Steve's Gulfstream jet takes corporate perks to new heights

Despite appearances in last week's Net Results, Niall McKay was not responsible for my opinions on the BT/Esat sale. Nor (despite being based in San Francisco) does he have a particular interest in the top 10 tech bachelors in Silicon Valley, the other topic of last week's column. A misplaced picture byline of Niall might have led to such a conclusion, although my e-mail address was correctly appended to the end of the piece.

So, apologies to Niall, and if anyone wants to comment on the column - or nominate some Irish tech bachelors - direct comments to me, as usual.

CEOs everywhere must be depressed by the decision of Apple's board of directors to award no-longer-interim CEO Steve Jobs with a $40 million Gulfstream jet last week. Sure, Steve doesn't accept a salary for working at Apple, but it sure does raise the bar for corporate perks, doesn't it?

On the other hand, Mr Jobs has done what few would have thought possible - turned Apple into a consistent profit earner and come up with products that turned boring old computer design on its head. In the too-macho world of great big hard-drives, whopping RAM, and accelerated this-and-that, who'd have expected that something as simple as colour and sharp design could make people fall in love with a machine? Consumers are excited about Apple again and as a result, so is the Street.

I spent last week at the RSA Conference in San Jose, the largest annual gathering of cryptography and security folks in the world. This year about 9,000 people attended what used to be known as the "RSA Data Security Conference", but maybe that sounded a bit too geeky - "data" not being readily identifiable as something to do with this year's corporate obsession, e-commerce.

Nonetheless, the geeks were out in full force, easily spottable among the PR people and younger marketing types. RSA attracts the vintage geeks - the people who pioneered the first cryptographic algorithms, or mathematical formulas that enable computer data to be encoded. The vintage guys tend to go for sandals and socks and shoulder length graying hair and beards. Especially beards. They also tend to be witty and ironic and good at launching barbs at the US government, which tries to impose restrictions on the use of cryptography and thus drives them to distraction.

The youthful incarnation of the crypto geek is the hacker, also out in droves at the RSA. With few exceptions (including the king of hackers, Kevin Mitnick, released from prison last week after serving a prison sentence for hacking), hackers are allowed two hairstyles: no hair/stubble, or very, very long hair. Beards are popular as well, especially strange permutations of facial hair, shaved and shaped into odd tufts or long curtains or pointy goatees. All were highly visible at the oddest (and grooviest) party of the RSA, the launch of a company called @Stake, held at the San Jose Museum of Art.

The speciality of @Stake is using the wisdom of hackers to help companies create good online security. To this end, @Stake merged with a famous group of hackers called the Lopht. As a result, the vice-president of research and development for @Stake is a long-haired gentleman known simply as Mudge.

Mudge and cohorts were easy to spot at the party, where guests oh-so-coolly listened to jazz while feeding on sushi and other Asian delectables. Very cyber-hip.

Dublin's Baltimore Technologies had a great bash as well at the South Street Billiards Hall, where they fed the geeks on Asian and Mediterranean food and let them hit the green felt tables until very late (but this was Silicon Valley, so most had headed for bed by midnight).

The other whiz-bang RSA party (a conference famous for its parties) was the closing night IBM-sponsored Cryptographer's Gala. They seem to have given up on suggesting it's a formal event - just try to get a crypto geek into black tie.

Formality would have seemed out of place anyway, since the venue was the San Jose Sports Arena. Guests could talk tech in the corporate hospitality areas or wander out onto the main floor, where IBM had engaged the services of Jefferson Starship on the main stage. What a change from the stiff-necked, formal IBM of yore, where blue suits and white shirts were de rigueur.

Along with Steve Jobs, the other tech guy getting plenty of attention in Silicon Valley last week was former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, the man who took over from founder Jim Clark. Mr Barksdale and his wife made an extremely generous gift of $100 million to support children's reading programmes in their home state of Mississippi. Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the US and its students tend to score poorly on national assessment tests, so the recipient programmes were over the moon at the Barksdales' gesture.

Given the wealth sloshing around the technology industry, especially the personal wealth of those who have done extremely well in pioneering Internet companies, perhaps the donation will inspire others to do the same.

Because of the phenomenal rise and rise of technology, at no other time in history has so much wealth been created so swiftly - in Ireland as well as the US. Certainly, it's a good time for Ireland's new tech multi-millionaires to think about similar gestures?

klillington@irish-times.ie