[bowerbird]

the osborne i was my first computer -- one of the great loves of my life.

and your recounting of the debacle around adam's second machine is correct.
(although -- like most people -- you've forgotten to say he had little choice
about pre-announcing his "executive" because he was trying to raise money
to produce the machine by selling stocks to individual investors.)

but notice that that is _not_ what amazon did here. first of all, they didn't
announce this -- and still haven't. second, they have no existing product
that might be accidently cannibalized by a premature pre-announcement.

if you're positing that they deliberately let this rumor slip, so as to sabotage
the sony reader, then that's a different type of strategy, but one that already
_has_ a name -- namely "f.u.d." (for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"), and it's
the specialty of another seattle-area company called "microsoft", thank you.

but i don't think that's what happened. because remember, it wasn't amazon
that blew this thing out of proportion. it was rothman over at teleblog and
some people here and on some other blogs, people who have been telling us
for _years_ that a cheap machine is right around the corner, who are now
_desperate_ that they've sacrificed so much of their credibility on this, and
are looking for _anything_ that might salvage a bit of it. but sorry, charlie...

cheap machines _will_ come. but it won't be sooner, it will be later.

even the o.l.p.c. -- which is pushing the edge of the envelope, what with
their research and development bringing about _major_ accomplishments --
won't come as soon as we'd like, considering that their may 30th deadline
for ordering has passed without any big announcements, unfortunately...

-bowerbird