THE MEANS JUSTIFY THE SPENDS

“There were a lot of things done when the Internet was flying high that people think about differently in retrospect.”

Patti Hart, Excite@Home’s fourth CEO in five years, whose first week on the job was spent dealing with a teensy $75 million cash shortage that her new employer neglected to tell her about while she was being interviewed, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 May 2001

CHANGE IS BILLABLE

“The real lesson here is to recognize that the technology itself is of a transformational nature.”

Chunka Mui, DiamondCluster’s chief enervation officer, who’s still charging high hourly fees to tell people, yet again, that the Internet changes everything, The New York Times, 13 May 2001

THE NEWTON ECONOMY

“The reigning notion today is that the laws of economics are not, after all, suspended in cyberspace like the laws of gravity in outer space.”

Slate editor Michael Kinsley, showing that the comp-sci majors he’s hung out with for the past five years haven’t rubbed off on him, Slate, 10 May 2001

CLIFF NOTES

“People are claiming that they’re seeing the bottom. I don’t know where they’re getting that data. They certainly didn’t see the cliff, so how in the world can they see the bottom?”

Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, on analysts who can’t tell their bottoms from a dot in dot com, News.com, 10 May 2001

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO CUPERTINO

“In the last four years we’ve recovered our soul to a large extent.”

Kevin Browne, general manager of Microsoft’s Mac-software business unit, on avoiding spiritual margin calls on his karmic brokerage account, ZDNN, 7 May 2001