From: spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com
Sent: Monday, August 9, 2004 12:57 AM
To: eWEEK readers
Subject: Rocky horrors; Penguin to open Citi account? Novell on the move
Back in Las Vegas to carry out his quest to ride at least once in every cab in the city, Spence, alas, spent most of his time holed up in the vast MGM Grand Hotel for this years edition of the SCO Forum event.
“If I sit through more video clips, Ill have to swap my tech journalist credentials for a movie critics,” mused the Mouser. Included in this years SCO film festival was a feature linking CEO and President Darl McBride with the quintessential underdog, Rocky. It was the most tedious part of the entire sleep-inducing exercise. As Spence snoozed, he recalled a video at last years conference that portrayed McBride as a James Bond-like figure, fighting to rid the IT world of vast corporate evil. Yawn. In addition to the Rocky comparison, McBride this year screened a clip from “The Princess Bride,” a platform for identifying himself with the character Wesley, who was given up for dead but returned to right wrongs. Referring to the pressure put on SCO by IBM “and its agents” as “unbelievable and brutal,” McBride then rolled a clip of a man being stretched on a torture machine. But the most significant phrase of the conference, to the Katts sensitive ears, was McBrides repeated admission that the company might lose its lawsuits: “We may be wrong, but I doubt it,” said the SCO CEO.
“Your movies may not be puerile and boring, but I doubt it,” hissed His Hirsuteness. “Gotta Fly Now,” Spence sputtered. He skatted from the hall to check e-mail and noted that SCOs FUD was having no effect in some quarters. One tipster averred that IBM is close to getting CitiFinancial to drop Windows in favor of Linux. CitiFinancial is a big NT user, wrote the source, and apparently has been a mostly Hewlett-Packard hardware shop, whereas Citi corporate has been Big Blue through and through for a while. So, while CitiFinancial is readying to move to IBM hardware, IBM is making a pitch to replace the companys Windows servers and workstations with an all-Linux solution. Bzzz! The KattPhone vibrated against Spences haunch. A Tabby tattler claimed Novell is shutting its 50-person San Francisco office. A Novell spokesperson responded that it had only about 25 sales and support staff, all of whom are being retained “for now” and will work from home.
El Gato then cabbed to McCarran for a flight to San Jose and the Search Engine Strategies conference. There, he visited the booth of search marketing company WebSourced, where execs were showing the companys work on a huge plasma screen. Suddenly, pornographic sites took over the display. One exec, frantically grabbing a cup of coffee, fingered spyware as the culprit. “Sure,” winked the Lynx.