Word: cards
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some software manufacturers have begun charging for what they used to provide free. MicroPro still lists its overburdened customer-service number but also offers a $90-per-year premium service contract with an unlisted help line. Bargain-basement software firms like Paperback take credit-card numbers, time calls with a stopwatch and charge customers by the minute. One result: fewer queries. "If people have to pay a few dollars for the phone call," says Osborne, "it's amazing how smart they...
...prime uses: archival scanning that once required exhaustive card- catalog searches and high-speed analysis of myriad numbers until the machine kicks out revelatory patterns. In 1979, for instance, the Miami Herald scanned with a computer all 2 million of Dade County's property-tax assessments to dig out inequities. In 1984 Long Island's (N.Y.) Newsday parsed every state- awarded highway contract in the area and all major county sewer contracts over eleven years to discover that five favored firms collected 86% of the boodle...
...weddings of fantasy (from The Godfather to Dynasty) and of privilege: Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger on April 26, Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg on July 19, and Fergie and Prince Andrew on July 23. They are all fair game for emulation in a democracy where a plastic card can grab you a piece of anyone else's dream and an extra slice of wedding cake. Linda Blackburn, a former catering consultant, and onetime wedding gown Retailer Linda Stuart started a Los Angeles firm offering advice at an average $1,500 a pop on how to get the shebang together...
Bradley's interest in tax reform was stirred, typically, not by a three- by-five card handed to him by a Senate aide but by his own firsthand experience. As a bonus baby for the New York Knicks in 1967, his eyes widened as his lawyer described all the ways he could shelter his six-figure income. "I wasn't just a player," he recalls. "I was a depreciable asset." On one road trip, when his teammates went to the movies to unwind, Bradley curled up with heavy tomes by Economist Milton Friedman and Tax Specialist Stanley Surrey and first...
...know me?"--then proceeds with a gentle spoof of his family connection: "Every time I appear on a talk show, people ask me about my father. Every time I give out an interview, people ask me about my father. Every time I pull out the American Express card, people treat me like my father. Come to think of it, that...