CompuServe Thread

2286 Bridge $1595???

4 messages in this thread
#24223From: Jay GrossDec 1, 1988 11:30 PM
How to predict the EXACT date CBM will ship something: Take the date the stuff is out of fashion. Add three months. Take the date the vapor was announced. Add twelve months. Take the date the competition bests the product. Add six months. Average all of the above and add six months. Alternatively, flip a coin. Heads it's a year late, tails it's two.
#24411From: SyndesisDec 3, 1988 12:36 PM
Jay, given that you've created this equation, you should test it as a true hypothesis. Plug in some real dates for announcements and shipment, and see what comes out… This reminds me of a conversation I had once with Arthur Abraham, the creator of Amiga Live!. He was thinking that we could all sue Tim King for taking time out of our lives, for every crash and reboot because of bugs in his code… he multiplied the number of Amiga users by the rate of crashes, and the time of reboot, and estimated work lost. Arthur was getting quite worked up about the total lost time, on the order of hundreds of man-years. I quietly suggested that we could make a similar calculation about the total time that interested people spent waiting for A%a Live, and he screamed in agony, and never mentioned his King lawsuit again…
#24476From: Jay GrossDec 3, 1988 10:19 PM
The only thing wrong with my equation is that itt's too conservative. I should have doubled all the multiply factors, and then it'd be right. Also, I should have added in a "stupidity quotient" for CBM's ivory tower approach to marketing.
#24477From: Jay GrossDec 3, 1988 10:21 PM
As for the Tim king thing, it's not something that CAN'T be fixed, but it IS somethinkg that HASN'T been fixed. The HASN'T isn't Timmy's fault. Besides, I hear tell the 1.3 shell looks an AWFUL lot like Metacomco's, and has only a few fewer bugs.