Every Christmas morning when the Monitor was a wee one, it would get up early, bound down the steps and run to the den to see what Santa had brought. And sure enough, every Christmas morning there sat a stocking — full from top-to-toe — on top of a present or two.
But before
tearing into its booty, the Monitor would take a moment, lower its head and thank any and all divine powers for one thing: you don’t always get what you deserve. In the spirit of giving I’d like to share some of the Christmas desires from some of the newsmakers of 2002. I don’t know if they’ll get what they want, but the Monitor knows what they need and deserve.
- What Bryant Jackson wants: Metafore head honcho would like a couple of high-profile clients to replace York Central Hospital and Merrill Lynch, both of whom made tracks for greener reseller pastures in 2002.
- What he needs: A copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
- What the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) wants: Exclusive and non-revocable rights to the word engineer and foreign equivalents. Squabbled seemingly all year with anyone who used the word . . . I’m not sure I can use it.
- What it deserves: Carrot Top to change his name to Professional Engineer.
- What Bell DSL subscribers, Rogers Internet users and the Residential Broadband Users’ Association want: Unlimited bandwidth and no cap on downloads or uploads.
- What they need: Definitions of rights and privileges and a copy of the Canadian Constitution.
- What Bill Gates wants: All the lawsuits, trials and investigations to go away.
- What he needs: To spend a month in front of a TV looping Matlock re-runs.
- What Larry Ellison wants: Whatever Bill Gates has.
- What he needs: Whatever Bill Gates deserves.
- What the “”Dude, you’re getting a Dell”” kid wants: A job.
- What he needs: A lifetime of work at a Dell customer call centre.
- What Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft wants: For business to go straight — piracy cost $289 million in retail sales in Canada in 2001, $2 billion in lost wages and 32,000 jobs.
- What it needs: A method to calculate the piracy rate in Canada that doesn’t rely on assumptions.
- What British Telecom wants: Nothing much, just the intellectual property rights to hyperlinks, that’s all.
- What it deserves: A front row seat next to the CCPE at a pity party.
- What the City of Toronto IT department wants: The leasing inquiry and stories about executives skipping work to hours golfing to go away.
- What it deserves: To spend the rest of their days picking up balls at a driving range. . . in the Arctic.
- What Research in Motion wants: sue the pants off anyone within a country mile of its intellectual property.
- What it needs: fresh Berries.
- What Michael Cowpland wants: I have absolutely no idea, but I’d guess a return to the spotlight.
- What he deserves: A second chance (come on, it’s Christmas).
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