If so, then why does Senator Fritz Hollings of S. Carolina work so hard on behalf of Disney and other "Hollywood" businesses?
Why do companies like Disney and Microsoft spend so much money lobbying representatives outside of their home districts if legislators are only supposed to represent their consituents?
Works for me. My wife and I just finished a 1200 mile vacation trip from Maryland to Florida by way of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains, including some dirt road and off road exploring in our (decidedly non-grand) Cherokee.
We found several obscure, scenic mountain lodges in Virginia and N. Carolina, and a funky/cool restored old hotel (with a great bar) in a small Georgia town along the way, no problem, and we didn't use a computer or other electronic device at any point, just your basic (paper) Road Atlas.
Navigation is not that hard. Really. And Wednesday, here in Forida, I plan to go sailing on Sarasota Bay, and I'll find my way with a chart and a hand-held compass. That's all anyone with a brain needs to find their way around the inland waterways, same as a decent road map is all you need to find your way on land in well-mapped countries like the U.S. (And I've found my way in plenty of places that weren't well-mapped, too.)
5. Run "Guess Password" utility. It tries the sytem user's address, phone number, variations on wife or girlfriend's name, and several significant dates in the user's life, plus the ever-popular "rosebud." The current version of this utility only works correctly when the bomb countdown is almost at zero.
I believe an improved version of this utility, one that isn't bomb countdown-reliant, is supposed to be included in KDE 4, but of course that's up to the release manager.
- Robin
Re:Easy way to get good wedding photos
on
Robotic Photographer
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yep. Good, low-cost, low-tech way to get lots of candid reception shots, works out very well.
Best pattern I've seen = pro to do the ceremony and a *brief* set of posed shots afterwards, disposable cameras for the rest.
The "robot photog" is not going to be a cheap piece of machinery for a long time, and a dozen disposable cameras in friends'/relatives' hands will get more and more interesting photos than a single robot could possibly produce.
Of course, at robot weddings with robot guests, things may be different...
(Don't forget, because of my limo experience I've been to more wedding than most people, literally hundreds of them.)
And yet... Robert Heinlein's old novella, "Magic Inc." was fantasy in the sense that it was based on the postulate that magic worked and was part of everyday business life, but could also be considered "alternate timeline" science fiction, because other than magic working, the story was about American small-town "main street" business and politics as they existed when the story was written.
"What if?" is the basic question asked by most of the science fiction I enjoy. What it is asked about can be almost anything: "What if dragons not only existed, but could become partners with selected humans?" is an example, as is "What if we had faster than light travel and met up with an interesting alien civilization?"
I liked "American Gods" so much that as soon as I finished it I told several friends to read it. All of them liked it as much as I did. It deserved a Hugo IMO even though it is *not* SF in the classical sense.
Several years ago, while looking at the Web site for the Ft. Hood-based 312th MI bn, where I was stationed for a while, back when I was in the Army, I came across a whole bunch of wide-open (NT) servers full of confidential and/or classified information.
I didn't do anything to "crack" them; the password forms only worked with MSIE/Windows. Uisng Linux and Netscape I clicked right past the authorization forms and had complete, instant entry to all kinds of information about Ft. Hood units and the people in them, including plenty of stuff that shouldn't have been exposed to public view.
I immediately emailed the Ft.Hood public information office and explained what I had found. I got back a snotty, "We don't have time for this kind of nonsense from civilians" response.
Apparently nothing has changed on the security front at Ft. Hood -- except that now you are a criminal if you report problems.
I got several copies of the infamous Bill Jones political spam even though I live in Florida and use a mailserver located in Virginia. And those spams came to me through an open relay in the Far East, not from an address identifiable as one associated with the Bill Jones campaign. I have since received polispam (nice new word, eh?) from several ultra-right Republican candidates in the midwest. They used honest "reply to" addresses, but I am nowhere near these candidatates' districts, so the only good they did by sending me spam was create potential donations -- for their opponents.
The only legitimate way I can see to send bulk political email right now is to buy lists of registered users from *local* TV station, newspaper, and other media Web sites. This way, almost all recipients would a) Either live in or be interested in the area in question; b) Be more interested in news than the average person, and therefore more likely to vote; and c) might have a fighting chance of already knowing about some of the local issues, which would mean *informative* polispam sent to them would probably not irritate them very much -- unless they strongly disagreed with positions held by the sending candidate, and in that case they would not view his or her polispam either more or less favorably than they'd view his or her brochures, TV spots or direct (postal) mail.
