Oh, goody, goody.....

[Dan Lester]

How long will it be before the IE/NS thread takes over the list
like the censorship discussions did.  How many hours until
the first complaint of "shut up about IE vs NS and monopolies
and all that crap already."???   Not long, I'm sure.

I won't try to narrow it down to the capitalists vs the
socialists, or the business folks vs. the ivory tower
academics, although it is tempting to do so.  o-)

I'm willing to accept that both exist, and probably will for the
forseeable future, certainly for longer than the forseeable
future of Apple.   <oh, no, I may have started another flame
war>    Maybe it is because I'm an official Old Fart Propeller
Head, or maybe because I'm Mister Cynical, or the Chief of
Been There Done That.....but all of this is old news.  Look at
"Break up Ma Bell" and how well that turned out.  Yeah, sure.
 Look at IBM vs. The Seven Dwarves, and all the other
dwarves that died before it got down to seven.  Look at
CompuAdd vs. all the little companies that thought that
CompuAdd would kill them all off.  Gee, where is CompuAdd
today?  Or Univac?  Or others.   The first computer I worked
on was a tube and discreet diode (on phenolic boards holding
thousands of "fuse clips" to hold the diodes in").   It was
made by one of the early companies in computing, and it was
already an antique when I started using it in 1960.  Who
made it?  The clue was in the name.   None other than
Standard Oil!   They gave up on the computer business in the
fifties.  

NO, I'm NOT trying to shut off any discussion.  I have owned
too many lists for too long to think that is a "good thing", as it
just leads to meta-discussions about freedom of speech, first
amendment, etc, etc.  Nope, I've still got a functional delete
key in case, or when, I get tired of it.  

All of this stuff is fine for the Young Politicians Club, an
Economics class, or for Case Studies in Business while
you're working on MBA?  But I know that what we think and
argue about here on these topics doesn't mean diddly to the
people we're discussing.  They quite simply don't care.  I
learned that lesson in Endicott in the mid sixties.  That was
when a lot of us hot dogs (who were even young then) tried to
convince IBM of how vital our needs were to their continued
existence.  An IBM VP gave us some figures on it....and the
head of their Museums, Libraries, and Archives division,
which was doing a bit of "library software" at the time
confirmed it.....we were WAY less than one percent of their
business, and the top folks were ready to blow away the
library marketplace as an irrititing horsefly on the nose of their
triple crown champion.  And of course we were indeed
swatted and killed by what we then called the 1 Big Mother. 
They've survived.  And any hard times they've had since then
have nothing to do with the library market they gave up on as
a losing proposition.  

cheers

the cynical old fart

cyclops

and yeah, of course, these opinions are my own and don't
represent the opinions of any other men, women, or animals
(which were not harmed in the writing of this message) 
{ASPCA Certification Available on Request}



Dan Lester, Network Information Coordinator
Boise State University Library, Boise, Idaho, 83725 USA
voice: 208-385-1235   fax:  208-385-1394
dlester at bsu.idbsu.edu     OR    alileste at idbsu.idbsu.edu
Cyclops' Internet Toolbox:    http://cyclops.idbsu.edu
"How can one fool make another wise?"   Kansas, 1979.