• silicon.com
• Management
• CIO Insights

By Graham Hayday, 27 December 2002 09:00

COMMENT 4. Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems The mouth on legs has been on top form this year, putting the world to rights and preaching an open standards gospel. He was a front-runner in the Halo Handicap until a late faux-pas saw him slip down the field. McNealy named and shamed the devil in April. He warned developers against Bill Gates - yes, him - telling them not to be lured into the evil one's grasp. "You can take the offer from the dark side," he said. "The first hit of heroin is free." He continued: "People ask me why I'm negative about Microsoft. It's because I can't leave my kids to a world of control, alt, delete..." Perish the thought. And pity McNealy's children. Despite earning what some would call a very large fortune, the big man urged users to buy his company's servers in August. "Go buy one, please. Support my kids. They need new shoes." Presumably those limited edition Reeboks with diamonds on the soles. Come October, McNealy thought he'd found another Satanic conspiracy. And Michael Dell was the ring-leader this time. "[Michael Dell] has a pact with Intel and Microsoft to consolidate the entire distribution channel. He gets a special super deal from both that as long as he doesn't stray, they will give him enough advantage. This is my conjecture. But the whole deal is to consolidate IBM, HP and Compaq and everybody else out of the business. And then, at some point, Intel disintermediates Dell just by putting all these white boxes on a website and auctioning them off to whoever wants. And then Dell will have a competitor called Intel." Strewth. And what happens at that point? McNealy said: "At that point, Michael doesn't care. He's got his money. It's just a strict collapse of the supply chain. Ten years from now, you'll know whether I was on drugs or not." So McNealy's out of the running for sainthood pending the results of an official urine test. In the meantime, Santa is happy to give him 10 Silk Cut and a packet of king-sized Rizlas to keep him going. 5. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com Everyone's favourite smiley CEO has (some would say) performed miracles by keeping his company running. And Amazon - whisper it - even posted a profit this time last year, with another one on the cards for this festive quarter. eBay too proved there is money to be made online. But Bezos' failure to complete a complex experiment involving a needle, a camel and a rich man rule him out from joining the heavenly throng. Consolation present: A Segway Human Transporter, so he can show us all just how useful the invention he backed really is. 6. Brian Halla, CEO, NatSemi The chip outfit's boss made a late push for the ultimate accolade in November by trying to predict the future. Using complex mathematical models, neural networks, historical patterns and current trends, he came up with the date upon which our industry will begin to recover: 21 June 2003. Using a sophisticated technique called 'sticking a finger in the air', the Round-Up can tell you he's wrong. So Halla is a false prophet of profit (who's even got a slightly devilish name come to think of it) Sorry Brian. (He's not the Messiah, he's Brian, etc). Present: A Viking helmet. 7. Honor Blackman, Alan Hansen and Lisa Riley You might be surprised to see three people trying to occupy one position, but religious types don't seem to have much trouble with that sort of thing, so why the heck not? The unlikely trio were appointed the government's official 'net gurus' in March, fronting its 'let's all get on' campaign. They've now disappeared off the face of the website (www.letsallgeton.gov.uk ), but still - things aren't going too badly in the e-government world. Various e-voting trials took place this year which, while not having much of an impact on voter turnout, did prove popular with the electorate: in one, over 40 per cent of votes were cast electronically. Around 70 per cent of government services are online - but the three e-musketeers' credentials have been damaged by Tony Blair's own revelation that just one in ten of us have actually bothered to access these online services. Furthermore in March, the director of technology for the Cabinet Office, Anwar Choudhury, asked a conference of government IT types if they thought Blair was likely to hit his target of making all services available electronically by 2005. He was met with a short period of silence, followed by some awkward shuffling and nervous laughter. Potential saints shouldn't ally themselves with anyone who breaks a promise. Besides, Honor Blackman's involvement gave us the excuse to publish a story entitled 'There's Pussy Galore on the web'. And it's not like we need an excuse to write childish headlines. So sorry gang, no dice. A life-sized model of Mark Lawrenson for Alan, a life-side model of Alan for Honor and a larger-than-life-sized model of Jeremy Beadle for Lisa. 8. Ben Verwaayen, CEO, BT Well, he had to get a mention, if only to provide us with a hilarious punch line. A self-install ADSL package for you sir. (Sorry, cheap shot there: BT's actually not had a bad year. But that's another story...) That means, of course, that no one's emerged from 2002 with enough glory to become the internet's first saint - except perhaps our lovely readers for logging-on to silicon. Thanks to one and all. And thanks for reading the Round-Up this year. It'll be back on Friday 10 January, while silicon.com itself will be back on January 2. Until then, from all of us at silicon, have a fantastic Christmas and a very happy New Year.