ben6 said:
...They can and do control what reference samples go out to various websites otherwise they'd go in financial trouble .
Oh, no, don't tell me he hit you with the old, "We're really as poor as church mice, and you have no idea what it does to our budget to send out a dozen review cards!" line, did he?
I can see the headlines now:
NVIDIA Files for Protection under Chapter 13
ALCATRAZ--nVidia Corp. HQ, Dec 25 2003. A shaken (not stirred) and disheveled James T. Kirk, Science Officer for the NVIDIA Corporation, looked out from behind bars today and delivered a bombshell:
"I am James T. Kirk," he said, "and as I am the Captain of the NVIDIA PR department, I declare that although I was ready to negotiate, and had been living in a 6x10-foot hole in the ground without even a cell phone until today, our creditors would not cooperate, and so we are now in bankruptcy."
At this point Kirk paused and looked to the ceiling, shook his fists and screamed, "Ra-a-a-a-a-a-a-adeo-o-o-o-on! Ra-de-on!!!" in front of several television cameras and a stunned crowd of network news anchormen and reporters from around the world.
Dan Rather was seen to crumple to the ground and collapse in a heap of wracking sobs, muttering, "What am I going to do with Doom 3?", interspersed with colorful wailing while ripping off his suit lapels, a mini-drama that lasted for several minutes while Kirk continued to bellow and shake his fists at the heavens.
The last words heard from Kirk prior to his lapsing into what doctors say is an irreversible coma, were these as this reporter heard them:
"It was that [expletive deleted] last review card we sent out that did it! Mother[expletive deleted]! How could I have known that it would be the proverbial straw! I could not have known! They didn't tell me! No!" It was immediately after those remarks that Kirk began banging his head against the bars of his cell prior to collapsing to lay beside the twitching form of Dan Rather on the cold concrete floor.
Although doctors say that it isn't likely that Kirk will recover, there was some good news: Dan Rather will most likely make a full recovery aside from somehow having bitten off his own tongue and swallowing it shortly after his own collapse. Despite doing an emergency procedure later in the hospital to retrieve Rather's tongue, doctors indicated that Rather had digested much of it before they could recover it, and so they were able to reattach only the small portion of Rather's tongue which remained. This reporter visited a cheerful and upbeat Rather several hours later in his hospital room, where Rather told me:
"Nnnn-nhnhnh uh-nnnunundi innubiirnadi uh---nnnnnn!," after which Rather attempted to laugh heartily and I found his laughter contagious and had no problem in joining in, even though I wasn't sure what Rather had just told me. I provided Rather with a pen and notebook, with which he informed me:
"I am retiring and moving to El Paso!," a sentiment which both of us found extremely funny for the next several minutes in which there was much back-slapping, chortling, guffawing and elbow punching between us. This reporter left a smiling Dan Rather that day, wiping tears of joy from his face, not having laughed so much since watching the latest rerun of the Honeymooners.
All's well that ends well...
