Microsoft & me

Nothing inflames hatred of Microsoft quite like redesigning your web site. Except, I guess, having your innovative internet business crushed through monopolistic abuse of market power. Yeah, that’s probably worse. But designing your web site means having thoughts like this: “Okay, I can work around Internet Explorer 6’s float bug using absolute positioning, but that means I run into IE5’s positioning bug—which I guess I could fix by exploiting its CSS bug—” And so on.

I tell you, if everybody didn’t use Internet Explorer as their browser, nobody would use it.

When Doubleday asked me for an author photo for Jennifer Government, I e-mailed them a whole bunch of snaps. Most were of me looking like I thought authors were meant to look like: serious, thoughtful, smoking a pipe and rubbing my tweed elbow patches, that kind of thing. But one was this one I took of myself with my tongue poking out—which, of course Doubleday chose for the book jacket.

Now that’s okay—people get the impression that I like smashing up hotel rooms, but that’s actually kind of cool—but the problem is I’m sitting in front of a standard Windows desktop. I can protest that I dual-boot Linux all I like; it makes no difference. In the eyes of geeks around the world, I am forever shamed.