Karen's Korner

Karen's Korner
Authored by: Karen L. Mansbridge-Wood, May 24, 2000

ZDNet: Conspiracy Theory

It was announced in this newsgroup and other OS/2 related
newsgroups yesterday that ZDNet was hosting a poll with the
subject "Is OS/2 Dead?" This has become quite an interesting
little intellectual puzzle.

1. ZDNet stated that IBM had made an official announcement that
OS/2 was dead. The source they referenced was an article from
Networks News in the UK, dated May 17, 2000, written by Nick
Farrell. Following their link to the article does not, in fact,
lead to any IBM announcement. It leads to an article in which
the author claims that an unnamed IBM source clarified IBM's
OS/2 Strategy 2000 document for him. For all anybody knows the
"source" is a sales clerk, a bus boy in the lunchroom, or
non-existent. Certainly no such "clarifying" material exists on
IBM's own web site, where the OS/2 Strategy 2000 document
remains in it's unaltered form. There has been no such new
announcement.

2. Within 15 minutes of the fact of this poll's existence being
made known on OS/2 newsgroups, the URL for the poll was changed,
and anyone using the old URL was redirected to an unrelated
"OS/2 is dead" article.

3. Within minutes of the new URL being posted on USENET, that
link was also being redirected to the unrelated "OS/2 is dead"
article.

4. After several hours of OS/2 users attempting to log in their
votes unsuccessfully, and posting this fact to USENET so that
other OS/2 users would realize the poll had been terminated
rather abruptly, the poll magically reappeared on ZDNet. In
fact, there were discussions on OS/2 mailing lists about the
poll being terminated and the explanation offered was that there
was nothing suspect about the fact of the poll being terminated
because it was only intended to run for 24 hours. The
suspicious element in this explanation is that the poll still
hasn't been terminated. It was only terminated long enough for
OS/2 users to believe it was terminated, and then it was
reinstated. The poll is running and tabulating votes as I
write.

I wonder if they'll have the nerve to pull it again now that an
announcement on OS/2 newsgroups has been made that it exists?
Could they be *that* stupid? Or that obvious? Well, they were
stupid enough, and obvious enough, to reference an article
referring to an unnamed IBM source as an "IBM announcement" so I
suppose it is entirely
possible.

http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/screensavers/interact/story/0,3656,2572332,00.html

Karen

Don't miss these other fine articles from Karen's Korner:

Papyrus Office 8 International English Version - 4/22/00
Here a Q, There a Q, Everywhere an ICQ - 4/26/00
OS/2 Is Rescued By The Internet - 5/4/00
Why OS/2 ISVs Are So Upset With The OS/2 Warp 2000 Strategy- 5/6/00
Papyrus Office 8 Shipping - 5/14/00

Karen L. Mansbridge-Wood offers "Karen's Korner" a user site dedicated to the promotion and support of IBM's OS/2 Operating System. The site is currently under construction, but most of the features are fully implemented. Feel free to browse. Participation
in the message board and chat area require the use of a password, which may be obtained by subscribing to her address list.
Stop by and sign her guestbook today!