Careful targeting is the key to efffective polispam. Right now, for all I know, half the Korean language spam I get is "vote for me" messages. I also have a horrible vision of 1000+ candidates for the ~435 U.S. Congress/Senate seats all spamming the whole world constantly. Add in the many special interest groups (and even ordinary interest groups) that always have something to say about a campaign, and you'd have email pipes all over the world clogged with polispam for months before every U.S. election.
I *am* an ISOC member, and I have sat in on meetings and made my voice heard. I have never been denied access to ISOC board members, although I admit I haven't spent a lot of time asking for it.
My main concern with ISOC is that not nearly enough people have joined it and participate in local chapters. I have expressed this concern on the main ISOC email list, and ISOC is gradually moving toward more public participation.
...and then there are people like me -- writers -- who might be imagining hijack scenarios as potential plot devices. What about us? What about an air marshall or other undercover law enforcement type trying to think up every possible move a hijacked might make?
We're not terrorists, but we might be trying to *think* like terrorists. If we succeed too well, we're in trouble, aren't we?
This was someone who came forward voluntarily and offered to do the interview. Over 3/4 of our interviews come about this way or as a result of reader suggestions (as long as those suggestions are accompanied by contact info).
I don't live in South Carolina, but if you can point me toward viable opposition to Hollings, I can and will send money to his/her/their campaign fund(s).
Andover.net (now OSDN) got bit hard by Unisys after Unisys suddenly decided to enforce their GIF patent. Not over Slashdot icons or crud like that, but over our Gifworks.com site.
Think about JPEG and The Gimp.... or OpenOffice... or any one of hundreds of graphics programs developed by people working either for free or developing small-time shareware utilities in their spare time all getting bills. This could easily happen.
All of these people are going to hate the JPG patent blackmailers, who will somehow have to learn to deal with that hatred while sipping margaritas by the pools of their Palm Beach mansions while their 19-year-old ex-Playmate "housekeepers" practice for the Nude Swan Dive competition.
Yep. Life is hard in the patent blackmail business. All those people hating you. Good thing there are all those gated communities, eh? Got to have someplace to live quietly where those communist hippie Free Software people and all those nasty little independent proprietary software developers (damn entrepreneurs are almost as bad as commies, you know) can't get at you....
Hmmm... sounds to me like the routine data collection for this system would be done the same way it is now, by nurses and clerical employees, and that access to what really amounts to a sophisticated troubleshooting guide would free doctors from a lot of routine drudery and give them more time to treat patients.
We might also want to look at med school pricing. $300K seems a tad high to me.
But then, all medical costs seem high to me nowadays. I remember when, as a child (1960 or so), I had a broken arm and my father paid the doctor out of his pocket, and it wasn't a budget-breaking amount. When my kid had a broken arm in the 80s -- a crappy greenstick fracture I could have set myself -- the total bill was well over $1000. I have no idea how much a doc would charge today for reducing and casting a simple fracture, but I bet it would be huge.
We really need radical changes in how medical treatment is provided. It's a whole system, from medical school to insurance, that is draining the rest of the U.S.economy. If the tech tools will help, I say, "Bring them on."
So blind people can lean out of the cab and get money. I used to drive a cab (before I got into the limo business), and took many blind people to ATM drive-throughs.
I always tell phone solicitors I'm a writer and consultant, that I charge $120 per hour to analyze telephone sales pitches, and ask for their billing address "before you say anything else, please."
Hang up. Bye bye. I hardly get any solicitation calls these days...
Sadly, WRNR shut off their Webcast months ago because of the original decision to charge over-the-air broadcasters additional fees to Webcast their programming.
This was the other hope: that interesting stations like WRNR would gradually move onto the Internet and keep indendent radio alive even in a world increasingly dominated by Murky Channel, Finite Broadcasting, and the rest of the "10 song playlist" crowd. It was killed last year but hardly anyone seemed to notice.
Sadly, my home in Elkridge is just beyond the reach of WRNR's tiny signal. Jake Einstein (WRNR owner; Damien's dad) once told me there's not a chance he can get the FCC to license him for more wattage, that I am just going to have to move...
As for straightupness, remember that we're talking about it in corporate CEO context here, not about a normal person. For a CEO, Ransom is pretty okay. He uses buzzwords because it's part of his job, but the use here is light compared to most.
