the rounds of the staff and later appeared in print about one of the meetings that took place just before the situation was made public. General Curtis LeMay, a high-ranking Air Force officer previously in attendance, was missing. One of the President's aides was concerned and asked, "Where's General LeMay?" The President ignored the aide and continued with his opening remarks, but after a minute or so, believing the General's presence to be critically important, the aide persisted with an interruption: "Excuse me, Mr. President, General LeMay isn't here, shouldn't we wait for him?" At this point Kennedy is said to have stopped, removed his glasses, looked straight at the aide, and said, "No. We don't want him here. We're here to decide whether or not we want to bomb Cuba. If we decide we want to bomb Cuba, we'll put Curtis in the lead airplane, but we don't want him helping us make that decision." This story is sometimes used to illustrate the difference between strategy and tactics. The strategy involved deciding what to do. However it's likely the act of excluding Practical IP and Telecom for Broadcast Engineering and Operations Copyright © 2004 by Fred Huffman. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS the General was a tactic aimed a keeping minds open and forcing a war council to consider one or more alternatives and forge a strategy or two to get the missiles removed from the Caribbean island. In the late 1960s, the Radio Corporation of America changed its corporate name to simply RCA and went on an acquisition spree buying Cornet Carpets, Banquet Foods, and Hertz Enterprises. Many saw this jokingly as changing the meaning of the company name to "rugs, chickens, and automobiles." Later, after struggling for several years to compete with IBM in mainframe computer design and manufacturing, the company decided to exit the business. After the decision was finally made and formally announced, an observer noted, "Strategic planning at RCA c