Hey, Matthew. I, too, feel the pain of small ISPs. First because I went through a string of them in the late '90s as a customer who had to keep switching as they were bought out or went under; second, because I became involved in that industry for a while, speaking at the California ISP Association in 2002; third, because... well, just because. :)
Your idea of ISPs using Drupal hosting as a distinguishing feature is a good one. The trouble, of course, is in support: Drupal is currently too complicated for the average person to administer. I think it would work best if the ISP hid hosted sites' superuser privilege from end users by default, so they'd only have to think about selecting a theme, adding content, and doing some minor administration (such as adding/removing menus) -- i.e., making it as "dumb" as WordPress. In other words, offer them only a choice of colors. :)
As for that quote: I don't know if this is the canonical origin, but I found it again at this 1999 article in Low-End Mac. I was probably reading it around that time, so it makes sense that that's the first place I (at least) read the quote. (O.K., so it wasn't when the first iMacs came out... oh well.)
Hey, Matthew. I, too, feel the pain of small ISPs. First because I went through a string of them in the late '90s as a customer who had to keep switching as they were bought out or went under; second, because I became involved in that industry for a while, speaking at the California ISP Association in 2002; third, because... well, just because. :)
Your idea of ISPs using Drupal hosting as a distinguishing feature is a good one. The trouble, of course, is in support: Drupal is currently too complicated for the average person to administer. I think it would work best if the ISP hid hosted sites' superuser privilege from end users by default, so they'd only have to think about selecting a theme, adding content, and doing some minor administration (such as adding/removing menus) -- i.e., making it as "dumb" as WordPress. In other words, offer them only a choice of colors. :)
As for that quote: I don't know if this is the canonical origin, but I found it again at this 1999 article in Low-End Mac. I was probably reading it around that time, so it makes sense that that's the first place I (at least) read the quote. (O.K., so it wasn't when the first iMacs came out... oh well.)