The Microsoft Millionaires Come of Age

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Interesting piece in the NYT.

From the 1986 to 1996, Microsoft’s stock soared more than a hundredfold as the company’s Windows operating system and Office applications dominated the PC industry. That explosive climb made millionaires of employees who had accepted options as a substantial part of their compensation for 60-hour workweeks fueled by a diet of Twinkies, Coca-Cola and marshmallow Peeps. The sudden riches led many to refer to themselves as “lottery winners.”

“While the exact number is not known, it is reasonable to assume that there were approximately 10,000 Microsoft millionaires created by the year 2000,” said Richard S. Conway Jr., a Seattle economist whom Microsoft hired to study its impact on Washington State. “The wealth that has come to this area is staggering.”

Even allowing for this particular consultant’s contractual obligations, it’s true that Microsoft has enriched many employees who have gone on to fund worthwhile projects. One of them, a friend of mine, gave over £1 million to UK charities before he died.

Podcasting museum guides

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From an interesting article in the New York Times about another subversive use of podcasting.

If you soak up the Jackson Pollocks at the Museum of Modern Art while listening to the museum’s official rented $5 audio guide, you will hear informative but slightly dry quotations from the artist and commentary from a renowned curator. (“The grand scale and apparently reckless approach seem wholly American.”)

But the other day, a college student, Malena Negrao, stood in front of Pollock’s “Echo Number 25,” and her audio guide featured something a little more lively. “Now, let’s talk about this painting sexually,” a man’s deep voice said. “What do you see in this painting?”

A woman, giggling, responded on the audio track: “Oh my God! You’re such a pervert. I can’t even say what that – am I allowed to say what that looks like?”

Hmmm… An interesting way to bring younger generations back to great art?

Do I want one of these?

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A keyboard with blank keys. According to the Blurb,

Since there is no key to look at when typing, your brain will quickly adapt and memorize the key positions and you will find yourself typing a lot faster with more accuracy in no time. It is amazing how slow typers almost double their speed and quick typers become blazing fast!

Hmmm… Jolly useful for writing blank verse though (sorry). A snip at $79.95.

What’s on Dubya’s iPod?

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According to the International Herald Tribune…

President George W. Bush spent an hour and a half Saturday riding a mountain bike at his Texas ranch. With him, as usual, was his indispensable new exercise toy: an iPod music player loaded with country and popular rock tunes aimed at getting the presidential heart rate up to a chest-pounding 170 beats per minute.

Which brings up the inevitable question. What, exactly, is on the First iPod? …

First, Bush’s iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by the folk-rock singer Van Morrison, whose “Brown-Eyed Girl” is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably “Centerfield,” which was played at Texas Rangers games when Bush was an owner and is still played at ballfields all over America. (“Oh, put me in, Coach – I’m ready to play today.”)

The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist in the 2004 campaign. Among them are “Circle Back” by John Hiatt, “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” by Joni Mitchell and “My Sharona,” the 1970s song by The Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor in charge of music coverage at Rolling Stone, cheerfully branded “suggestive if not outright filthy” in an interview last week.

Bush has had his $300 Apple iPod since last July, when he received it from his twin daughters as a birthday gift. He has some 250 songs on it, a paltry number compared to the 10,000 selections it can hold.

Bush, as leader of the free world, does not take the time to download the music himself; that task falls to his personal aide, Blake Gottesman, who buys individual songs and albums, including greatest hits by Jones and Jackson, from the iTunes music store.

Apple and podcasting

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Podcasting is an interesting development, but currently is not for the technologically naive user. Steve Jobs has announced that within two months Apple’s iTunes will offer support for podcasts. Lots of people are pondering what this might mean. Here’s Eric Hellweg on the subject.

Hyperventilation

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There is, writes Virginia Postrel in her Forbes column,

something about blogs [that] makes a lot of respectable journalists hyperventilate. News pros seem terribly threatened by online amateurs. Blogging is a “solipsistic, self-aggrandizing, journalist-wannabe genre,” writes David Shaw in the Los Angeles Times. Shaw, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his media criticism, declares that bloggers are “practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism” and that “many bloggers — not all, perhaps not even most — don’t seem to worry much about being accurate.” (Emphasis added.)

Virginia goes on to point out that Shaw omits to provide any links to Blogs which illustrate his claims.

But that’s par for this course. Non-journalists who are dismissive of Blogs behave similarly — and in my experience those who are most critical have rarely actually seen any Blogs, and certainly have not read any serious ones. But in fact the view that “all blogs are x” (where x = ‘self-indulgent’, ‘vanity publishing’, ‘solipsistic’ or whatever other term of abuse comes to mind) is as absurd as the view that “all books are x” or “all newspapers are x”. Blogs (like books and newspapers) come in every conceivable type and quality. There are thoughtful blogs, silly blogs, truthful blogs, fanatical blogs, ideological blogs, biased blogs — just as there are thoughtful, silly, fanatical, ideological, biased books (and newspapers).

Just after reading the Postrel column, I came on Steven Johnson’s Blog, in which he discusses some of the responses to his new book, Everything Bad is Good for You: how today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter. This is a vigorous defence of the value of contemporary culture in which he challenges conventional claims that American popular culture is vile and debased, appeals to the lowest common denominator, is all about sensationalistic exploitation and dumbing down, etc. This is a tough argument to make, and I haven’t read the book yet, but Johnson is a fine writer and I’m looking forward to seeing how he does it.

In the meantime, I followed some of the links Johnson provides to comments on his book. One of them is a really fine essay by Steven Shaviro which is as erudite and thoughtful as anything you’d find in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books or any other reputable literary journal. But it appears on … a blog.

The yucky corporate profile

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A typical, old-media, news-free, adulatory piece about Microsoft — in this case a profile by Steve Lohr of Eric Rudder, who is supposedly a “rising star” in Redmond. Here’s the opener:

The path to the top at Microsoft is not for the timid. Anyone hoping to make the ascent must be able to match wits with two of the most formidable and combative intellects in corporate America: Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, and Steven A. Ballmer, its chief executive.

Eric Rudder, a senior vice president, demonstrated that skill not long after he arrived at Microsoft. In 1992, Mr. Rudder, then 25, had a confrontation with Mr. Gates, recalled Brad Silverberg, a former senior Microsoft executive. The dispute centered on some now-forgotten technical matter in the Windows desktop operating system.

“Bill, you’re absolutely, totally wrong,” Mr. Rudder said, according to Mr. Silverberg. “And here’s why.”

After hearing him out, Mr. Silverberg said, Mr. Gates conceded the point, saying: “You know what? I guess you’re right.”

See what I mean? This is lazy, uncritical journalism. Pass the sickbag, Alice.