THE BIG GRAY WALL

I just love to read the papers!

This Sunday's Washington Post has a nifty column by David Ignatius entitled "Microsoft's Next Monopoly?" in which the author quotes extensively from an interview with a pumped-up Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, a man who needs no jumpstarting. He's been watching the Microsoft antitrust trial very closely, while keeping a wary eye on what's been going on outside the courtroom, and he's not happy. It turns out that since the trial has been underway, Microsoft has been buying up telecommunications companies right and left. McNealy is convinced that Microsoft is trying to buy its way into another monopoly by snapping up all the firms* that will control "the next wave of technology."

"What they can't do with R&D, they're trying to do with M&A (mergers and acquisitions). So they're taking $4 billion a quarter out in cash and investing -- before the trial is over -- and going beserk-crazy buying customers for their technology."

Included in this frenzy is the $5 billion Microsoft investment in AT&T anounced last month. AT&T, which recently acquired TCI and MediaOne, wants to be "Ma Cable" and give you Internet access, telephone, and TV through the same wire. This scenario involves the proverbial "set-top box" for managing the flow of digital delights, over which idiot millionaires have experienced auto-erotic epiphanies. They imagine things like slavering hordes of lust-besotted viewers clicking on links to order whatever so-and-so was just wearing on "Melrose Place," for example, without ever getting up from the couch. (And you thought you had to be smart to be rich!) Well, McNealy knows that AT&T has been cajoled or sleazed into loading Windows CE on several million of those set-top boxes and indignantly exclaims:

"I don't know anyone who thinks CE is good stuff. CE is a trimmed-down Windows hairball that doesn't even run Windows applications. You get the worst of both worlds!"

You have to love a guy who can pull a phrase like that out of the air when he's on a rant, I must say. And McNealy isn't done: he's especially cranked that Microsoft is now trying to dominate the "post PC-world" by leveraging its monopoly to buy its way in. If you believe that Microsoft is guilty of violating antitrust laws, then this is a case of using profits from an illegal first monopoly to buy your way into a second one. No wonder he's mad! So are we, because that would mean the bad guys are getting away with it. But McNealy, someone you'd like to have on your side, is confident that the game hasn't been lost. Claiming that 85 percent of Internet-connected computers are Windows-equipped, he predicts that by the year 2002 the figure will be less than 50 percent!

Well, that's interesting, I thought. I wonder what's going to take over the other half? What does he figure is going to stop this juggernaut of cash and greed from blowing everyone away like a humongous typhoon? The article didn't exactly say, but I didn't think he was thinking of the Don Crabb MickeyMac or Linux Ho the Wagons.

About that time I looked up from my reading. It was a cloudy, humid day, maybe 80 degrees, with occasional steamy interludes of bright sunsine. Bands of darkish clouds had been blowing in from the ocean all day long, but now it appeared they had gone, and all I could see was a uniform area of whitish-gray that reached from the horizon to nearly overhead. Now where had I seen that kind of sky before? Oh, that's right -- on the river!

It was way back when we lived in a huge rambling old farmhouse on Southeast Creek, deep in the marshes and forests primeval. I had already sailed my Folbot from there all the way down to Cliff City for the start of the Chester River Yacht and Country Club's annual upriver race. This was a silly thing to do, because it meant adding several hours to a very long day in the cockpit of a tiny open boat. In July! There must have been a good reason (?).

(You need to understand that this is a big tidal river that eventually opens out into the Chesapeake Bay. At this location, the river is maybe a quarter of a mile wide!)

There I was at about 11:30 A.M., having rounded the point where the Chester widens out near Comegy's Bight, when I caught sight of the fleet assembling for the start on the opposite shore: I would barely make it over there in time if the wind held and I kept heading straight across. I felt exhilarated and smug: hah! I had sailed to the start of the race from my own house! Was I cool or what?! Well, for one thing I already had to pee pretty bad, I'd been scrunched down in the boat for over three hours, plus it was getting awfully hot, and -- huh?

What had happened to the sky??

A moment ago I had been looking at a hazy bluish-white sky filled with puffy white clouds, but now the sky was a uniform shade of whitish-gray from horizon to nearly overhead. Uh-oh! At least I didn't have to be told to alter course and head right for the landing. Not after I heard the first rumble, at least. And I wasn't alone. I could see most of the fleet turning back, except that they were close, and I was well out of earshot, just a speck in the distance to them. The boat was dead in the water with the sudden, ominous calm spell. There was lightning in the big gray wall now, lots of it, and I could hear the sound of wind that had not reached me yet, moaning in tall treetops in the distance. I was flat-ass doomed, all alone in a tiny boat with a ten-foot aluminum mast in the center of a big wide river with all holy hell bearing down on me out of that big, gray wall!

I waved, I yelled, I hollered "Help!" for the first time in my life! (It was safe to be afraid, because no one could hear me anyway.) And I was scared, all right! I could see that lightning bolt hitting the mast and the whole damn boat going up like one of those depth charge explosions from an old WW II movie: ka-BLAM, sploosh! ("Look, skipper! Oil and lifejackets!")

All of sudden, WHAM boom shriek the squall line hit! Unbelievable wind, rain, hail, and one long unending peal of thunder! OH NO the boat is crossways to the wind and going over! Jesus Christ, where's the tiller? Watch out for the boom, grab it, shove it across to starboard! WHOMP leap scream the sail catches the wind and the Folbot takes off downwind like a freaking rocket sled!!!

Even Chester River lightning has a hard time hitting a kayak with leeboards doing 80 knots or more, so I survived, but for a while it was touch and go!

After one helluva wild ride, I ended up drenched and shaken on a peaceful, deserted sandy beach way far away from where I was supposed to be. At least I got to pee before repairing the rigging and heading for home. The sky eventually cleared, you see, and the race started without me, but I didn't mind. I just wanted to get the hell home. And as it turned out, well before I got there, the afternoon sun turned out to be more deadly than the storm. . .

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I remembered and understood what this particular big gray wall was telling me, or so I thought. "Hey, I think we probably ought to bring in the clothes!" And so we did. But there was never a squall line or even any lightning, just wave after wave of drenching downpours, followed by a long sunny period and some more downpours. This was tropical moisture, long bands of rain following the spiraling currents of an offshore low pressure area, and boy did we need it! I didn't need the leaks on the front porch, but they weren't too bad. We're pretty quick with the coffee cans and jars now, anyway. Hmmm. No boom-booms.

That's fine, of course: the last storm fried my modem. Yes, I have a surge protector with modem protection, and no, the modem wasn't plugged into it. Go ahead and laugh. I could probably get my Master Procrastinator certification if I'd just fill out those forms and send 'em in.

Something tells me I won't be working for Scott, but I will keep watching the sky!

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and would answer emails, especially from anyone who wants to buy his house. John's own Web site, the ZOO ZONE , is hosted on a spiffy G3 server.

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* TeleWest (cable and phone service), Qwest (phone company), SkyTel (paging company), and earlier: UUNet (now part of MCIWorldCom), Mobile TeleCom Technologies (cell phone company), and ComCast (cable company). Also Web TV in 1997!

February 09, 2012