Murphy, the one with the law that is, was working overtime last Monday when trustbuster-beleaguered Microsoft Corp.’s normally super-polished public relations shop shipped to reporters gratis the long-awaited final version of Windows 98 that will be sold to the public for $89 starting June 25.
The specially “burned” CD-ROM for newsies contained an ugly bug created when billg@microsoft.com’s flack shop tried to give the favored few a special password and tripped over other code.
Once past this last binary burp, Windows 98 installs on PCs in a half hour or so and does it as smooth as the bottom line on Gates’ VISA card.
YO HO HO AND A BOTTLE OF COBOL
WHAT’S THAT TICKING SOUND?
Did you ever wonder what Capt. Hook’s name was before that gator ate his hand? What pirates did to the guys who buried the treasure for them? As to the latter, the answer is probably the same thing corporate America is going to do to Year 2000 bug fix programmers after the turn of the 21st Century.
Trade journal Computerworld interviewed a bevy of corporate IT (information technology) honchos and found widespread plans to deep-six highly paid Cobol programmers now on full-time status once the Millennium Bug is squashed.
Computerworld’s headline: Year 2000 coders face `bloodbath’
THE GOOD SHIP AMOCO
AHOY MATES, WELCOME ABOARD
Maybe Capt. Hook’s name was Dan Dietsch. He’s an Amoco publicist beating the bushes to get the word out to programmers and other data droids that Chicagoland’s 5th largest company is desperate for computer workers. Hook, I mean Dietsch, urges those with knowhow to log on to the job site www.amoco.com/what(underscore)we(underscore)do/ss/hr/usa/opport/opport.htm.
The first person they hire should be somebody capable of producing readable Web addresses.
ON-LINE WORKOUT
YOU’VE GOT ABS
Hustlers at San Francisco-based Netpulse Communications Inc. are pitching health club operators and even hospital cardiovascular monitoring technicians with a gadget that goes on the handlebars of exercise torture equipment and lets victims use a touch screen to surf Websites, watch TV, read and send e-mail, shop and, of course, read ads, while working out.
Sit down, log on to www.netpulse.net and check it out. Then take a nice nap.
WATCH OUT!
YOU’VE GOT MAIL
“Ted,” a Gary Ellenberg (“Grinders,” “No Quarter”) movie tastelessly billed as “an explosive comedy about the Unabomber,” kicks off a multimedia Chicago.Alt.Film Festival at the Harold Washington library Friday. A Chicago premiere is appropriate, say the sick comedy backers of Ted, because it’s a “mocumentary” in the Spinal Tap vein about a Illinois local boy with a vision. An associated Website: www.chronicmedia.com.
