Gates Book Offers a Study in Contrasts nytimes.com
On Dell & Linux, sounds like more postmodern economics to me. The NT+$20 price for linux probably is what Joachim Kempin said it should be. Meanwhile, elsewhere on the neologistics front, this amusing article from today's NYT, where once again it's demonstrated that Bill is untroubled by the hobgoblin of small minds. Also a bit of news on the DNA/DNS "initiative".
Which is the real Bill Gates?
Is it the author who insists, in his new book, "Business the Speed of Thought," that all interoffice communications should flow "over e-mail so workers can act on news with reflex-like speed" -- adding that meetings should not be "used to present information" because "it's more efficient to use e-mail"?
Or is it the witness who testified in the government's
antitrust case against his company that he could not
remember dozens of e-mail messages he wrote or received
in recent years, dismissing one long internal message full of
market data, by saying "I don't know what we're talking
about" and "I mean, who knows?"
Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., never mentions the
antitrust trial in the 470-page book, which his publisher,
Warner Books, a unit of Time Warner Inc., will begin
selling next week. It is a treatise on a favorite theme, the
notion that just about every corporate problem can be
helped if not solved with the right hardware and software,
or "digital infrastructure."
Gates speaks of a "digital nervous system" and "living the Web lifestyle" -- phrases that many Microsoft employees repeat in conversation like the favored sayings of Chairman Mao. So it is probably true that the voluble, enthusiastic Gates selling his vision in this book more closely approximates the man than the guarded, argumentative and poorly informed defense witness.
The difference might have proved damaging to Microsoft, since it could be perceived as undermining the credibility of Gates' testimony. But it appears that damage is already done. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who is hearing the case in U.S. District Court, has already said he does not consider Gates an effective witness.
And never fear, a dry bit of irony in the conclusion, very topical here. At Microsoft, the Neologistics department never sleeps.
Part of Microsoft's current strategy to counter that charge is to stop using the word "browser." At Microsoft, it seems, the word is banned. Internet Explorer is not a browser at all, company executives say. It is a package of "Web browsing technologies" that is part of Windows.
At Gates' deposition, government lawyers questioned him about this, asking, "Is there an effort on your part or, insofar as you are aware, on other people's parts, to change the way words are used" as a means of advancing Microsoft's case? He gave no clear answer.
Occasionally executives do slip and utter the B word. Among them is Gates. On page 163, he notes that, after years of lagging in Internet software and services, "now we lead in several major Internet areas and have a growing number of people using our browser."
Cheers, Dan. |
