...a word about our sponsor...

This blog is a little over a year old, and during that time, it has gained enough traction to attract sponsorship. We thought very hard about whether to permit sponsorship on this blog, and decided we should, and so we did. We are pleased to welcome ProSoft as our sponsor. The blogsphere is awash with sponsorship, and it doesn't, for example, keep Glen Reynolds or Cory Doctorow from being as opinionated as they want to be, on any issue at all. Glen and Cory are about as opinionated as they come. So it is, of course, with your humble proprietor. The fact that this blog now has a sponsor will not in any way affect it, other than to add a spot of color to the bottom of the post. We are grateful to ProSoft, and to the other upcoming sponsors, for believing that what we say here is important enough to justify underwriting it. The only rule I keep to here, and the only rule Control keeps to, when serving as the voice of the end-user is that we will not do any gratuitous vendor-bashing. The key to that is gratuitous. If we feel that a vendor needs a swift one, it will be administered. We have an 18-year track record through four editors, of being willing to administer appropriate chastisement when necessary, regardless of the chastisee's advertising budget or size. I don't see any reason to change now. We will also treat end-user companies equally, as we always have done. As a very longtime automation professional, in roles as diverse as field service technician and editor in chief, I have friends who are end-users, who are vendors, and who are integrators and OEMs, and I have products that I personally think are better than others. But I bet you can't tell what products those are, or necessarily who my friends are. That's the way it should be. Walt