Table of Contents:

General News

• Two Graduations, A Parental Visit and a Gold Award
• Paul At Work

Computer Industry News

• Rethinking Microsoft Redux

Web Site of the Week

• The Brunching Shuttlecocks

Humor

• The Serenity Prayer

Movies

• Love Letter

Letters

• Truth in Pets: Meg Sherwood, Kent Peterman

General News

Two Graduations, A Parental Visit and a Gold Award

OK, it isn't as clever as the movie title, but it does describe the last, hectic week.

For the first, but not the last time, we had two major graduations back to back. Rae graduated from grade school (although some would argue that isn't major) and Marlow graduated from high school.

Rae graduated first, from Orinda Intermediate School, on Thursday. The ceremony was held in the gymnasium of nearby St. Mary's College. Due to a lack of planning, the traffic leaving the Joaquin Moraga Middle School commencement was leaving just as we arrived, achieving total gridlock with no traffic control officers on scene.

Four years ago, it rained heavily on the day of Marlow's graduation from eighth grade. This year, it was breezy and in the 70s for Rae's. An outdoor graduation would have been comfortable. This one was indoors. At least the motivational speaker who interminably lengthened Marlow's commencement was absent this year. Gone too were the usual interminable speeches by school district luminaries. Several students spoke for three minutes each, the principal said a few words, and then we were off to the unavoidably long and boring part: the reading of every name.

You know, the best way to attend a commencement is the way I attended MIT's; come for an entertaining speaker, then leave before the names. Of course that only works if none of the names are related to you.

Rae was stunning in a long white dress. She was elegant as she walked to the stage and received her diploma. They don't wear gowns for 8th grade graduation. She went immediately to a dance that ran from 7:30 to 11 p.m. I arrived at the gym at 11:15 p.m. and by 1:30 a.m. we had disassembled the "Hollywood Night" theme constructions.

I know a lot of people feel 8th grade graduation is silly. Almost no one halts their education at that point, so what are we marking? We are having a ceremony for a change in status. I have long believed that one of the things wrong wit this society is that we have too few--never too many--ceremonies to mark life changes.

Thus, I have no trouble with making a pretty big deal out of high school graduation either. This is clearly a much bigger deal. For starters, Marlow won't see most of these people ever again, and she's been close to some of them for 12 years. For another thing, although 90% or so of the students are going on to college, some are not, and some of the college-bound students won't graduate. For them, this is it. Their last chance to shine.

And shine they did. Saving The Best For Last, the Miramonte High School Class of 1999 graduated on the football field, in front of some of the most splinter-filled benches it has ever been my misfortune to sit on. I lost all feeling in my hindquarters before the third student speech. By the time that Zimmerman kid picked up his diploma, I was lucky I could stand up.

It was a beautiful day, sunny and windy. The graduates faced into the sun. The parents and grandparents in the stands all worried about getting sunburned necks, even thought the ceremony started at 5:30 p.m. In attendance were Vicki, Rae and Me, my mother (also at Rae's commencement), the girls' godmother Sue Thiem and their cousins Kimberly and Kirsten Drake. Marlow's aunt Pamela Drake was riding a bicycle to Los Angeles to raise money to fight AIDS (she made it).

Once again, the speeches were mercifully brief (three minutes or less) and there were few of them. Despite a few outbreaks of beach ball bouncing, the grads were generally well behaved. They went immediately to an all-night party in the school gym featuring food and entertainment that lasted until 4 a.m. These school-sponsored grad night parties are apparently the norm now.

They don't call it commencement for nothing. Both of my daughters commenced on new stages of their lives, with bright prospects and an unknown by wide open future head of them. I am very proud of both of them, and always will be.

Never skip a commencement.

Oh, the parental visit was my mother's: she came on Wednesday and left on Sunday. All of you should be so lucky to have the relationship with your parents I have with mine. And she gets along like a house on fire with my wife and daughters too. Am I the luckiest guy on Earth, or what.

Finally, this weekend marked what I believe will be the last celebration of Marlow's Girl Scout Gold award. I only saw the very start of the celebration (the eating chips and drinking soda part), then had to leave for my band's Flag Day concert at the Rossmoor retirmenet home. It was the first time I ever missed the first song in a concert. I hope it will be the last. Boy is it embarrasing to sit down and join the band afte they've started playing.

Paul At Work

I flew to Los Angeles and installed some audio gear at Chaos Manor for my columnist Jerry Pournelle. He grabbed these shots of me at work.

See The Pictures Here

Computer Industry News

Rethinking Microsoft Redux

Two weeks ago in this space, I asked people to rethink their assumptions about Microsoft. A week ago at Byte.com, I printed the same editorial.

You would think I had set fire to an American flag while defiling Chelsea Clinton in Times Square on New Years' Eve. The average Byte.com article attracts perhaps four email letters. The editorial attracted 40, all but a few of them violently opposed to my simple suggestion--that maybe Microsoft wasn't at fault for every bad thing that happened to every competitor. I am going to take another bite of the apple at the Byte.com site as well, but I will test run it here. Keep in mind this is aimed mostly at the Byte audience. Everyone who reads this column was quite polite.

