Dr. Dobb's Journal March 1999
I don't know if you realize the effort that I go through to bring you the finest in column material every month. Just so you'll appreciate what I do for you, here are the ideas for columns that I rejected this month.
Column Idea 1 -- Party Games and Company Names. With the large number of technology companies that have selected common words for their names, you could make a party game out of trying to construct meaningful sentences entirely from tech company names. For example, "Be On Time Now, Lotus. iShip On Digital River. Go Intuit, Cisco. Yahoo!"
Sorta reminds me of the party game where you combine the names of two people who have nothing in common but their last name and wish them a happy anniversary: "Happy anniversary, Ken and Brenda Starr...George and Kate Bush...Klaus and Malibu Barbie...Windows and Year 2000.
Maybe we don't go to the same parties. Speaking of company names, I've written a business plan for the ultimate corporation, B and M Enterprises. That stands for "Branding and Merchandising." It produces no product, delivers no service, just develops a strong brand identification and licenses it to a T-shirt company. And not just a T-shirt company, either. Every strong brand deserves a line of T-shirts, baseball caps, iron-on patches, pens, action figures, trading cards, refrigerator magnets, calendars, mouse pads, lunch boxes, ceramic mugs, plastic glasses, bumper stickers, buttons, decals, temporary tattoos, permanent tattoos, graffiti. You name it. Which reminds me of...
Column Idea 2 -- Short (But Not Short Enough) Haiku.
What did the Buddhist
order at the game? Make me
one with everything.
I Got Dem Termination-of-Project Blues
I'm What It Is -- until it isn't.
I wuz da Wiz, but now I'm wizened.
Column Idea 3 -- Assigning Blame. The Annals of Improbable Research asks the crucial Y2K question: Who can we blame? Let's assign blame, hold an execution, and move on, they say. Apparently a vote of censure wouldn't suffice. Vanity Fair gets an answer to the question from former Department of Defense coder Harry White, who says we should blame the DOD. They were too "occupied with Vietnam" and couldn't be bothered to listen to his warnings. His buddy Bob Bemer makes a fine case for blaming it all on Nixon. Two excellent fall guys, in my opinion, but I blame Jesus Christ. When I start to explain the Jesus-Y2K connection, though, people tell me, "Get a life, Fox." That's a reference to -- oh, you know what that's a reference to.
Or we could just blame Alan Greenspan, who, long before becoming Federal Reserve Chairman, was one of those 2-byte programmers. This plan has the advantage that the accused has already confessed. "I'm one of the culprits who created this problem," Greenspan told Congress a few months back. Let's lay it all on him.
Column Idea 4 -- Didja Ever Wonder. Were there moments in the Microsoft antitrust trial when you thought Bill Gates might bomb Iraq to draw some heat off himself?
In a few years will we be looking back on the good old days when you didn't have to think about what operating system you were going to run on your computer?
Will there come a day when we yearn for the simplicity of Windows registry files? Given the negative connotations of the year 2000, was Windows 2000 really a wise name choice?
Didja ever notice how the Internet has brought people together so that they can more effectively isolate themselves? Little circles of users use technical jargon and acronyms to shut others out of their groups. Chatroom denizens refer to their offline life as IRL ("in real life"). Online computer gamers talk about NPCs ("nonplayer characters").
IRL, I'm an NPC.
--Michael Swaine