(An aside: Peter Wayner and I have registered BuzzwordInstitute.org so we can issue "buzzword compliance certificates" and such; it's a joke, one we'll get going as soon as we have time to actually make the site. We can use some help if you're up for it; we're both very busy. We'll give you some sort of impressive title, even. "Executive Director in Charge of ______" or some such. Peter pointed out that inflated titles are part of buzzwordness, necessary "for executive retention purposes.")
Anyway, I'll admit that I prefer interviews with people like Moshe Bar, who simply speak their minds, but some of the corporate activities are important and it's worth knowing what the Linux corpses are up to even if you have an RMS shrine in your dining room before which you genuflect 5 times daily.
Not only that, but the ability to run a broken box over to a local shop and have it fixed *while you wait* if it's an emergency is something only a local business can provide. It's also nice to deal with a human being instead of some crappy voice mail system that runs you through five layers of menus before you get to someone who can actually solve your problem.
There is a huge market for local systems integrators that serve other small local businesses. This is, BTW, the way Linux *should* be sold, but not many "Linux vendors" seem to have caught on to this.
If you had a small business, which would you rather do:
1) Call faceless operator at GiantComputerCo with a customer number.
2) Call your computer-hip Chamber of Commerce buddy Al at LocalCompouterCompany, who knows your name, your favorite brand of beer, and your opinion about the Orioles' chances in the playoffs this year?
I have more faith in Al, who I run into at the local bar all the time, than I will ever have in HPDellIBMGatewayCostcoBigCompany. I know where Al lives, he knows where I live. He is going to do his best to keep my computers working because I am important to him. Michael Dell and Carly Fiorina could care less about me. This makes a difference.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but when I buy anything critical to my business, I like to deal with people I know, who know me too.
I'm a Slashdot editor and possibly one of the 10 or 20 most widely-read tech/IT journalists in the world, and emails I sent to several major laptop manufacturers over a week ago still have not been answered. But when I call my local buddies in the computer business, the Slashdot thing and all the tech journo hotshotness mean nothing. They respond to me quickly and politely, same as they respond to everyone else.
I am a major small business believer and booster because I have always gotten better and more reponsive server from local small businesses. Small businesses don't need to buy CRM [Customer Relationship Management] software. The good ones have CRM *wetware* and the bad ones go broke.
Not that I'm against big business or anything, or that I invented the OSDN self-serve ad system specifically to give small businesses a chance to compete head to head with big ones online or anything....
I know a fair number of "screwdriver shops" in the Baltimore area that do perfectly well. One of my best friends owns one, and he makes his living supplying high-end custom servers to academic institutions and government agencies.
Interestingly, 95% of what Joe sells runs Linux. If we saw accurate stats from all the small boxbuilders like Joe, I suspect we'd see a lot higher percentage of Linux use than we see in most popular surveys and analysts' reports.
Joe has never been featured in the Baltimore Sun, a newspaper that has gone downhill to an alarming degree in recent years (I used to write freelance op-ed for them, but now I don't even bother to submit any). I must admit that I am surprised and glad to see an article in the paper's business section that goes beyond the basic "rewrite the big company press release" level.
Daily journalism -- especially newspaper business journalism -- in this country is in sad shape. Maybe someday I'll get tired of the online rat race and apply to a small daily or two, but chances are they'd turn me down. The newspaper business is not only contracting, but is becoming increasingly insular.
Isn't it sad that an article like this is rare enough to deserve a Slashdot mention? Not that anyone in the newspaper business is ever going to listen to me (sigh).
I was being polite by giving the marketing guy the benefit of the doubt. He's a middle manager who must defend the indefensible if he wants to keep his job.
He didn't sound like he enjoyed saying what he was supposed to say, either.
I really feel sorry for the front-line customer "service" rep I talked to first, who said, "What they tell me to tell you is..." about TW Cable's inane "anti-piracy" (really anti-customer) policy.
Slashdot Mirror
Fixed. Thanks for noticing.
- Robin
Accurate title metatags on as many pages on your site as possible make it easier for users to bookmark those pages, too.
- Robin
If so, then why does Senator Fritz Hollings of S. Carolina work so hard on behalf of Disney and other "Hollywood" businesses?
Why do companies like Disney and Microsoft spend so much money lobbying representatives outside of their home districts if legislators are only supposed to represent their consituents?
