Are you there? You’re reading this, right? Good! That means we’ve all survived Y2K.

Well, actually it means that you and Computer Currents survived Y2K. Since I am writing this in 1999, I may still be killed on New Year’s Eve by a falling plane shot out of the sky by an Russian nuclear missile launched by a PC with an out-of-date BIOS. Or perhaps a drunk driver.

But it’s not only the end of a decade, a century, and a millennium. It’s also the end of a year. and that means it’s time for the HAL 9000 Awards, where I honor the people, programs, and corporations that kept Gigglebytes supplied with material throughout 1999.

Best Performance by Bill Gates
In 1999 the richest man alive played a kindly philanthropist, a ruthless competitor (very convincingly), and, well, the richest man alive. But what a performance he gave after Judge Jackson’s famous finding of fact, when Bill got to play the indignant little guy up against the big, bad government. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Gates insisted that the lawsuit was "fundamentally about one question: Can a successful American company continue to improve its products for the benefit of consumers?" Consumers, for the most part, weren’t sure what company he was talking about.

The John Wayne Award for Manly Warfare
This year saw the release of yet another warfare simulation game, one that promised to place "gamers and non-gamers alike in an all-out assault for control of a global virtual battlefield." To emphasize the joy, the thrill, and the excitement of mass extermination, the Infogrames Entertainment Group named this game Wargasm.

The Monty Python Spam Spam Spam Spam Award
Back in February, I received unsolicited e-mail from K.C. Smith of Evansville, Indiana. Mr. Smith, so the mailing states, hates spam and has figured out how to stop it. So he e-mailed everyone in the world and asked each person to send him $15.

The George W. Bush Citation for Inspiring Confidence
At least as of October, the Royal Bank Financial Group’s Web site contained a strong assurance that the financial institution was ready for the Year 2000. "We guarantee that on and after January 1, 2000, our clients ’ money will be safe in their accounts, and that our records of client assets and transactions will be protected." But if you visit the site, reports one reader, a cookie is put on your hard disk that says "This cookie will persist until Wed Dec 31 19:00:01 1969."

Worst New Acronym
IMHO, this award goes ASAP to a company with a great IPO, WD. In a November press release, the good folks at Western Digital announced a new line of hard drives targeting "the enterprise sector’s fastest growing market, LOETHE—the low end of the high end." (Can’t we just call it the middle?)

The Personal Affront Award
As the year began, someone named a program after me. What’s worse, Spector is a privacy invasion tool that allows people to secretly record what other people are doing on their computers. Visit SpectorSoft’s Web site (www.spectorsoft.com) and you’re told that "Your kids will hate Spector. Your employees will hate Spector." And this Spector hates Spector!

The MTV Award For Too Much Advertising
This has to go to Free-PC, a company that started offering free computers in the middle of ‘99. The catch: You had to sacrifice nearly a third of your screen to blinking, changing, and annoying ads. Oh, yes, there was also a licensing agreement that banned changing your computer’s resolution and demanded that you spend a minimum number of hours a week at your computer. There seems to be a matter of principle here: Does the computer belong to Free-PC, or does it belong to Microsoft?

Product of the Year
This goes to the eagerly awaited Windows 2000, which Microsoft has succeeded in keeping in an eagerly-awaited state throughout the year. Windows 2000 is, we all know, the absolute wonder; the operating system that will solve all of our problems. Enjoy it now, because the OS is expected to lose much of its appeal next month when it finally ships.

And that’s it for this year. The next time you read the HAL 9000 Awards, it really will be 2001. [May 29, 2003: I never did do a HAL 9000 Award in 2001, or 2002 or 2003. Changes in the column forced by ComputerUser made this annual feature impractical.]

© Copyright 2000 by Lincoln Spector

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