Back in 1996, I started an email newsletter I called Tek Thots. If you've ever seen my LinkedIn profile, you know I'm intrigued by and pursue many interests. At the time, I was working progressively longer hours at a growing tech
company that would become the country's second largest Internet Service
Provider behind only AOL. (AOL was technically a Commercial Online
Service so I've often argued EarthLink was actually the largest ISP in
the country, not AOL. But semantics, yes?)
I was also teaching at a couple of schools on the side (one a tenure
track associate professor position). I taught an odd mix of classes
ranging from Composition, Creative Writing and Twentieth Century British
and American Literature to what evolved into web development, software
development (and a rare class on computer hardware). I was also writing
and publishing, traveling for business and pleasure, giving seminars
with additional odd projects on the side that could become time and
labor-intensive.
Still, I had many geek interests, in part stemming from my involvement
in the computing world since the 1970s, my first home computer in 1982
(C64, of course), email, modems, my first programming classes, security,
BBS's, protocols such the OSI model, TCP/IP stack, etc. Spending my
time working in the biggest data center on the west coast thrilled me to
no end, and I was working toward an engineering degree at UCLA. Of
course I loved gaming, helping out newbies, research into still little
known tech issues (anyone remember VRML?), tracking down "bad guys" with
some others, typical geek humor, etc.
Tek Thots surprised me by turning out to be pretty influential. I
published erratically, had no help and did everything myself, but met
some great people from around the world. If you've read my short LinkedIn entry on it, I note it
migrated to a greater emphasis on security, privacy, cryptography, info
warfare, etc., and I was engaged with many professionals around the
globe and people seemed to appreciate the (free) newsletter's growth. At
one point I know Tek Thots had subscribers from over 50 countries,
including the US, Belgium, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, Israel, Canada,
Australia, Germany, Chile, Finland, Norway, UAE, Italy, South Korea,
Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Singapore,
Hong Kong, South Africa, Russia, Spain, Latvia, Thailand, Portugal,
Mexico, Japan, Romania, India, Austria, Bermuda, Nicaragua, Brazil,
Malaysia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovak Republic, Croatia,
Greece, Cypress & Estonia. Moreover, many were in education,
government and military fields and the majority of US subscribers often
had email domains ending with .edu, .gov, .mil and .arpa extensions.
The purpose of this article actually is NOT supposed to be a full
history of Tek Thots. Rather, I wanted to post a snippet of one of the
issues as an introduction to my new project to put up an informal site
where anyone can access the issues I still possess from between
1996-1999. I'm missing quite a few, but I still have over 15 and I think
some are interesting because I made a lot of observations, predictions
and forecasting and it's been interesting to see how accurate I turned
out to be. Also I encouraged reader engagement, not all of which was
glowing fan mail. Those who are honest will surely admit that techies
are among the first to rip into each other if they think a person is
wrong. They have no compuctions about proving that person stupid.
Fortunately, I rarely had to deal with that, but I did receive many
messages from people contesting some of my observations or assertions --
good naturedly -- and I'd often print a few (with their permission) and
respond in the following issue. I came across one such a few weeks ago
from the first year of the newsletter and I wondered whatever happened
to the young lady who wrote me asking questions and offering a small
challenge in response to some things I'd written in the previous issue. I
knew nothing about her but decided to see if I could find her and to my
surprise, she's on LinkedIn! I haven't contacted her because
despite a positive relationship, that WAS in the previous century and
who knows if she ever remembers this. My typical strategy is to tag a
person and hope they see it, which I would do except since I haven't
spoken to her, I don't know how she'd feel about me identifying her by
name -- even via just a tag -- on this platform, but I'll worry about
that another time.
So Finally! I'm finally at the place which this intended-short article
was to be about. I apologize for the lengthy intro but I wanted to
explain the purpose and context, especially since what I'm about to post
was typical nerd humor in the 1980s and '90s, but as far as I know, may
no longer be appreciated these days because it seems so many people
have lost their sense of humor, a pity. But I have one more longish
piece of information to provide, largely for those not familiar with the
old hatred of Microsoft.
