David VanHorn wrote:
>> That one can be solved: redefine the meaning of 'b' and give them the 1Mb.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, they did say "megabyte".
> 
> All the requirements that I mentioned turned out to have no more grounding
> than a discussion over drinks.  We had a competitor (tiny) who was using a
> 16 bit processor for the same application, and so the marketing guys turned
> this into "16 bit technology" and decided we needed it.  The job could be
> done with a 4 bit processor if it came right down to it, but of course was a
> trivial fit for an 8 bitter.
> 
> This is what happens when system architecture decisions are made by guys who
> send .exe files to ASCII mode printers. (really..)

I used to get mad about this type of thing, but over the years I 
realized that the Marketing folks do sometimes know their business 
better than I do, and if they add an "odd" requirement, there's usually 
a reason.

Example: I worked for a startup data-center company.  They dictated that 
we'd be using Cisco PIX or Checkpoint Firewall-1 for the firewall 
solution, period.  The security engineer was pissed - he hadn't even 
done an evaluation of any of the various products available to see if 
they met the technical requirements, but in the long-run, we realized 
that the Marketing people couldn't "sell" anything other than Cisco or 
Checkpoint to potential business customer's clueless managers who hadn't 
heard of anything else.

Just one of many examples I could provide.  But sometimes the Marketing 
"stupidity" is actually them doing their part of the job... figuring out 
when they're just full of it and when they're actually helping becomes 
an art form in and of itself.

Nate
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