Month: August 1999

“Let’s continue to find new ways to stand on each others’ shoulders rather than stepping on each others’ toes.”

Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy, exhorting Linux programmers to line up and assume the position at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in Monterey, California, ZDNN, 24 August 1999

“An Internet that’s growing and can handle streaming media is in everyone’s interests. We poke each other with sharp sticks all the time, but slowly we move forward.”

Tony Blake, AT&T Labs’ VP of marketing, on the primitive yet robust methods Internet engineers use to gain consensus on new standards, The New York Times, 23 August 1999

“It’s not about the fastest computer, or having the most wickedly awesome graphics generator. It’s about that person from Norway who stumbles into your cybercafe and can read his email and send it back home.”

Josh Cook, owner of Boston cybercafe Designs for Living, skipping over the inconveient fact that his target market of Norwegian travelers may not support a large business, be, 19 August 1999

“We don’t see this as a flaw. It is a concern.”

Reciprocal CTO Allen Beckerdite, reacting to the publication of a hack that disables the anti-piracy scheme his company built for Microsoft’s online music format, Wired News, 18 August 1999

“Most of our investors got involved because they liked the product and they liked us. They saw us as a force for good on the Web.”

Steven Johnson, Feed cofounder, on his site’s sudden embarrassment of profits, Village Voice, 18 August 1999