--- Lawrence de Bivort wrote: > Jones, in fairness, your truncation does miss my point. Repost with the full quotation beyond the '...' and I'll be glad to respond.
Yes, no problem. I hate it when someone does this to me, even if I find myself agreeing with the strained point which they were making by using only the truncated part of a message. Here is the complete paragraph of LdB: "My sense is that everyone does the best they can - all the time. It is perhaps the greatest tragedy of mankind that we can see better ways of doing things, but are stopped from pursuing them by the tired 'realities' of money, competing priorities, and disagreements among ourselves." Let me say that in the context of GM and Ford, they are giant companies which do not, or should not, suffer those same "tired realities" which do keep most of society from moving ahead at full pace ... at least they only suffer from what is self-imposed by internal stupidity. IOW - They have the money (or at least the good credit ;-) which would allow them to pursue a grander vision, rather than the tunnel vision of maximizing short term profitability. IOW the "competing priorities" of Ford and GM are those which are imposed by their own incompetent management. Perhaps Lawrence, who may have some contact with these companies, will be far more diplomatic on that general assessment, but he can speak for himself. And- as to their internal disagreements (Ford and GM) these too are due precisely the result of the shortsighted corporate culture in which they chose to perpetuate and wallow - this is a culture where the bottom line, not the customer nor the environment, nor the public's concerns, predominate. In short, there may be only a small net disagreement between my view and that of Lawrence, except that he may be more forgiving of high level management at these companies. And yes - it is too easy to be critical, or make untested suggestions, from an "armchair" perspective... and that is one reason that in the original posting, instead of only complaining, I chose to introduce a concept which in fact, I know that they have been exposed-to in the past, but have declined to pursue. How do I know this? Well, both companies own patents which go part of the way there, and in addition I have also in the past submitted RFPs to both companies, which they declined, but for reasons which contradict what their own patents and IP claim to be accurate. IOW there is a massive "high level disconnect" at both companies, between management and what little creative staff they can tolerate- and ample evidence of "Peter-Principle-type" incompetence, deserving of public scorn- even by "Monday morning quarterbacks"... ... ain't hindsight great? 20-20 as they say. Jones
