Ten years on this essay is surprisingly topical today as it was then.

… Bill Gates, who has already made Mitch Kapor-style money, many times over, and posesses something much more offensive — the power of FUD.

In the software business, FUD is the power to set the agenda, to keep anyone else from moving, to make everyone wait for you. It isn’t entirely negative. FUD makes it possible for there to actually *be* an agenda. If the industry is run by random idiots, then this is preferrable.

… my Dad had a Rainbow; it had more steel in it than a small car.

A decade later, today that msn.com is the #2 traffic site, bested only by Yahoo.