Sender: Robert_Ebert.OsBU_North@xerox.com
From: bebert.osbu_north@xerox.com

RISKS-13.34 (Friday 3 April 1992) carried a submission from me forwarded from
TidBITS#114/01-Apr-92 about Backing up Macs and PC's over the phone.

TidBITS#115/06-Apr-92 carried the following notice:

  To quote from the excellent movie "Spinal Tap," "it's a fine line
  between clever and stupid." I may have fallen off that fine line
  in writing TidBITS#114, because despite a few clues and hints, the
  fact that it was indeed our annual April Fools issue appears to
  have gone generally unnoticed. Almost everything in that issue was
  false - though often entirely possible and even intensely
  desirable - with the exception of the IBM marketing move (which
  was strange enough to be an April Fools joke), and the Dolch
  projection panel (which I used to make the last article more
  believable). Sorry folks, if I threw you for a loop.

So, there you have it.  I don't consider myself to be terribly gullible, but I
was taken in.  [I didn't have this problem with any other April jokes... I
don't think.  But then, most of the ones I got were substantially more
obviously jokes than this.  Xerox is *not* going to lease it's newly acquired
buildings in Palo Alto to the Mariott hotel chain, and an "Amusement park for
Silicon Valley geeks" requiring "magnetic badges built into pocket protectors"
is *not* going to be opened on the neighboring land at Page Mill & Foothills.]

In any case, apologies all around for spreading what turned out to be false
information.  The backup scheme described seems entirely plausible, and even
lucrative.  Looking over the rest of the TidBITS digest, I suppose there are
clues to be had... in retrospect.  In comparison to the rest of the silliness
that the rest of the net goes through every April, TidBITS was the height of
subtlety.  Ah, well, whatever it takes to relieve those tax-time blues, I
suppose.

The IBM marketing move (from TidBITS#114/01-Apr-92):
  Ralph Amundesen wrote with some interesting information about IBM.
  Evidently, IBM is so worried about OS/2 that the company has
  expanded its battalion of salesbots by drafting the entire
  company. I don't know if this will go as far as dark-suited IBM
  folks out pounding the pavement ("Excuse me, Ma'am, may I come in
  and demonstrate what OS/2 2.0 can do for you today?"), but all
  344,000 employees are in it for fun and prizes.  It's a step up
  from grade school, but IBM employees could win medals, IBM
  software, IBM hardware, or even cold hard cash. I sure hope they
  don't stop in here since I don't have 30 MB free under SoftPC to
  test it. Sheesh, wouldn't you think it would be easier to just buy
  a few TV spots like Microsoft is doing?

The Dolch projection panel (from TidBITS#114/01-Apr-92):
  Interestingly, Dolch Computer Systems just released a color LCD
  projection panel that can double as a stand-alone screen for a
  mere $8500.

			--Bob (bebert.osbu_north@xerox.com)

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