On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 02:42:10PM -0000, MJ Ray wrote:

Mark Evans wrote:

...

Sounds like this is heading for the level of marketing for a car which offers features along the line of "an internal combustion engine", "pnumatic tyres", "hydrolically actuated brakes", etc...

Far be it from me to promote non-copyleft material, but there's a lovely Dilbert cartoon in which Dogbert sets himself up as a financial adviser and promotes the idea that financial products are too complicated for normal people so customers should just give all their money to him.

The idea of marketing something by trumpeting some "feature" which is either part of the basic function or utterly irrelevent goes back at least 50 years. Even to the point where radios contained components not actually connected to anything because the greater the number of transistors the better the radio...

I think we're in danger of heading the same way here. The obvious

As in "School admin systems are so complex only a large company, like CES, could possibly do them correctly. (Pay no attention to those people in Essex and Manchester."

step to me is to start educating people. That shouldn't be a problem for education, should it? I don't know much about LEA publications, not being in that sector, but would they publish a reply where you ask these sort of questions as part of their next bulletin?

Taking comments from readers, what a strange and democratic idea... Anyway that might mean that they'd need to trim down their "agony aunt" sections with such obviously made authors. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763