96 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
96 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
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This humorous article appears in the April 16, 1984 edition of `Micro
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MarketWorld' on page 90 in the `MicroMania' column.
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PC Readers Locate Stories with New Index Program
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By Richard Loftin
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Contributing Editor
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Last fall PC World scooped the end-user computer press by binding into the
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magazine a demo disk of Microsoft's new "Word" word processor. Almost
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immediately, arch-rival PC magazine began working on a retaliatory move. The
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person they retained to head up the project just happened to be my good friend
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Jack Forrest, consultant and programmer extraordinaire.
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"I'm writing a program that will be bound into the pages of PC," Jack
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explained. "It will be far more useful to PC sunscribers than the `Word' demo
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ever was to PC World readers."
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"What kind of program is it?" I asked.
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"It's a retrieval program - designed to aid subscribers in locating pertinent
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PC articles."
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"You mean it will help people retrieve PC articles from their files?"
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"No, it will help people retrieve PC articles from their magazine."
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"I'm not sure I follow you."
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"Have you ever tried to find an article in PC? It's like hunting for a
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needle in a haystack. The book is mostly advertisements."
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"Why don't you start by looking in the table of contents?"
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"It's useless," Jack said. "All I get there are page numbers. PC doesn't
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bother to number its pages."
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"I was looking at a PC last week, and I could have sworn I saw some page
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numbers."
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"You were just lucky - most people go for hours without finding a page
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numbers. The only pages with numbers are the few without ads."
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"Do you have any idea why the magazine has so much advertising?"
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"Sure. All the vendors are fighting each other for shelf space in the
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stores. One of the first questions a prospective retailer asks a vendor is,
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`What's your advertising buget?'"
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"You mean the ads aren't there to influence end user's?"
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"Of course not. How many of the computer ads do you ever read?"
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"I looked at a Hyperion ad once."
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"There are always exceptions. But face it - most of these ads wouldn't get
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read if they were the only ones in the magazine. If I were a vendor, I'd take
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my ad money and put it into bribes."
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"You seem to know how to play this game," I remarked. "Can you tell me whose
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idea it was for PC to go from a monthly to a bi-weekly publication?"
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"Actually, the circulation department came up with that one. They're trying
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to hold down the size of the magazine by spreading the ads over two issues a
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month. They're scared that if the magazine gets much larger, they'll be forced
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to ship it by parcel post or UPS."
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"I hope for everyone's sake their strategy works. Now, tell me about your
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retrieval program."
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"It's simple. The program allows you to find any article in PC by locating
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the advertisement nearest it."
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"And how do you locate the ad?"
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"By using a ruler. The program tells you how many inches into the magazine
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the ad is located. You lay the magazine flat on a table and measure the
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thickness to determine where to open it. Then you look for the bingo number of
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the first ad you see and enter it into the computer."
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"Why the bingo number?"
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"Because every ad has one, which is to say virtually every page has one.
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Based on the bingo number, the computer tells you how many pages forward or
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backward to turn to reach the particular article. If you've done a good job
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with your ruler, the article will be nearby."
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"Another example of using your personal computer to solve an everyday
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problem," I observed. "Do you have any other ideas for PC?"
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"Well, the magazine in its present form is limited to desktop use,"
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Jack noted. "I'd like to see them add a handle to it. I'm sure it would be
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much more practical as a transportable."
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Call The Works BBS - 1600+ Textfiles! - [914]/238-8195 - 300/1200 - Always Open
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