John after Donna after Lars:

> I love it. It is constructive, yet makes the point.
>
> The trick, and the key, will be getting the business press to
> cover the story and thus force HP management to respond.
>
> John (I've already contributed) Burke
>
> > Now imagine those people decide to not spend $150,000
> > for a printed page of paper, but make up their minds and
> > make that a donation for some charity, maybe asking the
> > HPe3000 division manager to represent them for handing
> > over the donation...
> >
> > Would Wall Street Journal consider a story about that?
> > Or would they just be angry about losing a $150K deal?

First of all kudos to Lars for thinking of this....   and I'm not at
all against the idea in principal....  but....  let me play hard-
nosed grinch for a moment;  and throw out another possible
variant:

Giving $150K to charity in this context might be noticed in
passing by the trade rags;  and it's not impossible that it would
rate a few words in the WSJ....  but it's hard for me to imagine
it would ever be much more than a short footnote on page
whatever on a slow news day...  and we would have zero
control over when it would run, if at all..

IF we were going to try something like this, I would hold out for:
Half-page instead of full page in WSJ;  give the other half to
charity like Lars suggested and hope that gets covered too...

BTW, I don't think an ad like Wirt put up or the variant of his
words that I just proposed or most of the other versions that
have been talked about would be grounds for being labeled
"kooks"....  I'm betting it would do just what is intended:  Get
people's attention (who and for how long is of course TBD)....

Ken Sletten