THIS IS AN EITHER-OR QUESTION?

“The question for Condé Nast is can they leave [Wired] alone, or will they force it into the mold of their other achingly hip, sweet-smelling, narcissistic magazines.”

Jon Katz, HotWired’s media critic, missing the obvious synergies in the sale of Wired magazine to Condé Nast, The New York Times, 11 May 1998

MY OPERATING SYSTEM, RIGHT OR WRONG

“An injunction delaying Windows 98 would clearly have a negative impact on the country as a whole.”

Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer, who’s secretly thrilled to pin his sales woes on the government instead of his lackluster products, speaking at Microsoft’s behest at a pro-Windows 98 corporate PR rally in New York, The New York Times, 6 May 1998

I HATE 1-800 NUMBERS, TOO — DO SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE

“This appeals to people who are looking for a particular site and can’t remember a URL, and for whom the whole approach of typing in ‘www.companyname.com’ doesn’t feel good.”

Abe Hirsch, director of business development for AltaVista, for whom the whole approach of registering “www.altavista.com” never worked, on his company’s new RealName service to make sure fools and their Web sites are not parted, News.com, 6 May 1998

SERIAL MONOTONY

“I’m still out trying to build the Knowledge Navigator, but doing it not with just one company but a whole series of companies.”

Quixotic visionary and erstwhile soda jerk John Sculley, still dreaming the impossible dream of ubiquitous information access through whizzy gadgets, Seattle Times, 5 May 1998

THE NETSCAPE GUIDE BY YA-WHO?

“It’s not really in our model to provide work for hire.”

Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Jeff Mallett, who seems curiously unaware of such operations as the Netscape Guide by Yahoo and MTV UnfURLed, on his company’s standoffish approach to negotiations over renewing Netscape’s search agreements for its Netcenter Web site, TechWeb News, 4 May 1998