- Robin
> A paper road map.
Works for me. My wife and I just finished a 1200 mile vacation trip from Maryland to Florida by way of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains, including some dirt road and off road exploring in our (decidedly non-grand) Cherokee.
We found several obscure, scenic mountain lodges in Virginia and N. Carolina, and a funky/cool restored old hotel (with a great bar) in a small Georgia town along the way, no problem, and we didn't use a computer or other electronic device at any point, just your basic (paper) Road Atlas.
Navigation is not that hard. Really. And Wednesday, here in Forida, I plan to go sailing on Sarasota Bay, and I'll find my way with a chart and a hand-held compass. That's all anyone with a brain needs to find their way around the inland waterways, same as a decent road map is all you need to find your way on land in well-mapped countries like the U.S. (And I've found my way in plenty of places that weren't well-mapped, too.)
- Robin
5. Run "Guess Password" utility. It tries the sytem user's address, phone number, variations on wife or girlfriend's name, and several significant dates in the user's life, plus the ever-popular "rosebud." The current version of this utility only works correctly when the bomb countdown is almost at zero.
I believe an improved version of this utility, one that isn't bomb countdown-reliant, is supposed to be included in KDE 4, but of course that's up to the release manager.
- Robin
Yep. Good, low-cost, low-tech way to get lots of candid reception shots, works out very well.
Best pattern I've seen = pro to do the ceremony and a *brief* set of posed shots afterwards, disposable cameras for the rest.
The "robot photog" is not going to be a cheap piece of machinery for a long time, and a dozen disposable cameras in friends'/relatives' hands will get more and more interesting photos than a single robot could possibly produce.
Of course, at robot weddings with robot guests, things may be different...
(Don't forget, because of my limo experience I've been to more wedding than most people, literally hundreds of them.)
- Robin
And yet... Robert Heinlein's old novella, "Magic Inc." was fantasy in the sense that it was based on the postulate that magic worked and was part of everyday business life, but could also be considered "alternate timeline" science fiction, because other than magic working, the story was about American small-town "main street" business and politics as they existed when the story was written.
"What if?" is the basic question asked by most of the science fiction I enjoy. What it is asked about can be almost anything: "What if dragons not only existed, but could become partners with selected humans?" is an example, as is "What if we had faster than light travel and met up with an interesting alien civilization?"
- Robin
I liked "American Gods" so much that as soon as I finished it I told several friends to read it. All of them liked it as much as I did. It deserved a Hugo IMO even though it is *not* SF in the classical sense.
- Robin
Several years ago, while looking at the Web site for the Ft. Hood-based 312th MI bn, where I was stationed for a while, back when I was in the Army, I came across a whole bunch of wide-open (NT) servers full of confidential and/or classified information.
I didn't do anything to "crack" them; the password forms only worked with MSIE/Windows. Uisng Linux and Netscape I clicked right past the authorization forms and had complete, instant entry to all kinds of information about Ft. Hood units and the people in them, including plenty of stuff that shouldn't have been exposed to public view.
I immediately emailed the Ft.Hood public information office and explained what I had found. I got back a snotty, "We don't have time for this kind of nonsense from civilians" response.
Apparently nothing has changed on the security front at Ft. Hood -- except that now you are a criminal if you report problems.
Oh, my poor country...
- Robin
I got several copies of the infamous Bill Jones political spam even though I live in Florida and use a mailserver located in Virginia. And those spams came to me through an open relay in the Far East, not from an address identifiable as one associated with the Bill Jones campaign. I have since received polispam (nice new word, eh?) from several ultra-right Republican candidates in the midwest. They used honest "reply to" addresses, but I am nowhere near these candidatates' districts, so the only good they did by sending me spam was create potential donations -- for their opponents.
The only legitimate way I can see to send bulk political email right now is to buy lists of registered users from *local* TV station, newspaper, and other media Web sites. This way, almost all recipients would a) Either live in or be interested in the area in question; b) Be more interested in news than the average person, and therefore more likely to vote; and c) might have a fighting chance of already knowing about some of the local issues, which would mean *informative* polispam sent to them would probably not irritate them very much -- unless they strongly disagreed with positions held by the sending candidate, and in that case they would not view his or her polispam either more or less favorably than they'd view his or her brochures, TV spots or direct (postal) mail.
