ckd | A funny observation

This year's renewal gift from The Economist was a USB flash drive (in red, of course, and with their logo).

A 256MB USB 2.0 (480Mb/s interface, though I suspect the chips aren't that fast) flash drive.

So in a few grams I now have more than 4x the storage on the machine I got through college with, where the external SCSI-1 hard drive weighed 14lbs and ran with a 5MB/s (=40Mb/s) interface, and I know that box wasn't pushing the SCSI limits.

But that's not the funny part.

The Economist is, in my opinion, the most erudite weekly news magazine out there. Dry British wit is part of their house style, and their simple advertisements (short sentences on a red background) are both distinctive and amusing. Typos happen, but are quite rare, and their language is almost painfully precise. Even the package that the USB drive came in fits the image; it's a red box, with "Exceed your capacity." on it in their standard typeface.

However, inside the box, under the drive, lanyard, and cable, I found a folded piece of paper:

USB DISK
User's Install Manual
(For vendor peference only)

quickly manual

I won't transcribe the whole thing, but there's something in there about running "Mangager.exe".

I'm also instructed by the "GUARANTEE ITEM" section: "Dear user: Thank you to use our products. please seriously read the item and carefully keep of the guarantee card."