More on Bill Gates

A couple of posts ago I mentioned how excited I was about the upcoming movie The Social Network, and how much I'm looking forward to the dramatization of the founding of Facebook. On that post I also embedded a short clip from the 1999 movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, which was about the (now) early days of the Mac vs. PC wars. The specific clip dramatized the time in 1980/81 when Microsoft sold its operating system, DOS, to IBM.

Here's another clip from the film. This is near the very end of the film, and it dramatizes the Apple release of the Macintosh, which happened just a few months before Microsoft unveiled Windows, its graphical interface for DOS that looked VERY much like the Apple Macintosh operating system. VERY MUCH. So much so that Steve Jobs (played by Noah Wiley in the clip) is a little upset.

As with the first clip, here's another example of where being first or even being best isn't necessarily important in the computer industry--knowing how to leverage, promote, and sell a product IS. The actor playing Bill Gates says as much right at the end of the clip.

As far as I know, neither of the meetings in this clip actually happened, at least not the way they're portrayed here (Bill Gates, though, DID appear at the keynote address when the 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl ad aired). But that's okay--writers of docudramas often use a little bit of dramatic license, and I think that what's happened here, and I also think it doesn't necessarily hurt anything--the gist of everyone's feelings during the time is captured pretty well here.



(I can't see the video.)

Nothing New Under the Sun

I'm looking forward very much to the upcoming film The Social Network. It's been a long time since there was a  non-action or non-Disney movie that I wanted to see in the theaters, but this is it, for several reasons:
1) It was written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote The West Wing, Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and A Few Good Men. As with those works, I'm expecting a lot of fast paced, witty dialogue.
2) I like many of the actors in the film, including Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg.
3) It's about social networking! Going to see the movie is practically part of my job description.

I will say one thing, though. I'm surprised that many people are upset that the film is going to portray Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg in a negative light. According to a news article I was just reading, the director states that the film portrays Zuckerburg as "prickly and smarter than everybody else and makes no apologies for it." The film also portrays Zuckerburg not as the real creator of Facebook, but as someone who used his business savvy to profit from the work of others. Zuckerburg is portrayed more as a businessman than as a computer genius.

Huh. Kind of reminds me of another rich computer genius:



(I can't see the video.)

Prayer for the Educational CIO

I found myself actually saying a variation of this prayer at a long traffic light one morning this week.

Dear God,

All my life I wish to serve You, and in my current job, I serve You by serving other people. Help me remember that.

Help me remember many things, Lord:

--That not everyone I talk to spends 40 hours a week buried in technology, and that many of them don't know a gigabyte from a kilobyte from a dogbite. Help me to not talk over their heads.

--That many people I work with are AFRAID of technology, and if I appear rushed or dismissive to these people, or if I seem to judge them for not being proficient in technology, they may give up and become even LESS inclined to use technology.

--That I shouldn't yell at this person for not knowing that you can turn off a computer by holding the power button in and counting to ten.

--That no piece of technology is worth more than a human being, especially the human being who is seeking my help right now.

--That though I may have fifty things more pressing to the school district than the issue that this person is telling me about,  their problem isn't unimportant to THEM, and that I shouldn't sound dismissive to them.

--That my job is NOT to tinker with technology all day. My job is to help others to help students to learn, and if I'm not doing that, if I can't trace what I'm doing somehow back to that simple idea, I'm not doing my job.

--That the guy who couldn't get an email attachment to open so he tried to reinstall Windows and in the process corrupted his computer, was NOT trying to sabotage my day. He was TRYING to help, and he probably wants to be thanked.

--That though I may already have been told 17 times that email isn't working, this is the first time THIS person has told me, and they're not just telling me again to tick me off.

--That no matter how many times they're instructed otherwise, people will open unknown attachments and get viruses, and people will purchase technology without checking with me to see if their computer can run it or our network is compatible with it, and people will try to send emails about their yard sale to every student and staff member in the district, and people will email me instead of creating a work order, and then they'll create a work order that they can't get their solitaire program to work. People are dumb, God, and give me the patience and the grace to say that to You and not to them.

Help me to remember these things, God, so that I can do my job well, and so that I can help everyone else do their job.

But it's not just they that need help, God. I need help, too, so I ask these things of you:

--If there's a virus out there, help my machines to be patched.

--If there's a thunderstorm coming, help it to not knock out the power and in the process, fry some server.

--If I have important drives whose back ups are corrupt, help the drives to not fail.

--If I have an important report or technology plan or grant proposal or whatever else due, help me finish it on time.

--If I have to recommend a particular piece of technology for purchase, help it to not break six days after it arrives.

And finally, God, help me to remember that in the grand scheme of things, my job really, honestly, truly is not all that important. When I'm dead and gone, people will not remember how well I kept the network running, or how quickly I came and fixed their computers. People will remember how I treated other people, and what kind of person I was.

Help me, God, to be the kind of person that I'll want to be remembered as...