Although I agree with your assertion, the misconception comes from the fact the standard is "ISO 9000 - Quality management". The disconnect comes from the assumption that quality == good. The standards where introduced for quality management and to provide a basis to improve product quality. In addition most companies introduced ISO 9001 in the hopes to improve product and service quality. The silver bullet to solve all quality issues. What most missed is the simple fact that you need to do something with all the data you collected and actually improve the production process.

Um logic fallacy much? Following that logic, nobody would have a bank account. People are not born with a bank account, so with that logic, they could not get any. In almost all cases where people don't have a bank account is because they have bad credit based on the plain fact that they failed to pay their dues. When you have no prior debt your credit score is plainly not so abysmal that you will not get a bank account; they won't give you a large credit though.

There is no reason why it can not. If you can handle the civil disorder charges afterwards, you know since it is in a public place...

Sounds like fun...

I did no say that Columbus did not have an important part in world history. But in the US the meme "Columbus discovered America" is somewhat misguided. But then again world history is glossed over in US schools.

How far do you get in 7 years, if you walk?

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Welcome to Pirate ISP, the place where we don't care about taxes.

Yes but measured at what layer? Do Ethernet/ATM/PPP/IP/TCP headers count against the bandwidth? In some cases the headers make up biggest part of the bandwidth. I see this being a problem...

You are well aware that IBM was a merger from the three companies Tabulating Machine Company, International Time Recording Company and Computing Scale Company to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Company in the year 1880. They then renamed the company to International Business Machines in 1924. Their core business was building tabulators, time clocks and other specialized machines.

The general purpose computer was not necessarily the most useful tool for business. In the aforementioned 60s and 70s some large companies used them for accounting purposes, but even there their use was limited. For universities and research labs general purpose computers was more useful and here you found them there.

That does not mean that IBM did not have their hands in other specialized applications. You could probably equip you entire company with only IBM products. Only until the late 70s and 80s did the IBM general purpose computers find their way into mainstream business applications.

Have you actually looked at the picture?! The monitor is in portrait orientation... That looks like 4:3 ratio; or rather a 3:4.

But don't take my word for the meaning of the word "orientation" when it comes to displays or paper, take Wikipedia's article: Page orientation.

Just to be pedantic... 7 light-years.

The notion that Columbus, "discovered" America is odd at best. The fact that it was already inhabited and he was not even the first European sort of renders the "discovered" point moot. He not even was able to notice that he was not really in India. Sure the travel was sort of epic for the time, but the "Columbus discovered America" meme is sort of nonsense.

+1 Funny

True that, but in the 60s and 70s you would rather find a general purpose computer at an university or research facility than a business.

The difference between NASA and PARC is that NASA just followed the narrow goal of space exportation and PARC (being XEROX) tried to get the computer into the office. The use of computers for space exploration is does not bare many fruits for normal people. On the other hand almost everybody needs text processing and table calculations, including people that do not work in offices.