When Amy cashed out my piggy bank for me, I found myself with $40 in Amazon credit.  I got myself a book (Designing Interfaces — review sometime next week), and I ordered a copy of Pirates of Silicon Valley.

I haven’t had a Thursday Night Movie Night since Amy finished her summer semester, so I fed the DVD into my Mac Mini HTPC and plopped down on the couch.  I joked about the Mac saying “Error: Can’t play disc.  It makes Steve Jobs look like a jerk.”  Oddly enough, the computer locked up completely at the end of one of the special features, and had to be rebooted.  The prophecy was fulfilled — kneel before me!

Pirates of Silicon Valley was a TNT made-for-TV feature.  I last saw it when it was originally shown in 1999, at the end of the dot-com era.  At the time, I was thrilled that computer geeks were getting mainstream attention.  Of course, that came with a price.

When watching this movie, I had to keep reminding myself that it’s a dramatization, not a documentary per se.  Bill Gates comes off as megalomanical dork, Steve Jobs as an abusive asshole, and Woz as a completely socially inept genius.  It’s entertaining, but it’s not 100% accurate.  It’s a summary of what was going on between Microsoft and Apple in those days, completely ignoring the rest of the home computer industry.  The director only had two hours to tell an exciting story, and I think it was wise to leave Commodore, Atari, Tandy, et al out of the picture.  Heck, the saga of Commodore could be a whole mini series on its own, with all the drama under their roof.

You can only use the POW block so many times. I think the original game limited you to three times. Some people have apparently hacked reality to use it over & over. But eventually, it catches up with you.

I don’t know who made this, but it’s full of awesomeness.