Английский язык: Аннотирование и реферирование текста

229 This miscalculation – if that is what it is – by the large vendors stems from their history of catering to companies rather than people, says Pure Networks' Mr. Dowling (who used to be at Intel and who hired some 40 of his 60 employees from Microsoft). During the infor- mation-technology boom, the industry sold its wares mostly to chief information officers or chief technology officers with big budgets. These are customers who tend to be receptive toward buying "solu- tions" rather than products, and often hire consultants such as IBM Global Services to pull together hardware and software from various vendors. But "consumers don't buy as an IT manager does," says Mr. Dowling. "They buy spur-of-the-moment and hodge-podge; they buy things, not systems." To the extent that the digital home is not a thing but a solution, he thinks, "the vendors are all fooling themselves." The vendors, naturally, disagree vehemently. "When you ask cus- tomers what they want, they will never tell you. You have to show them first," says Microsoft's Mr. Mundie. That is why Microsoft has, since 1994, had an impressive (or, to some people, intimidating) mock digital home on its campus in Redmond, Washington State, which it updates with the latest gadgets. Intel, NETGEAR, HP and most other self- respecting technology firms have similar mock-ups for display. There is, argues Motorola's Mr. Burke, a huge "need to educate consumers about the value of a connected home and lifestyle." Talking the same language Outside the controlled environment of a mock home or confer- ence demonstration, however, educating consumers tends to backfire. That is because real-world digital homes usually do not work very well. The premise of the entire vision, remember, is that heterogeneous de- vices talk to one another and readily transfer content to wherever the consumer wants to access it. This requires compatibility – "interopera- bility" in the jargon – among vendors involved in two technological categories. The first is file formats and codecs (short for coder-decoders), which encode digital information – such as a picture, song or film –