2nd Poll Data *EXPOSED!!!*
Posted by: up_yours
Date posted: Wed, 18 Jun 1997
...Thanks to the help of the infamously reknown
hacker extreme,
s6i6x, I've managed to acquire some important
facts about who was polled by telephone and participated in
IW's semi-annual Readers' Insult event. The
data, needless to say, was rather interesting.
...First off, the three hundred people polled had
an employment breakdown as follows:
Profession | # Polled |
Phone Sex Operators (PSO) | 169 |
Midwestern Farmers (MF) | 81 |
Small Engine Mechanics (SEM) | 25 |
Domesticated Avian Breeders (DAB) | 12 |
Janitorial Workers (JW) | 8 |
Union Steel Workers (SW) | 5 |
...Next, they were asked what their favorite operating
system was:
Operating System | # of Votes |
Quake | 102 |
Diablo | 91 |
C&C Red Alert | 57 |
Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time | 30 |
IBM OS/2 Warp | 21 |
Solitaire under Windows NT 4.0 Workstation | 9 |
...Now, to break down the votes by who voted for what:
Operating System |
Total # of Votes |
# of Votes PSO |
# of Votes MF |
# of Votes SEM |
# of Votes DAB |
# of Votes JW |
# of Votes SW |
Quake |
102 |
21 |
17 |
33 |
2 |
14 |
15 |
Diablo |
91 |
22 |
17 |
11 |
2 |
10 |
29 |
C&C Red Alert |
57 |
17 |
11 |
15 |
5 |
7 |
2 |
Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time |
30 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
22 |
3 |
IBM OS/2 Warp |
21 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
18 |
1 |
1 |
Solitaire on Windows NT 4.0 Workstation |
9 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
...So, from the data, the following conclusions can
be derived:
- Most of those polled had no clue what an OS was.
- Of those polled, only the Domesticated Avian Breeders - or, in other words,
Macaw Ranchers - by any majority of their group understood what an OS
was, and what it was all about. However, since that same majority selected OS/2
by a six-to-one margin, their votes were, as Sandy Reed said, tossed out.
- Note to CEO's: There's obviously a lot of your janitorial staff goofing
off on the job. Granted, their choice was good - in fact, better than Windows NT - but we're
dealing in economics here...
- Most of the Union Steel Workers preferred Diablo as an OS in the poll. I assume
that there's a patch out there that turns the demons into union-busting goons?
- By contrast, Small Engine Mechanics preferred Quake. Must be the resemblance
of the big white lightning-throwing demons to their customers once they've
received the repair bill...
- Phone Sex Operators appear to enjoy games of violence and conquest. What the data
above does not show is that the PSO's prefer playing these games while at work.
IW must have called the "Beat My Guest" lines for those responses...
- The most important factor in all this is that a LOT of the tallys didn't quite add up.
I suspect this might be what led Sally to believe that the OS/2 "zealots" somehow
had managed to stuff the ballot box. Of course, this assumes that we give her the benefit
of the doubt and assume that she wasn't simply running an analysis on a buggy old P5 box.
...Well, there you have it. Now, all we need is to see the data from the first poll, and
then we can do some comparisons.
OM