Dr. Dobb's Journal October 1998
On certain nights I can be found wielding a bar rag at Foo Bar, the late-night hangout where Silicon Valley pundits and players assemble and where I moonlight for tips and tips. But on this particular night, I was wielding a mop and bucket. We clean the place once a year, whether it needs it or not. I was doing my wielding around the table where Brit journalist Larry Wilde and Silicon Valley reporter Mo McBean sat.
"I find myself oddly touched," Larry was saying, "that Steve Ballmer has been named president at Microsoft. Why is that, do you suppose?"
Mo ran her finger around the bottom of the empty peanut dish and licked the salty digit. "It's probably," she said dryly, "because of your close personal relationship with Steve."
"Unlikely, I should say. And it's certainly not because I think Microsoft will now back off from its 'business is war' posture."
"Unlikely, like you say. Ballmer is Microsoft's Patton."
"Mm. No, I think it's because Steve is such an emotional fellow, and has been waiting for this for so very long. I picture his eyes misting over at the news. The image of Steve Ballmer teary-eyed gets me."
"That's an unhealthy attitude for a journalist, Larry," Mo said as she held the empty peanut dish out in front of me, upside down. I got the message. I got the peanuts.
When I returned, a third journalist, Joe, had joined their party, and I took and filled his order for cream soda, along with a second white wine for Larry and a Margarita for Mo, then leaned on the mop as I listened in.
"My eyes glaze over when I read words that rhyme with vermilion," Joe was saying. "Like million, billion, trillion. I read in the San Jose Mercury News that there are 1.2 million Chinese on the Internet. Is that a lot? Some investors and journalists seem to think so. Me, I dunno. I think I'm number-numb."
"I know exactly what you mean," Larry said. "I read that 250,000 people have downloaded the Netscape Communicator source code. Sounds like a lot, but is it? I should know these things."
"Jeez, you guys," Mo growled, "just do the math. There are about 1.2 billion Chinese, right? So one Chinese in a thousand is on the Internet. That's nothing."
"What about the Netscape thing?" Joe asked.
"Well there are about 250 million Americans, so one American in a thousand is developing browser code. That's a big story."
"Wow, it is. May I use it?"
Larry spoiled Mo's fun. "She's having you on, Joe. For one thing, most of the people who downloaded the code were just curious. And they were, by no means, all Americans."
These journalists are ruthless, especially with their own kind. I listened to Larry ridicule a story about "an encryption approach that would keep electronic messages secure but still let government officials eavesdrop for law-enforcement purposes." He sneered. "Secure and open to eavesdropping by the Feds? Only The Wall Street Journal and the FBI could say that with a straight face."
Recalling that I am sometimes a journalist, I moved away and went on with my housekeeping.
And speaking of housecleaning, I need to do a little of that here in the column this month.
First, I want to remind you that you can write to me at mswaine@swaine.com. And I want to mention the Nerd News digest I'm running weekdays at Swaine's World, http://www.swaine.com/.
Second, while I don't want to belabor this political stuff, in the interest of fairness, I need to correct -- or at least annotate -- my recent Bork column. I criticized Netscape for hiring Judge Robert Bork as a lobbyist, suggesting that associating with the hatchetman of Watergate was not the sort of image makeover that the company needed. Some readers pointed me to more-recent sources on Bork's role in Watergate, and I see that I may have misjudged him. But then again, maybe not.
I accused Bork of ignoring the example of his principled bosses, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, who resigned rather than carry out Richard Nixon's order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was getting close to exposing Nixon's misdeeds. It appears that, although Bork did exactly what I said he did, he was willing to resign if so ordered by his bosses. They actually encouraged him to stay and carry out the order to fire Cox, for public interest reasons. On the other hand, one reason they were comfortable asking him to do this was that he had no moral qualms about carrying out Nixon's order. He apparently saw nothing wrong with firing Cox. I've posted some documentation supporting these conclusions at http://www.swaine.com/mike/paradigm.htm.
-- Michael Swaine