The equipment leasing industry has never faced a muckraker quite like Rhonda Roland Shearer. Widow of the Harvard science guru Stephen Jay Gould, Shearer, 50, is a Dadaist expert who runs a nonprofit think tank that studies art and science out of her 4,000-square-foot loft in SoHo, which is adorned with Persian carpets, 18th-century English furniture and 400 works by surrealist Marcel Duchamp. Shearer's beef with the leasing business is itself a bit surreal. In 2003 she signed a five-year, $28,000 equipment lease from telecom reseller Norvergence, which in turn sold the lease to the CIT Group. Norvergence promised customers its Matrix box would deliver unlimited broadband and cell phone service with no per-minute charges. But the box turned out to be no more than a glorified router used to send long-distance calls through Qwest (see "The Matrix Unraveled," Sept. 20, 2004), and Norvergence was later forced into bankruptcy.
展开▼
机译：设备租赁行业从来没有像Rhonda Roland Shearer那样面对过烂摊子。哈佛大学科学大师斯蒂芬·杰伊·古尔德（Stephen Jay Gould）的遗d，现年50岁的希勒（Shearer）是一位达达主义专家，她经营一家非营利性智囊团，在她位于SoHo的4,000平方英尺阁楼中研究艺术和科学，该阁楼装饰有18岁的波斯地毯世纪英国家具和超现实主义者马塞尔·杜尚（Marcel Duchamp）的400件作品。采煤机与租赁业务的牛肉本身有点超现实。 2003年，她与电信经销商Norvergence签订了为期5年，价值28,000美元的设备租赁合同，该合同又将租赁合同出售给了CIT Group。 Norvergence向客户承诺，其Matrix盒将免费提供无限制的宽带和手机服务，无需按分钟计费。但事实证明，这只不过是用来通过Qwest发送长途电话的光荣路由器（请参阅“黑客帝国破灭”，2004年9月20日），后来Norvergence被迫破产。
展开▼