I have read the trial transcripts, thank you. In fact, I have read more of them than you have, unless you're an attorney for one side or the other. I covered the first four months of the trial every day. I sat through all four hours of testimony before the Senate Antitrust Committee last spring-did you?

Unlike some of you, I have given some actual thought to the subject instead of reacting viscerally and automatically. None of the email we received, not the thoughtful messages (thank you for your time) or the outpourings of foul-mouthed bile (of which we are and will publish exactly zero) gave me a single fact I hadn't already known.

If arrogance and frat-boy boasting were crimes, every senior official of Microsoft would have been in jail a long time ago. Neither activity is against the law.

In my opinion, Microsoft has committed acts that are prohibited to a monopolist. In my opinion, Microsoft is a monopolist. So, in my opinion, it deserves to lose the present case in federal court.

That does not mean that it destroyed OS/2, or DR-DOS or even Netscape single-handedly. It was aided and abetted in all three cases by management error at the companies in question. Yes, thank you, I have considered the fact that it is still a crime to torpedo a sinking boat, or for a rich person to rob a poor one.

We can argue this until the cows come home--and probably will. The simple fact of the matter is that, with a few exceptions, in the early, critical years of this business, when Bill Gates was establishing his empire, he took software seriously as a business and believed in PCs. That's why he won and others lost. For him it was a zero sum game.

For Gary Kildall (DR-DOS), it was a game period. Business never came before pleasure. Gary was a wonderful person--a much more pleasant human being than Gates. But he lacked the killer instinct. As for IBM, it was years before the company believed in the PC; to IBM it was a smart terminal, a mainframe adjunct. They neutered it the first chance they got, and went for the "business" market without realizing that the whole market was a business market.

The only new idea I've heard since the trial started is the one that started this whole brouhaha--Jerry Pournelle's idea that in the case of some Microsoft competitors, it wasn't murder, it was suicide. That's still a refreshingly different idea in this debate. It struck me and I wanted to share it with you.

Jerry also thinks the government in punishing Microsoft for succeeding. I am not sure I agree. If Microsoft is punished, it won't be for succeeding, it will be for succeeding unfairly. If Microsoft gets off scott-free, I will be as angry as you. They have almost certainly broken the law, and they should not be allowed to get away with it, any more than Standard Oil or AT&T were. But not every Microsoft success stems from illegal activity, and we should keep that in mind.

On the other hand, a thoughtful friend of mine sent this analysis after reading my Microsoft editorial here recently. He asked me to withhold his name:

Web Site of the Week

The Brunching Shuttlecocks

A tip o' the Schindler hat to Craig Reynolds, who sent me this note:

By the way, the humorous comparison Craig liked was:

The Renaissance: Constant reminders of the fleetingness of life and the close hand of death.

The Web: Pictures of cats wearing fake reindeer antlers.

Here is my "Momento Morty." I don't think I'll put it on my web page, but I'll put it in this one column:

Humor

The Serenity Prayer

Movies

Love Letter

Just the facts (courtesy of the Internet Movie Database).

Director: Peter Chan. Writer: Maria Maggenti from the novel by Cathleen Schine. Tagline: No one knows who sent it. No one knows who it's for. But everyone's getting the same message. Kate Capshaw: Helen. Blythe Danner: Lillian MacFarquhar. Gloria Stuart: Eleanor MacFarquhar. Ellen DeGeneres: Janet Hall. Geraldine McEwan: Mrs. Scattergoods. Tom Everett Scott: Johnny. Tom Selleck: George Mathias. MPAA: Rated PG-13 on appeal for some sensuality, nudity and strong language. Runtime: 88 minutes.

First, Bravo. A reasonable running time!

I was inclined to love this film for its very clever conceit: a single love letter, seen by numerous people, all of whom think it is addressed to them. It is odd, eccentric, disjointed and offbeat. My younger daughter Rae objected strenuously to the sexual relationship between Helen (Kate Capshaw), a woman in her 40s and Johnny (Tom Everett Scott), who is playing a 20-something college student. At least she's consistent; you'll recall she also disliked the relationship between Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment.

I couldn't find the full text of the letter. If you can find it somewhere on the Internet, let me know. It begins, "Do you know how in love with you I am? … I know when I long to see you … when I tie my shoes ... when I drive my car.…" I liked it. Some reviewers found it saccharine. I found it sweet and endearing.

It was disjointed. Maybe that happened in the editing room. Maybe it was a lousy script. I don't know enough to say. But someone should take the fall for this kind of incoherence.

Kate Capshaw doesn't work too much (most middle aged women in Hollywood don't work too much). But she might have been well advised to pass on this script and wait for a better one.

Having seen Ellen DeGeneres twice now, in this and as Sgt. Rita Pompano in the indie film Goodbye Lover, I predict a bright future for her as a wisecracking secondary character.

Letters

Truth in Pets

Last week, I said the dog ate my homework. Meg Sherwood immediately caught me out:

Kent Peterman apparently liked my reunion story: