was either a corporate giveaway or perhaps she made a trip to China.
I'm not an Apple fan, but I can't wait for a "Switch the switcher" counteroffensive. I predict that when Ms. Mallinson has outlived her usefulness at M$, she will write a series of articles for Apple about her misguided adventure behind enemy lines.
(1) Ms. Mallinson may be the "switcher", but did she actually write the article? If so, who is "Don Funk" and why is it his folder that is shown in the screenshot?
(2) Did she actually buy XP Pro and Office XP, or did she get that for free as an M$ contractor? That's some pricey software; she must be one hell of a freelance writer to afford it.
(3) Was the "switch" voluntary or was it part of a requirement for the campaign?
Maybe it was easier to crop out the watermark from Getty. They sure don't want to mess with Corbis (and risk a BSA audit)! Then again, maybe Getty just has better-looking women.
I could be wrong about this, but I'm having a tough time believing that "Don Funk" is/was a Girl Scout, or resembles the woman with the coffee cup.