I'm a little chagrined, all the news breaking today and none from me. So, I'll just have to mine the salon piece from Harvey for a quote or two, this Scott Rosenberg seems to be the ironic sort.
But Microsoft's "rally" has caught the company in a much larger paradox, a corporate Catch-22 that recent coverage of the controversy has occasionally touched upon, in stray quotes, but never fully laid out. The more loudly the company protests that Windows 98 is essential to the U.S. economy, human progress and world peace, the more ammunition it hands its opponents.
Last month, Gates insisted to the U.S. Senate that his company is perennially vulnerable to new competitors snapping at its heels; this month he's holding the national well-being for ransom by insisting that any government interference with a single product release will unleash doom upon us all. Out of one side of its mouth, Microsoft tells us it's no monopoly; out of the other, it insists that it's the sole engine driving our economy. Well, Bill, which is it? You can't have it both ways.
Not only that, Microsoft has been downplaying Win98 all year, with the push to move business to NT. And business is where most of the PC money is. The only answer I can think of is that Bill's brilliant and expansive mind knows no hobgoblins, particularly the one my small mind is continuously hobbled by. A characteristic Bill shares with many of the Microsoft investors around here, of course, who deride the possibility of competing against Microsoft in all but the legal context.
On a lighter note, Scott notes, as did the sjmercury, Mr. Salvage Rider's rather unhip lack of knowledge about the Rolling Stones:
Senator Gorton needs to brush up on his Jagger. You don't need to be a Stones expert to know that the refrain of the 1965 song is "I can't get no satisfaction."
Shades of George Bush and Springsteen's "Born in the USA" circa 1992. Is that an omen?
Cheers, Dan. |
