WIRED LIFE IN CANADA

September 6, 1999
By Steve Tan, a poor Malaysian student studying in Montreal. While he insists that he is not a computer nerd, he nonetheless has a little beard, and has no girlfriend -- which are undisputable facts that he is a computer nerd.

Some years ago, Microsoft Number 2, Steve Ballmer, initiated a negotiation with Noorda, the head of Novell. They talked about merger. A few months later, Bill Gates said no. Boxes and boxes of Novell documents sitting in Redmond were returned to Novell. Presumably, Microsoft had read them all and learnt a great deal. They went on to create NT and made billions, and made Novell very miserable. This, is said to be typical of Microsoft : They negotiate just to learn something from their rivals. They first make love to you, then learn about you, and dump you, and crush you.

Two weeks ago, a guy named Francois phoned me and told me that he has found my website very interesting. He is doing similar things – creating a website that provides free classifieds service for people living in Canada. Then I asked him out for a coffee. I said, "hey, what do you think of a merger?".

Yesterday at 3pm, we met at a coffee house. He said he was really tall. I said I would carry a briefcase. We immediately recognized each other. We began with some small talk. We talked about courses in school, about Perl, about the goddam weather, about Linux. Then I took out a paper and drew a few rectangles and told him that that was the brief plan of my website. He took over the paper, and drew a lot of things, and talked a lot. I smiled politely and ocassionally uttered "Oh really ?", "Cool", "Oh I see".

He said he wanted to get a deal from the local grocery stores and created a section to offer online coupons. He said he had a little javascript that would reap the world news from a website so that his website can look more dynamic. He created a different DSN so that he could store the credit card information in a more secured path. To avoid appearing as a total jack-ass, I offered him some advice on how to organize the database. But for two hours, he did most of the talking.

We agreed on a few things, but no concrete deal was confirmed. We shook hands once again and walked out the coffee house.

I got what I wanted – my rival’s plan. I’m not sure what he is thinking. He could be thinking of the same thing. He probably offers me some honey first, and will chop me into pieces later. I walked down the busy street alone. I was feeling a little dizzy and hot. Bill, oh Bill, what have you done to me? What have you done to the entire generation of 20-something ? We are so fucked-up. You are a God and Devil.