Veronica, n. A technique in which the matador stands immobile while passing the cape slowly before the charging bull.
Veronica, n. A technique in which the system stands immobile while passing menu items slowly before the dozing user.
The similarity sorta makes you wonder if the traditional Spanish protocol for interacting with bulls influenced the traditional Minnesota protocol for interacting with Gophers.
Speaking of rodents, apparently Steve Jobs is now a billionaire. (Oh, maybe that was a little obscure. Here's what I was thinking: Steve's company Pixar is working closely with Disney on some all-digital-animation feature films, and Disney is closely associated with a mouse. Hence the rodent reference, you see.)
Anyway, with the completion of Pixar's first film, Toy Story, the paper value of Steve's holdings adds up to more than he ever had while at Apple. There are enough ironies here to satisfy even a journalist's appetite, not the least of them being that it was Pixar, acquired from George Lucas in 1986, rather than NeXT, the company Steve built from scratch after leaving Apple, that ultimately paid off. If Steve is a role model, the message for Jobs wannabes is apparently, "Hitch your wagon to someone else's cast-off dream."
"I don't think I'm personally a role model," Bill Gates told Newsweek interviewers in a special "Kissing Up to the Billionaire" issue of Newsweek that contained an excerpt from Bill's book, The Road Ahead. Pass the word. America's youth needs to know this.
I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for you. For example, I read everything written about Billionaire Bill so that you don't have to. What you get here is just the cream. You won't read, for example, "The King of Comdex, if not the computer industry, if not the future itself. The richest man on the planet, and maybe the smartest: William Henry Gates III." You'd read that in the KUTTB issue of Newsweek, under Steven Levy's byline.
<Murphy Brown voice>
"Jeez, Steven, did you really write that tripe, or just hold your nose while an editor lathered it on?"
</Murphy Brown voice>
Everybody is writing about Bill. Here, though, is the bottom line. Ready?
It's not about Microsoft and how it's missing the Internet window or not missing the window, or how Netscape is going to be what Microsoft might have become, or Microsoft is really going to become what Netscape is expected to become, or about Bill's vision of the future, which is a mosaic (you should pardon the expression) of other people's dreams, whether cast-off or not.
It's not about his divinity, another topic explored in Newsweek, or his house, or his attitude toward Apple or IBM or the Justice Department.
It's about his attention span.
Many of the pioneers of the information revolution were in it for the thrill of the new, and when it started to get familiar, they lost interest. Some left and did something else, like Mitch Kapor, who became a lobbyist. Some stayed and went through the motions, like, well, you know a few, I'll bet. And some were one-trick ponies who had nothing to offer after the first trick.
Here's the bottom line: Bill won't leave. He won't lose interest, he won't get bored, and he is not a one-trick pony. He is, though, a one-track mind, and that track is software. As long as there's software, expect him to be involved with its making and distributing.
Now isn't that a thought to wake you in the middle of the night in a cold sweat?
Snit of the month. The growing use of e-mail, not to mention Web-page publishing, threatens to reverse the trend toward illiteracy among the supposedly educated without at the same time improving their spelling. The following flame is intended only for those who need it: The word "independent" contains no "a"s. Zero. None. Nary an "a". It is not spelled "independant." Don't make me tell you again. The word "separate," on the other hand, has two "a"s. It is not spelled "seperate." There is no common English word that begins "sepe-". Flush that sequence from your cache.
I wouldn't have to spend time on this stuff if you would all just shape up.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mswaine@cruzio.com