Trade groups pick sides in EU-Microsoft battle

TalkBack 26 of 26:

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Privateers Pirates Terrorists

In Seattle we ponder Steve Job's Pirates of the Caribbean. Francis Ford Copala at the retirement party of an IBM CEO remarked that today's technology allows a film maker to portray reality in ways never possible before. Copala's films, such as the GodFather and Wind, often portray the wrong ways of American "business" and "family" "good" fellows. It is useful to see how Job's film is portraying reality. Jobs is the major shareholder of Disney who created and markets the Pirates of the Caribbean films. The analysis is fun owing to the battles Jobs has fought (and lost) with Gates, and owing to the film Pirates of Silicon Valley which seeks to cast Gates and Jobs as modern era pirates.

Microsoft has been portrayed as an octopus many times in the Seattle Papers and Davy Jones portrayal as a fascinating octopus-faced entrepreneur, (who claims to be the environment in which seamen operate) is with but-a-little doubt a portrayal of Bill Gates IRL (in real life).

The fact that initial reviews of the film were so bad mirrors the IRL tactics of Microsoft's lobby and legal efforts and Bill and Ken Lays belief that Perception is Reality. What I am saying is that influence-peddling is apparent in these initial reviews because they look to be an attempt to prevent the films block buster status which today's USA today notes was necessary to prevent the decline of Disney stock value. Such are the ways of modern pirates. Reality bites for Gates - the film is more than a blockbuster. With this post, it now becomes legendary.

There is so much rich for comparison, which over the summer will sustain those of us who work in IT. But for this post, I point out the history of the Pirates of the Caribbean. This history includes knighthood and honor for one pirate captain but eventual recognition that pirates were enemies of all mankind like today's terrorists. Originally supported by government and called privateers, when the French English Dutch and Spanish finally finished warring in the Caribbean, and created on of the greatest world economies of all time, the privateers were essentially out of work, became pirates, and eventually the terrorists of all mankind. At that point no polite society would tolerate them.

With the EU now rounding up Enron bankers and sending them to the US for justice, it looks like world society is revisiting that point in history. Ballmer is so stupid to be so defiant on this the day after a total of over 1 billion has assessed against Microsoft for its ways.

zoro - the man, the myth, the legend
Frank L. Mighetto CCP

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 07/13/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now
• Using NIC Teaming to Achieve High Availability on Linux Platforms Dell Network interface card (NIC) teaming is one method for providing high ... Download Now
• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now