JargonTalk

Dr. Scott Rice is the originator of the the world-famous Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an annual competition for would-be writers that challenges them to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

The contest is named after a Victorian novelist, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose novel Paul Clifford bagan with the now-(in)famous line: ”It was a dark and stormy night.”

More can be seen about the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest here: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

Don’t miss the wonderful listings and examples from past winners and runner-up entries. They’re well worth the trip. And maybe I’ll get to make my trip to SJSU someday, and shake the hand of the man who made this all possible.

Actually met Bill Gates years ago – see my other entries. The main reason I would like to meet him again is to express my admiration for all he and his wife Melinda are doing through the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, especially for education, our schools and our libraries.

Bill Gates has proven that capitalism is not a dirty word.

For all his detractors, he has proven himself to be among the Best-of-the-Best, and has to be one of the greatest humanitarians in history.

Thanks Bill, for all you’ve done!

Met Bill Gates back in the 1980s at a Boston Computer Society (BCS) meeting. At that time WordPerfect dominated the word processing market, and Lotus 1-2-3 owned the lion’s share of the spreadsheet business. If one had a database application for a PC, it was probably dBASE (II or III). Bill Gates addressed the meeting, and was constantly pushing his large glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. Many in the crowd were working for Lotus Development in Cambridge, and some of those were looking down their collective noses at Bill.

But I got to shake his hand at the close of the meeting, and told him that I had used Microsoft Multiplan (their spreadsheet) for a few years. He asked me why I liked it (this was in “Lotus Country”), and I told him one of my main reasons. Microsoft applications didn’t have copy protection (Lotus apps and others did), so if a hard drive failed (they did, and often!) a user could reinstall the application once the drive was repaired or replaced.

He asked if I used Word, I admitted that I didn’t and that I was using WordPerfect at the time. He asked if I would consider using Word, and I said I would.

There was more for a few minutes, with a lot of interruptions. But I ended up walking out of that gathering with a couple of most interesting coupons: one for an extremely reduced price on Word, and another for a free copy of something called Microsoft Windows 1.04 which was bundled with a Microsoft Inport Mouse. I bought that copy of Word and have continued upgrading it over the years. My early Windows (really a GUI extension of MS-DOS) kept crashing, badly, but the mouse was great with that MS-DOS version of Word and other apps.

And now in 2006, where is WordPerfect and their huge market share? Part of Corel in Canada. And where is Lotus 1-2-3 with their domination of the spreadsheet market? Part of IBM, and 1-2-3 seems to have just disappeared. And where is that Harvard dropout who kept pushing his glasses up on his nose? He’s now the richest man in the world, and he and his lovely wife will probably go down as being the greatest humanitarians and philanthropists in history.

Thanks, Bill – glad that we met!

(BTW, we share the same birthday: October 28th)