Boners, groaners, miscues, and snafus of 2004

It’s that time again, when we look back with a mix of amusement and dyspepsia on the events of 2004. For the second consecutive year, Notes From the Field presents the GUI Awards (or “Gooeys”) for Greed, Underhandedness, and Imbecility in the field of information technology. This year’s statuette features a bronze Firefox nibbling on a Microsoft end-user license agreement. So please, let’s dim the lights and offer a nice round of applause for our first presenter, Charo!

The “Mission Accomplished” Award goes to Oracle for rescuing PeopleSoft from the throes of a brutal dictatorship … or is that the other way around? As part of the deal, PeopleSoft agreed to drop its poison-pill defense against the takeover, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison agreed to enroll in an ego management program.

The “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” Award goes to Dell Computer. The makers of the original flaming laptop continue a proud tradition with the recent recall of nearly a million AC power adapters, which ran so hot users had to wear asbestos skivvies.

The “Fire Down Below” Award goes to the researchers at the State University of New York at Stonybrook who discovered that using a laptop in your lap could cause infertility by, um, overcooking your eggs. And if you’re using a Dell laptop, get ready to serve up some huevos rancheros.

The “If It Wasn’t for Bad Luck” Award goes to SCO, which got ditched by its last remaining investor, saw its licensing revenue drop by more than 90 percent, and had its Web site defaced by fiendishly sardonic hackers. (“We own all your code. Pay us all your money.”) I think somebody needs to give CEO Darl McBride a hug.

The “No Such Thing as Bad Publicity” Award goes to the Motion Picture Association of America, which filed its first lawsuits against file swappers in November. Frankly, that seems a little harsh — don’t you think downloading and watching Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace is punishment enough?

The “Show Me the Money” Award goes to Microsoft, naturally. During the past year, the cash-rich Redmondites settled disputes with InterTrust ($440 million), Novell ($536 million), Sun Microsystems ($1.6 billion), disgruntled shareholders (a $32 billion dividend), and a host of others. Maybe money can’t buy you love, but it can produce new and improved forms of loathing.

The “Andy Grove Humanitarian” Award goes, not surprisingly, to Intel. In 2004, the $30 billion chipmaker canceled two planned processors, issued a recall of one chip, delayed production of another, and saw its CPU market share dip dangerously close to 82 percent. Thanks for giving the little guys a chance to catch up.

The “That’s Not Writing, That’s Typing” Award goes to the bleary-eyed denizens of the blogosphere. From the cadre of font geeks who ripped the lid off “Rathergate” to the congressional assistant who lost her job for writing about her bedroom escapades with Bush administration officials, America’s 4 million bloggers served with distinction. Please remove your tin-foil helmets and take a bow.

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