Revenge on the Nerds -Maureen on a rampage

["Attila T. Hun" <attila@hun.org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

    and everyone thought I have been blowing smoke over the
    few years over the need to dismember Micro$haft. More
    aye-sayers than naysayers have joined the fray, some even
    eloquently.  even the opinion polls are against BadBillyG:
    bubba is more trusted! as is the government...
    
    Mickey$lop no longer generates terror in the hearts of 
    everyone --just the OEMs who can not afford to even testify
    for fear of retaliation --and it is a real fear.

    keep your fire extinguisher handy.
    Maureen is really smoking!

January 21, 1998
NYTimes OpEd Columnist
LIBERTIES / By MAUREEN DOWD
Revenge on the Nerds

WASHINGTON -- I figured things were way out of perspective
in the Other Washington when I heard that Bill Gates had put
an inscription from "The Great Gatsby" around the domed
ceiling of the library in his new $100 million pad:  "He had
come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have
seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it."

Bill Gates was obviously unaware of the magnitude of the
truth that he had unwittingly admitted.

When he read about the blue lawn, he must have imagined
computers with glowing blue screens stretching to infinity.
And he must certainly have liked the proximity of the words
"dream" and "grasp."

With a judge who is likely soon to hold Microsoft in
contempt for petulantly defying an order designed to give
its rivals any chance, Mr. Gates's dream may at last have
exceeded his grasp.  The Justice Department never came down
on Gatsby.

This Washington has disabused that Washington of its
arrogant presumption that what's good for Microsoft is good
for America.  This Washington has stripped that Washington
of its image as warm, tender, flannel-and-soyburger pioneers
of the new economy, and properly pegged Microsoft as an
egomaniacal, dangerous giant that has cut off the air supply
of competitors in a bid to control cyberspace.

"The only thing the robber barons did that Bill Gates hasn't
done is use dynamite against their competitors," Gary
Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer, told John
Heilemann of The New Yorker.

The disheveled college dropout who used to get adoring
headlines like "A Regular Guy Who's a Legend:  Bill Gates
Puts a New Face on the American Dream" now looks like a
spoiled rich brat.  When they treated the Justice Department
and the judge with the same contempt with which they treat
competitors, the masters of the virtual universe got hit
with a grim truth:  People hate Microsoft even more than
they hate the Government.

Mr.  Gates has gone from Horatio Alger similes to virus
similes.  Frederick Warren-Boulton, another antitrust
expert, told The New Yorker:  "Gates is like smallpox.  You
have to go in there and you have to nail it.  If you leave
it lying around, it will just come back."

When asked who they thought had done more good for the
future of America, Bill Gates or Bill Clinton, more
Americans chose Mr.  Clinton.  (Even though
portfolio-obsessed Americans would still rather have their
children grow up to be more like Mr. Gates than Mr.
Clinton, by 47 to 24 percent.)

As Jacob Weisberg plaintively wrote in Slate, Microsoft's
on-line magazine:  "A few months ago, everyone I met seemed
to think that working for Microsoft was a pretty cool thing
to do.  Now, strangers treat us like we work for Philip
Morris."

The Times's Timothy Egan explored the angst that has gripped
the Redmond campus since Microsoft lost its sheen.  Some
fret that the fate of the entire Pacific Northwest is at
stake.

All the instant millionaires in thermal shirts, droopy
drawers and sandals with wool socks are suddenly Wondering
If It's All Worth It.  They have staggered out of the
Seattle fog long enough to listen to their inner browsers.

This has been a rude shock to them because they honestly
believed that our Washington was full of anti-business,
careerist bureaucrats, and their Washington was full of
imaginative idealists and entrepreneurs who buy and sell to
the beat of a different drum.  They didn't reckon smokestack
laws could apply to high technology.

As Mr. Gates's lawyer, William Neukom, told Steve Lohr of
The Times, "We sincerely believe that we are a force for
good in the economy."  Actually, Microsoft has been a force
for greed in the economy, more brilliant at marketing and
purloining and crushing than it has been at innovating.  The
company saw the fight with the Justice Department as a
defense of its way of life.  And that way was hardball on
software; anything it decided was a core threat to Microsoft
was sucked into the operating system.

These are Darwinian nerds.  Besides, Microsoft couldn't even
save the universe in "Independence Day."  It took an Apple
to do that.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3i
Charset: latin1
Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be

iQBVAwUBNMZSQ7R8UA6T6u61AQH2fgH+OQT3p1cE1lRxSzMvhyt9AvvH2N3jFUmO
UZzpqRbrn9pB1VPxZLKG2lgBwOW4hPIlpFRWg8Fp+Uu6KoL6kKObuw==
=n+/c
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----