Month: May 1998

“VCs don’t sign NDAs.”

Andrew Anker, amateur pundit at VC firm August Capital, explaining how tech financiers avoid the burdens of nondisclosure agreements, Silicon Spin on ZDTV, 27 May 1998

“This is a branding deal for CNET. We’re going to be the supplier of computing- and Internet-related content for a dominant resource for millions of Internet users.”

Robin Wolaner, CNET’s executive vice president of technology publishing, on the no-money-down deal her company struck with Netscape to republish CNET content on Netcenter, News.com, 27 May 1998

“The problem with the Justice Department is they don’t understand how computer software works. And they don’t understand us.”

David Pritchard, Microsoft’s recruiter-in-chief, on the code that employees at his company run on, The New York Times, 26 May 1998

“Electronic mail is of great benefit, because information thus transmitted eliminates the limitations of space and time, is received instantly, may be read whenever and wherever there is a computer and telephone, eliminates bureaucracy, and can be instantly discussed and replied to if needed.”

Statement attributed to Indonesian President B.J. Habibie in a meeting of his country’s freshly minted Reform Cabinet, Kompas Online, 26 May 1998

“There will be other paradigm shifts, other new technology developments that will make these issues today that are such big problems [meaningless]…. There was no such thing as the Internet five years ago.”

Neil Herman, a technology analyst with Salomon Smith Barney, offering an intriguingly ahistorical perspective on Microsoft’s legal woes, CNNfn, 19 May 1998