Careful targeting is the key to efffective polispam. Right now, for all I know, half the Korean language spam I get is "vote for me" messages. I also have a horrible vision of 1000+ candidates for the ~435 U.S. Congress/Senate seats all spamming the whole world constantly. Add in the many special interest groups (and even ordinary interest groups) that always have something to say about a campaign, and you'd have email pipes all over the world clogged with polispam for months before every U.S. election.
Now imagine a democratized China.
Scary.
- Robin
I *am* an ISOC member, and I have sat in on meetings and made my voice heard. I have never been denied access to ISOC board members, although I admit I haven't spent a lot of time asking for it.
My main concern with ISOC is that not nearly enough people have joined it and participate in local chapters. I have expressed this concern on the main ISOC email list, and ISOC is gradually moving toward more public participation.
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
The Washington Times has not changed. Still owned by the Moonies.
- Robin
...and then there are people like me -- writers -- who might be imagining hijack scenarios as potential plot devices. What about us? What about an air marshall or other undercover law enforcement type trying to think up every possible move a hijacked might make?
We're not terrorists, but we might be trying to *think* like terrorists. If we succeed too well, we're in trouble, aren't we?
- Robin
This was someone who came forward voluntarily and offered to do the interview. Over 3/4 of our interviews come about this way or as a result of reader suggestions (as long as those suggestions are accompanied by contact info).
- Robin
I don't live in South Carolina, but if you can point me toward viable opposition to Hollings, I can and will send money to his/her/their campaign fund(s).
- Robin
Andover.net (now OSDN) got bit hard by Unisys after Unisys suddenly decided to enforce their GIF patent. Not over Slashdot icons or crud like that, but over our Gifworks.com site.
Think about JPEG and The Gimp.... or OpenOffice... or any one of hundreds of graphics programs developed by people working either for free or developing small-time shareware utilities in their spare time all getting bills. This could easily happen.
All of these people are going to hate the JPG patent blackmailers, who will somehow have to learn to deal with that hatred while sipping margaritas by the pools of their Palm Beach mansions while their 19-year-old ex-Playmate "housekeepers" practice for the Nude Swan Dive competition.
Yep. Life is hard in the patent blackmail business. All those people hating you. Good thing there are all those gated communities, eh? Got to have someplace to live quietly where those communist hippie Free Software people and all those nasty little independent proprietary software developers (damn entrepreneurs are almost as bad as commies, you know) can't get at you....
- Robin
Hmmm... sounds to me like the routine data collection for this system would be done the same way it is now, by nurses and clerical employees, and that access to what really amounts to a sophisticated troubleshooting guide would free doctors from a lot of routine drudery and give them more time to treat patients.
We might also want to look at med school pricing. $300K seems a tad high to me.
But then, all medical costs seem high to me nowadays. I remember when, as a child (1960 or so), I had a broken arm and my father paid the doctor out of his pocket, and it wasn't a budget-breaking amount. When my kid had a broken arm in the 80s -- a crappy greenstick fracture I could have set myself -- the total bill was well over $1000. I have no idea how much a doc would charge today for reducing and casting a simple fracture, but I bet it would be huge.
We really need radical changes in how medical treatment is provided. It's a whole system, from medical school to insurance, that is draining the rest of the U.S.economy. If the tech tools will help, I say, "Bring them on."
- Robin
So blind people can lean out of the cab and get money. I used to drive a cab (before I got into the limo business), and took many blind people to ATM drive-throughs.
- Robin
I always tell phone solicitors I'm a writer and consultant, that I charge $120 per hour to analyze telephone sales pitches, and ask for their billing address "before you say anything else, please."
Hang up. Bye bye. I hardly get any solicitation calls these days...
- Robin
Sadly, WRNR shut off their Webcast months ago because of the original decision to charge over-the-air broadcasters additional fees to Webcast their programming.
This was the other hope: that interesting stations like WRNR would gradually move onto the Internet and keep indendent radio alive even in a world increasingly dominated by Murky Channel, Finite Broadcasting, and the rest of the "10 song playlist" crowd. It was killed last year but hardly anyone seemed to notice.
Sadly, my home in Elkridge is just beyond the reach of WRNR's tiny signal. Jake Einstein (WRNR owner; Damien's dad) once told me there's not a chance he can get the FCC to license him for more wattage, that I am just going to have to move...
Oh, well.
- Robin
I fixed the formatting error. Thanks.
