Summit Up

Drat! Another error message. Spence was at his wits end, trying to figure out the online travel system his penurious publisher had instituted. The idea was to shave a few bucks off the bottom line by ditching the travel department and forcing staffers to spend hours trying to book the cheapest flights and hotels themselves. The bean counters, having wrested control of virtually everything in the wake of the dot-com bust, still had a stranglehold on business processes at the Puss publisher.

The travel Spence was trying desperately to arrange was for the PeopleSoft Leadership Summit in Las Vegas May 18 and 19. Bill would be speaking. Not that Bill, the other one: President No. 42, William Jefferson Clinton. Of course, the fact that the ex-prez was on the agenda was no guarantee hed appear.

Despite his lifestyle, Spence still has plenty of good memory cells left, and they recalled that Bubba had bailed on Oracle and SAP in recent years. One of the previous cancellations was due to a Hillary book signing, of all things. Spence also remembered that Larry Ellison used to be an FOB (Friend of Bill)—or maybe Bill was an FOL—and the man from Hope did speak at the Oracle Apps user conference in 2001, one of his first paid gigs after handing the reins to W. In fact, Larry hired Joe Lockhart, Bills press spokesman, after Bill left office. Bill now has become a regular at PeopleSoft events, having appeared in 2002 as well. Wheres the love?

The Kitty threw up his paws, booked the trip and fled to a watering hole. There, he imbibed with pals chatting about Googles Gmail. “If you have word recognition for contextualized ad placement in mail, then wouldnt Aunt Berthas birthday note to little Timmy telling him to expect a very big package be filled with male-enhancement ads?” prattled a pal. The Maven of Murmurs BlackBerry started going nuts. It was an integrator messaging him about the Terminal Services licensing scheme for Windows Server 2003. Microsoft now requires a license for any device using Terminal Services on Windows Server 2003. Previously, desktops such as Windows 2000 Pro didnt need a license to access a Win 2000 server via Terminal Services in application mode because it was included in the desktop OS. Many Terminal Server customers use Citrix, and this change means they would pay twice for Citrix clients accessing Terminal Server 2003.

Spence was now too addled to grasp the ins and outs of it all, but the bottom line seemed to be that, once again, Microsoft had changed its licensing policy to generate more revenue and to rile a rival products users. Alas, plus ça change, thought Le Chat, as he ordered another drink to dull the pain of booking online.