A little while ago, Bill Gates went on a train journey with a few friends. As you might expect on a trip organized by the world’s richest man, the food was impeccable, the train’s decor stunning, and
the route beautiful. Even more amazingly, the train was not delayed by even a minute. It was the perfect, controlled environment. But then, two strangers came up to the party and started insulting the esteemed Mr. Gates, as the other passengers watched on in amazement. Now, it turns out, amazingly enough that these two strangers were in fact actors, paid by Bill to insult him. Uh, why?
It seems that the strain of the past year is starting to show. Maybe Bill wanted to make his friends pity him, or maybe he wanted to be able to respond to their criticisms in this environment rather than on television, with a hostile interviewer, for the whole world to see.
 
Either way, billions of PR dollars spent portraying him as a regular guy‚Äö went down the drain. A normal person would *not* have done that. You see things have not been going so well for Microsoft recently: on top of the antitrust, a lot of people have been saying that the fall of the PC (as in personal computer, rather than just IBM-compatible), and with it the fall of Microsoft, is nigh. And I
have always thought their predictions have made a lot of sense. Why do computers need 400 MHz processors when most people just use their computer for word processing? Why buy a PC or Mac over a console if you’re just going to play games? A serious rethink of the computer needs to take place. If you will, the paradigm must shift from power to the people‚ to give the people what they want. What's the answer? The net, of course. Those who need serious number crunching power need look no further than immensely powerful servers. Those who just want to have fun could log-in to servers running Quake or C&C, and play against dozens of others. And those who want to word
process could plug in a printer, type out those novels in a simple Java applet, hit print, and not have to worry about anything else. All this could be achieved right now in a set top box at a cost to the
consumer of around a hundred dollars/pounds if sufficient volume was achieved.
 
If this happened the issue would change (at least on the client side) from Mac OS or Windows to Internet Explorer or Navigator, Java or QuickTime Applet Runner (which could well come into existence any month now.) This is why Bill Gates’ mental health is in such a precarious state, and this is why Microsoft is so keen to gain hold of the browser market. Lets just hope the Empire does not strike back.
Meanwhile, Sun and Oracle have announced a joint anti-Microsoft project, joining the Rebel Alliance. Admiral Ellison of Oracle has long been enamored of the kind of NC I outlined in the previous part of this column. Now his Raw Iron server for big business dispenses with the need for an operating system, though it does still need a kernel. One of the leading candidates is Mac OS X’s kernel, as Ellison is a close friend of Steve Jobs. If OS X provides Raw Iron’s kernel, it would be a major coup for Apple. That said, Sun’s Solaris kernel is the more likely option.