One of the frequent things found in engineering divisions (and
elsewhere) back in those days was forms of humor ranging from pure
geekfest to stuff that probably wouldn't pass the current PC barrier and
that was true even for many female colleagues working in these
environments. We made fun of a lot of famous people and companies and
there were so many to trash. However, if you're old enough to remember
those days, you should get this, and if you weren't around at the time,
you should probably know this so as to have any needed context. The two
tech companies that stood out for criticism with a little brutality were
Apple and at #1, Microsoft. I'll skip Apple for now. Microsoft was
hated by nearly everyone for nearly everything. In no particular order,
they made horribly inferior products, and that was in manufacturing,
because both by confirmation and strong assertions and beliefs,
Microsoft never actually MADE anything! [This URL provides good and once
common examples of the complaints people had about Microsoft: https://www.quora.com/What-made-Microsoft-deserve-the-moniker-of-Evil-Empire.]
Apple may have put some stinkers out there but they were innovators.
Microsoft was known for stealing most of their offerings from other
companies, or buying companies solely for a product they wanted to sell
but couldn't/wouldn't make themselves. While Gates did create DOS for
IBM (though even that concept is challenged), legend has it Gates, et
al, toured the incredibly innovative Xerox PARC where they'd already
invented most anything worth a damn (a GUI display, a mouse [originally
wooden], Ethernet, laser printing, a great text editor, the alleged
first actual personal computer, user friendly programming languages and
much more). Many young tech stars famously went to Palo Alto to tour the
lab, yet many sources assert Gates stole his idea for a GUI OS
interface, a mouse and more while there. (Steve Jobs and Apple were
accused of the same thing and it seems very likely they both were
guilty.) Additionally, Gates bought SQL from a small company and has
made massive profits, as well as Windows servers and their IE browser
from a small company they (metaphorically) roughed up. Nothing original,
yet even then, products that were largely crap in quality.
Unfortunately, users had no recourse because for one thing, Apples cost
so much more, UNIX wasn't a viable reality, and you couldn't buy a PC
without the new Windows on it, so Microsoft had a monopoly (which they
abused) that was considered so "evil" that the DOJ went after them and
forced a massive fine on them for various anti-competitive crimes.
To cut to the chase, though, the real problem was Bill Gates. He was
simply an asshole. By then Microsoft was called "the evil empire" by
many and Boardwatch Magazine published an issue so infamous that they
had merch made up and I still have the shirt that features Bill's head
with some sci fi contraption over one eye and the title "BillGatus of
Borg," which basically went viral. I not only still have the shirt, but
the poster too.
One known example is when AOL was under the impression they were going
to have a partnership with Microsoft. On the assigned day for talks,
Gates and his team apparently walked into AOL's conference room, Gates
sat down, looked at Steve Case and said "I can either buy you today or
destroy you today, your choice." (Recollected quote from book I read some years ago, so not likely ver batam.)
Unlike most companies, Case threw the Microsoft group out of the
building. So It wasn't until Bill retired, got married and tried to
resurrect his image with numerous interviews and much philanthropy, and
also other Borgs arising, that Gates was finally able to become ... not
nearly as toxic to many Microsoft haters. [As a personal aside - having
nothing to do with the many hundreds of friends, colleagues and
connections I have there - I've been impressed with the fact that over
the past decade or so, Microsoft has done two things they never did --
innovate and vastly improve most products so that now before the 3rd
version of whatever it is, it's long been stable and usable. So kudos to
them!]
So I have gone on far too long and I'm finally going to get to the
original reason for this article. I'm posting an example (bad, fuzzy --
sorry) of some subtle (not really), funny, sarcastic nerd humor from Tek
Thots vol. 2, issue 6, published on June 13, 1997. This was typical of
many different goofy things we'd exchange and occasionally post in
between pieces of hacking and hackers (Mitnik), viruses, espionage,
human trafficking, Russia's illegal purchase of SGIs, geopolitical
armaments, etc. Between the jokes and the computer game reviews, had to
keep things a bit lighter at times. One last note on this issue. I
called this issue my "Spamford Wallace" issue. Long story, but I gave
out his physical address and some 400 domains, IPs, invoices, etc., when
it appeared most have difficulty locating him. In any event, here
finally is the code. I can't improve on it so I hope it's readable and
if so, I hope you enjoy. For my friends at Microsoft, please realize
this is a harmless joke from over 25 years ago, so hopefully we can all
have a chuckle without any ill feelings. Thanks!
