Re: XyWrites 4 and 5 (was: RE: Dataviz and xyW)

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Yo Intl. wrote:
>
> 
> >TTG develops niche products. How do you imagine they could distribute a
> >niche product widely, in competition with the "majors?" If you were an
> >office worker, or the person in charge of them, what motivation would
> >you have to, say, expunge Microsoft Word from your system in favor of a
> >product you'd never heard of?
> >Leslie Bialler
>
> Sure, but once upon a (short) time ago, XY was a "major" and "widely
> distributed".

Yeah, and once I could hear people in the next room, and I could see
without glasses, and my knees didn't hurt when it rains. And when XY was
"major" and "widely distributed," there were probably one-tenth the
number of computer users there are now, and they all knew what they were
doing and didn't need confirmations of confirmations and dialog boxes,
and supposedly intuitive icons, and talking paperclips.

> Dig in your PC mags, and you'll find editors awards and
> statements that their whole staff uses it,

My point. Editors.

> full-page ads, and the like.
> I also remember major German manufacturers demanding documentation send
> in "Eurotext" i.e. XY format. How did this curious slide occur?
>
"Bill Gates has won--I got the postmodern blues."
-- Patricia Barber, "Postmodern Blues," from her CD _Modern Cool_


> --"It is astonishing that those who spent decades recounting the
> --'lessons of Vietnam' have themselves failed to heed those lessons."
> --J.Schlesinger

Isn't it, though? Migod! Here we are bombing bridges again, to little
effect again, and letting politicians make military decisions again. Oh
well, when all else fails we'll send in the Greeks and the Italians. I'd
pay to see _that_! It'd be funnier than "Duck Soup."

--
Leslie Bialler
Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx
> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup