If all else fails Bill, try jingoism

Patriotism, Samuel Johnson once noted, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is the leader's call to arms when all rational argument has failed and an appeal to the sentiment of fellow countrymen is seen as the last hope.

Now, I'm not suggesting Bill Gates is about to don a GI trooper's helmet and launch into a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. All the same, his appeal last week to the PC industry to help ward off legal sanctions that might delay Windows 98 did smack of wartime propaganda.

Certainly, it was directed at fellow Microsoft men. One of his warnings was that PC dealers would lose megabucks if they couldn't cash in on the high season demand of kids returning to school. Another was that the two million Americans developing Windows applications could equally lose out big time if the system's 25June launch is delayed. In other words, everyone could suffer, from kids needing the latest learning tools to the entire US economy.

It was an appeal direct to the heart of commerce, packing a wallop that even Meatloaf in cycle shorts couldn't manage. It was also a storyline that Compaq, Intel, Dell and sundry Microsoft business partners have been happy to endorse. Indeed, if all goes to plan, the Windows 98 love fest will culminate in a political rally, possibly in New York this week.

What's really at stake, of course, is whether Microsoft should be allowed to incorporate its Internet Explorer browser in its latest operating system, a row that still hasn't been resolved for Windows 95. Gates's gambit so far has been to throw numerous spanners in the judicial works, presumably on the basis that once Windows 98 is launched, it will be too late for rivals to intervene. Much of the legal argument levelled against Windows 95 will be rendered irrelevant and the US Department of Justice and the 13 states bringing antitrust charges against Microsoft will probably have to start again.

Meanwhile, as in war, Microsoft partisans are blitzing US district attorney Joel Klein and senate delegations with emails. Doubtless IBM and those in the rival Lotus Notes camp - the product most likely to lose if Microsoft dominates tomorrow's messaging highways - will soon retaliate. With Notes able to support 10,000 users on a single AS/400 server, it won't be long before the big guns are blazing.

'Lou, we've hit Gates in the kisser with several thousand email rounds, but then they trained all of MSN on the Justice Department sending Joel's computers crashing. Just say the word and we'll nuke Seattle with the output of a few System 3090s.'

With just six weeks to go before Windows 98's official debut, time is running out for both sides and the action could get really nasty - and don't forget, Microsoft is on the verge of launching a constellation of comms satellites using Satan missile launchers left over from the Russia's communist days. What were all those jokes again about Gates and the numbers 666?