As for straightupness, remember that we're talking about it in corporate CEO context here, not about a normal person. For a CEO, Ransom is pretty okay. He uses buzzwords because it's part of his job, but the use here is light compared to most.
(An aside: Peter Wayner and I have registered BuzzwordInstitute.org so we can issue "buzzword compliance certificates" and such; it's a joke, one we'll get going as soon as we have time to actually make the site. We can use some help if you're up for it; we're both very busy. We'll give you some sort of impressive title, even. "Executive Director in Charge of ______" or some such. Peter pointed out that inflated titles are part of buzzwordness, necessary "for executive retention purposes.")
Anyway, I'll admit that I prefer interviews with people like Moshe Bar, who simply speak their minds, but some of the corporate activities are important and it's worth knowing what the Linux corpses are up to even if you have an RMS shrine in your dining room before which you genuflect 5 times daily.
- Robin
Not only that, but the ability to run a broken box over to a local shop and have it fixed *while you wait* if it's an emergency is something only a local business can provide. It's also nice to deal with a human being instead of some crappy voice mail system that runs you through five layers of menus before you get to someone who can actually solve your problem.
There is a huge market for local systems integrators that serve other small local businesses. This is, BTW, the way Linux *should* be sold, but not many "Linux vendors" seem to have caught on to this.
If you had a small business, which would you rather do:
1) Call faceless operator at GiantComputerCo with a customer number.
2) Call your computer-hip Chamber of Commerce buddy Al at LocalCompouterCompany, who knows your name, your favorite brand of beer, and your opinion about the Orioles' chances in the playoffs this year?
I have more faith in Al, who I run into at the local bar all the time, than I will ever have in HPDellIBMGatewayCostcoBigCompany. I know where Al lives, he knows where I live. He is going to do his best to keep my computers working because I am important to him. Michael Dell and Carly Fiorina could care less about me. This makes a difference.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but when I buy anything critical to my business, I like to deal with people I know, who know me too.
I'm a Slashdot editor and possibly one of the 10 or 20 most widely-read tech/IT journalists in the world, and emails I sent to several major laptop manufacturers over a week ago still have not been answered. But when I call my local buddies in the computer business, the Slashdot thing and all the tech journo hotshotness mean nothing. They respond to me quickly and politely, same as they respond to everyone else.
I am a major small business believer and booster because I have always gotten better and more reponsive server from local small businesses. Small businesses don't need to buy CRM [Customer Relationship Management] software. The good ones have CRM *wetware* and the bad ones go broke.
Not that I'm against big business or anything, or that I invented the OSDN self-serve ad system specifically to give small businesses a chance to compete head to head with big ones online or anything....
- Robin
I know a fair number of "screwdriver shops" in the Baltimore area that do perfectly well. One of my best friends owns one, and he makes his living supplying high-end custom servers to academic institutions and government agencies.
Interestingly, 95% of what Joe sells runs Linux. If we saw accurate stats from all the small boxbuilders like Joe, I suspect we'd see a lot higher percentage of Linux use than we see in most popular surveys and analysts' reports.
Joe has never been featured in the Baltimore Sun, a newspaper that has gone downhill to an alarming degree in recent years (I used to write freelance op-ed for them, but now I don't even bother to submit any). I must admit that I am surprised and glad to see an article in the paper's business section that goes beyond the basic "rewrite the big company press release" level.
Daily journalism -- especially newspaper business journalism -- in this country is in sad shape. Maybe someday I'll get tired of the online rat race and apply to a small daily or two, but chances are they'd turn me down. The newspaper business is not only contracting, but is becoming increasingly insular.
Isn't it sad that an article like this is rare enough to deserve a Slashdot mention? Not that anyone in the newspaper business is ever going to listen to me (sigh).
- Robin
Wal-Mart has been selling HP computers running Windows for a number of years now.
:)
I notice that plenty of Fortune 500 enterprises buy from HP and use Windows.
But I live in a double-wide trailer and shopped at Wal-Mart a couple of days ago, so I'm sure this observation is not valid.
- Robin
I was being polite by giving the marketing guy the benefit of the doubt. He's a middle manager who must defend the indefensible if he wants to keep his job.
He didn't sound like he enjoyed saying what he was supposed to say, either.
I really feel sorry for the front-line customer "service" rep I talked to first, who said, "What they tell me to tell you is..." about TW Cable's inane "anti-piracy" (really anti-customer) policy.
- Robin