[Infowarrior] - Say what? A look back at McNealy zingers

[Richard Forno]

(off-topic but amusing......rf)

Say what? A look back at McNealy zingers
By Charles Cooper
http://news.com.com/Say+what+A+look+back+at+McNealy+zingers/2100-1014_3-6064
563.html 

Story last modified Tue Apr 25 05:54:50 PDT 2006

Say what you like about Scott McNealy, but one adjective you'll never find
attached to his name is shy. The Sun Microsystems co-founder has reveled in
running his mouth, and the list of "McNealy-isms" has become legendary
within the tech industry. The following includes highlights from two
decades' worth of his witticisms:

€ "Probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age."
(Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates)

€ "Ballmer and Butt-Head." (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Gates)

€ "A giant hair ball." (Microsoft's Windows and Windows NT)

€ "When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I consider that a compliment."

€ "General and motors." (Microsoft and Intel)

€ "Windows More Errors" (Windows ME)

€ "Look Out" (Microsoft's Outlook)

€ "The Corvair of Web servers, unsafe at any speed" (Internet Information
Server)

€ "Captive Directory" (Active Directory)

€ ".Not," ".Not Yet" and ".Nut" (Microsoft's .Net development strategy)

€ "The beast from Redmond" and "the evil empire." (Microsoft and its
headquarters.)

€ "Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away
products."

€ "With Microsoft, the first hit is always free--remember that all your
life."

€ "Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system. I guess I
would be nervous if my system was built on their technology, too."

€ "We've got bayonets fixed, and we'll go into any cave no matter how dark
and dank it is. And in the air war (against Microsoft to win new
developers), we'll go after any developer and not just let them turn over to
the dark side."

€ "Having Microsoft give us advice on open standards is like W.C. Fields
giving moral advice to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."

€ "The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I
could charge you $249 for the right to speak it, and I could charge you an
upgrade fee when I add new letters."

€ "I've always argued the best way to keep your teenager off drugs is buy
him a Pentium Pro, give him NT and Microsoft Office and a printer, and tell
him you get $500 if you can print something out of PowerPoint on that
printer. That will take him six months of drug-free activity. I think that's
probably the best thing you could possibly do for your teenager."

€ We should "shut down some of the bullshit the government is spending money
on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock. Then put all their
intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone! Then
we could just bronze Gates, turn him into a statue, and stick him in front
of the Commerce Department."

€ "Listen, I have never turned down a meeting with Gates or Ballmer...On
many occasions, I've challenged them to get onstage one-on-one and have a
reasonable debate, but they've always refused. And that's because they don't
even flirt with telling the truth anymore. And if I were protecting a
monopoly like they are, I wouldn't do it, either. Because they know the real
truth."

€ "The visual I see is a slow-motion collision of two garbage trucks--and
they are just about to meet bumpers." (On the prospects for the
Hewlett-Packard and Compaq merger.)

€ "If I could embed a locator chip in my child right now, I know I would do
that. Some people call that Big Brother; I call it being a father."

€ "Technology has the shelf life of a banana."

€ "Open source is free like a puppy is free."

€ "People say, 'Tape is kind of boring.' Well, I say go in and tell your
customer that you have lost their back-up tapes and you'll see excitement
pretty quickly."

€ "You already have zero privacy--get over it."

€ "So I think the opportunity with Java versus 'CaptiveX,' as everybody
calls it, is either you want to be captive to the Microsoft arena or you
want to have something that runs on everything."

€ "Is there a McNealy's law? Yeah, that's 'eat lunch or be lunch.' Or if
you're in academia, 'do lunch, or be lunch.'

€ "I enjoy my wife enough to now have four children."

Compiled from CNET News.com archives, BusinessWeek, Thinkexist.com and the
books "Bad Boy Ballmer" and "High Noon."