New subject: Marketing (was Re: SemiOT: Mourning for Classic Computing

16 Aug 2001

On Thu, 16 Aug 2001 07:15:53 -0400 Douglas Quebbeman
&lt;dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com&gt; writes:
...
  We had a kid in the neighborhood who was a great
show-off...
 he used to ride his bicycle head-on at cars, doing a wheely,
 then veer off at the last second. 
Hey! That could have been me!  We put together a bike from 
misc parts, but didn't have a proper rear wheel (a 'front' wheel
was substituted).  The result?  The Kamikaze Bike:  
No Brakes.  No Pedals.  No Fear.  I piloted that sucker down the
street in front of our house (it was a fairly steep hill).
I crashed and burned into a hedge at the bottom, but oooooh 
what a rush.

...
  I figured if he survived to adulthood, then
there'd be a
 job in marketing for him. 
Well, I survived into adulthood, and became a programmer--
go figure.

...
  Marketing  merely raises the ultimate costs of a
product, so 
 perhaps you'll understand why I don't have a very high 
 opinion of it. Or of a generation or programmers who rose 
 to serve marketing's needs. 
Marketing has another *very* undesirable effect-- It allows
lousy products to succeed, and good products to fail (for
lack of).

I would rant and rave about how these 'successful' products 
then frequently become 'standards', but I won't beat that rotting,
stinking horse anymore.

OB Classic:

Yesterday I scored a VaxStation 4000/90 with 2 x 600mb drives, 
and 128Mb of RAM (or thereabouts-- it has 8 x 16Mb simms).

Jeff
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