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| “Any CEO
of any company...who is able to sleep at night is probably smoking dope.
DID SOMEONE SAY, ‘WHY 2K?’ If you believe everything you read on the Internet (Hint: Don’t.), then the following memo was circulated by a programmer who had overheard a conversation about the need to fix his company’s Y2K problem: I am proud to report that I have completed the “Y-to-K” conversion. All calendars have been updated, so they now read: “Januark, Februark....” Internet postings suggest that, come New Year’s Day, computers the world over will send out memos like the one that follows. Let’s hope it happens somewhere—just not at Context: Our records indicate that you have not used any vacation time over the past 100 years. Please either take 9,400 days off work, or notify our office and your next paycheck will reflect payment of $8,277,432.22.
HOPELESSLY DEVOTED Dead Heads, move over. Here come the Dell Heads. Some Dell customers are so enamored of the computer company that they make an annual road trip to the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. This year, the pack of several dozen devotees not only made up T-shirts and set up tours of the corporate offices, but they also scored an invite to Michael Dell’s new multimillion-dollar home. What’s next? Dell tattoos?
DELIVERANCE EBay says that more than one in 20 packages delivered in the U.S. today is the result of an eBay auction.
DREAM WEAVER America Online and Roper asked current Internet users, "What would you prefer if
you were stranded on a desert island?" They were told:
THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD “The old boy network is being replaced by the computer network.”
BACK IN THE OLD DAYS.... Remember talking to your parents or grandparents about what life was like before television? In decades to come, you may find yourself having to describe to incredulous kids and grandkids what it was like to scrounge around for coins or reasonably crisp dollar bills when you wanted to buy something from a vending machine. The reason: Technology from TeleVend is making it possible to purchase an ice-cold soda simply by tapping a code into your cell phone or beaming credit-card information to the machine from your Palm Pilot.
CLICK HEARD ’ROUND THE WORLD It could be that the days of paper-pushing bureaucrats are numbered. When Congress sent the president a bill to limit corporate liability for the Y2K problem, the document went via e-mail—the first time that electrons, rather than paper, had made the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue as the president prepared to sign a bill into law. But the bureaucrats aren’t dead yet—this is Washington, after all. Congress followed the e-mail with a parchment copy of the Y2K bill, and the president was expected to sign the traditional, paper version. Digital signatures will have to wait.
PRECIOUS MOMENTS How long does it take for on-line shoppers to bail and go elsewhere if they have to wait for a Web page to download? Zona Research says a third of shoppers disappear within eight seconds. How much business do e-tailers lose to competitors by being slow? $4.35 billion a year, Zona estimates.
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