James Harding's view from the valley
You thought that Lara Croft was the biggest thing in Silicon Graphics, but no, it's the girl in Jurassic Park.
Everybody here seems to be talking about product placement in films -, but no, it's the girl in Jurassic Park. Silicon Valley companies are throwing their money at movie moguls down the coast in Hollywood. But one thing I have noticed in films is that the more evil the use of technology, the cooler it is.
In Jurassic Park, the little girl saves the whole cast from the dinosaurs by recognising a Silicon Graphics-based Unix system. But this Unix system was graphical, simple to use and easy to hack into - unlike any Unix system I know.
If that were not ridiculous enough, she works out how to lock a door using the same system within five or six seconds. The idea that anyone can learn Unix that quickly is insane and it actually biased me against Silicon Graphics for a good five minutes.
IBM and Northamber provided kit for the Bond film Goldeneye - which for me saved the genre after the dark days of Timothy Dalton - and I was a late substitute to see the Royal Premiere thanks to the distributor.
I must admit that using IBM hardware to save the world made me think positively about IBM for a few minutes.
The real benefit for computer firms comes when their stuff is used by the evil characters. Bad is good and everyone thinks bad guys are cool - just ask Alan Rickman or Jack Nicholson. The most recent use of technology I saw was in Face Off, John Travolta and Nicholas Cage's action thriller.
Cage, the bad guy, used an Iomega Jaz disk to hold his plan to blow up half of Los Angeles. He stored all that evil on one 4in disk and carried it around where the cops could never find it. Cool. I want a Jaz drive and I have thought good things about Iomega ever since.
Sauce for a goose
The laddish spirit of male resellers is not dead. According to Reuters, the president of Staples was forced to resign last week. When he was arrested for grabbing a company secretary, newspapers reported that he told police that he had paid her $10,000 to keep quiet about their affair. A Staples representative said the board then agreed he could not longer go on after violating the company's policy on fraternisation, which 'does not allow a non-business relationship between a subordinate and a supervisor'. It happens in America, too.
Paper money
If I hear another stupid analyst's prediction about how big the internet is going to be I swear I will start a Web site exposing such rubbish.
When all their ridiculous forecasts are proved wrong in the year 2001, I will email 2001 copies of their predictions back to them.
I wish I could remember one of these predictions about 1997 which has been proved to be a pile of MSN. I am convinced there was an idea that the computer and the internet would destroy the paper industry as everybody moved all their documents to electronic form.
The Electronic Document Systems Foundation says the revenue from non-printed documents was $5.1 billion in 1991 and rose to a massive $13.1 billion in 1996. Impressive. But electronic on-paper documents were worth $41.8 billion in 1991 and $72.8 billion in 1996. Surprise, surprise - most companies do business on paper and do not trust business matters to electronic storage yet, let alone e-commerce. Why? It's simple - you can't read or sign electronic contract documents on the golf course or the toilet.
Egg-heads and chips
Chip devotees and egg-heads flocked to San Jose recently for the Microprocessor Forum. It's the place where you find out about the latest in chip technology.
It's the place where Intel and company announce everything. It's the place where you see a glimpse of the future. It's the place where techies get a speaking slot if their employers are prepared to stump up enough. It's the place where I was utterly dumbfounded by the time every speaker reached their third presentation slide.
I may be more of a news writer than a propeller-head, but I usually know my way around. Not at this forum. After struggling to follow Intel, S3, AMD, Digital Semiconductor and Advanced Risc Machines, I got disoriented around the product road maps and block diagrams during IBM Microelectronics.
Eventually, they had turned my brain into Jell-O - the American, thicker version of jelly - and I lost my way. In fact, on the way out, I walked in on a medical committee meeting. As the heat of embarrassment flushed my face, I suddenly felt happier because at least a doctor would be present if I passed out.
Fee's a rainbow
The job market in Silly-con Valley gets sillier and sillier. The latest idea to entice people to join one technology company is to offer them Rolling Stones concert tickets.
Remedy Corporation has had so much trouble finding staff that it advertised that it is offering Stones tickets to anyone who joins the company by 14 November. Touts have been selling tickets for the highly acclaimed Bridges To Babylon tour for more than $500 apiece. Because the software company has had 200 applicants jumping like Jack Flash to apply in the first three days of its offer, the give-away seems to have worked. Remedy has 'got some satisfaction'.
James Harding is US Editor of VNU Newswire, based in San Francisco. He can be reached at [email protected] or on 00 1 415 306 0879.