Power Dreams
I actually have two topics to talk about, but they seem worthy of separate entries. The first regards a dream I had last night. For some reason, I had gobs of money, so I go to the only logical place: Microsoft. I walk in, get taken on a tour by Steve Ballmer, hear his spiel about how Microsoft is doing good things for the world, and then I turn to him and ask, "How much would it cost to buy Microsoft?"
"What do you mean 'buy Microsoft'?"
"I mean, buy it. As in, buy the company."
He laughs and quotes me some large sum of money. "Okay," I reply, write him a cheque, hand it over, and say, "You're fired." I then assemble a meeting of the entire company (it's a dream -- it's allowed to happen) and lay out my plans for the new Microsoft: no more DRM, no more Windows Vista (at least in its currently discussed incarnation), and so on. Instead, we're going to focus in redefining Vista into an affordable, (freely) expandable O/S modeled on the Windows UI paradigm but by taking lessons to be learned from Linux O/S models. We're ditching IE altogether -- instead, when someone clicks on a 'Download IE' link or some such, Microsoft will make a $5 donation to Mozilla and redirect the user to download Firefox.
And so forth. These decisions are at first met with skepticism, and then cheers.
Le sigh. If only.
"What do you mean 'buy Microsoft'?"
"I mean, buy it. As in, buy the company."
He laughs and quotes me some large sum of money. "Okay," I reply, write him a cheque, hand it over, and say, "You're fired." I then assemble a meeting of the entire company (it's a dream -- it's allowed to happen) and lay out my plans for the new Microsoft: no more DRM, no more Windows Vista (at least in its currently discussed incarnation), and so on. Instead, we're going to focus in redefining Vista into an affordable, (freely) expandable O/S modeled on the Windows UI paradigm but by taking lessons to be learned from Linux O/S models. We're ditching IE altogether -- instead, when someone clicks on a 'Download IE' link or some such, Microsoft will make a $5 donation to Mozilla and redirect the user to download Firefox.
And so forth. These decisions are at first met with skepticism, and then cheers.
Le sigh. If only.