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Aug. 18th, 2009 at 6:38 AM

Announcements of Big Deals that Didn't Quite Work: Press Releases of the Damned!

Windows Vista will usher in a new era of device compatibility.
AOL and Time-Warner will lead the world in creating and delivering Internet content.
And Yahoo was never about Search.

( 5 comments — Leave a comment )

ccdesan

Aug. 18th, 2009 03:13 pm (UTC)

Good find. I was once involved with a company that did press releases like that. The enterprise is now only a memory...

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sleepyjohn00

Aug. 18th, 2009 06:08 pm (UTC)

if it was that kind of a company, it's probably a two-bit memory.

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ccdesan

Aug. 18th, 2009 07:06 pm (UTC)

Actually, they started out with 16-bit Data General machines. Under the AOS/VS operating system, typing in "xyzzy" would come back with "Nothing happens." When DG upgraded their CPU's to a 32-bit system, the command then yielded "Twice as much nothing happens."

I love stuff like this and wish there were more of it. Our world is far too stuffy for my liking...

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sleepyjohn00

Aug. 18th, 2009 08:04 pm (UTC)

Someone tried to name a town in California Xyzzy. I don't know if he got away with it.

Before you ask, I did not pose for Wikipedia's featured article of the day.

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ccdesan

Aug. 18th, 2009 09:05 pm (UTC)

It was a simpler, more innocent world in 1944 when Curtis Howe Springer managed to convince people that Zzyzx was, indeed, a legitimate word and hence was able to name a town in California accordingly.

Today, "Xyzzy" would be tough to get through any legislature, even one as brain-dead as California's. Anyway, "syzygy" is always there to make fun of...

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