This summer will see the comic-book epic Batman Begins and has been treated already to the Revenge of the Sith III, the third chapter in the Star Wars Trek. But hot on its tale comes the monumental IT thriller Revenge of the Sith III/II(Three-Too like in beer). This is the second installment where the Evil Empire under the supposed benign and benevolent charity giving guise of Presumed-to-be-IT-Emperor, his cruelly magnificent William “Cut off the oxygen to whomever displeases me” Gates takes on the valiant Jedi Knights … errrr … uhhh make that the last-surviving-in-his-mind Jedi Jobs. Or do I have that bass ackwards ? At the soaring heights of the IT business its hard to tell good and evil apart.
In any case the battle is joined. Now it will be interesting to see which Dirty Rotten Scoundrel has created the most loathing and despising in the IT community of unwilling partners as Mac/Tiger on AMD/Intel takes on Windows/Longhorn on AMD/Intel. May the least despicable win.
All kidding aside about the moral and ethos vacuum at the pinnacle of desktop OS leadership, it is interesting to note how both Bill and Steve who railed against the IBM power and monopoly of the 70sand 80s have emulated, doubled and redoubled any Armonkian ambitions and Machiavellian misdeeds. Indeed IBM gets to play the dying Caesar twice: first with the stabbing of OS/2 in the back by Brutus Bill and then almost 15 years later with Crassus Steve adding his killer-chops to the PowerPC chip. One has to wonder how long Crimson-stained Sam Palmisano will stay atop the Armonkian peak.
Given the zero-sum and/or Machiavellian games some people seem determined to play at the top of the IT industry, is it a wonder that Linux, Linus Torvalds, Open Source, and nurturing the Commons has gained a very strong counter culture foothold in the IT community?
(c)JBSurveyer 2005