Posted on 11/30/2004 1:27:43 PM PST by kupia_kummi
The new fad in American politics in 2004 was data mining. The Republican and Democratic National Committees invested heavily in building large databases that used consumer marketing information to segment voters into groups for highly customized communications.
Given the seriousness of the effort in both parties, it is hard to see how the Democrats ended up being so far off in the messages they delivered to the much ballyhooed NASCAR-dad voter. Clearly, the Democrats attempt to co-opt the marketing techniques of corporate America was undermined by their disdain of big business and the purchasing habits of average Americans.
Next to President Bush, few things anger liberals more than Wal-Mart and Detroit's Big Three automakers. The liberal intelligentsia views Wal-Mart as the most frightening force in corporate America because it maintains a non-union workforce. The Big Three are scorned because they make trucks and SUVs that consume copious amounts of gasoline. Liberals believe America would be a much better country if more of us drove Toyota Priuses to Whole Foods each week instead of hopping into Ford F-150s to get our groceries at Wal-Mart.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Yes, I am quite aware of the history of MS-DOS and Microsoft in general. It is, after all, my profession. Your synopsis does nothing to explain how Microsoft successively dominated each and every viable competitor in the PC OS and productivity markets; Digital, IBM, Apple, BEOS, AMIGA, Novell, SCO, Word Perfect, Lotus, DBase, etc.. These are not lightweights. Microsoft beat ALL of them. The quality of their competitors' products is unquestionable; many repeatedly reviewed as superior to Microsoft. Many are still. But none of them did as good of a job selling. Their superior products did not win the game.
Even with nukes, though, I don't think pure EVs will ever be practical American vehicles. Perhaps in Europe or Japan, where distances are shorter and people have different ideas about what a vehicle's supposed to do...
Please note that hybrid vehicles do not need to be plugged into the wall socket, ever.
My view is that if they made this mystical vehicle people would just drive much more, essentially using the same amount of energy. Plus, you would have more traffic related injuries and deaths from these unsafe little go carts colliding with regular sized vehicles and other road hazards.
I think Rush has the best take on this. He says that the liberals always explain their losses to the fact that they are not getting out their message. Rush, knowing that the RATS will not take any advice, says that the RATS problem is not that they can't get out their message:
THEIR MESSAGE IS THEIR PROBLEM!
No, IBM beat all of them --- or rather, corporate inertia of using IBM beat all of them.
Microsoft went along for the ride.
Competitors of IBM had to use Microsoft because IBM used Microsoft, and those few people who would get off on a limb by using some hardware other than IBM had to answer the question from their boss "Will it work with our IBMs?"
And a monopoly was born.
I understand that. I was just envisioning a different type of hybrid that might become feasible with more practical recharging available.
IBM went to OS2, and MS stomped em.
OS2 was after IBM ceased to be a monopoly.
By the time 0S2 came around, the montra changed from "No one gets fired for buying IBM" to "No one gets fired for buying Microsoft."
It's all about risk-aversion, not marketing.
This is why the DemonRats are in one hell of a bind right now. They think their electorial defeat is a marketing problem, not a problem with their fundamental beliefs and "principles".
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