All Things Digital

“Vista is built for businesses,” Brad Goldberg, Microsoft’s (MSFT) general manager for Windows product management, once said. And that may be so. It’s just not built for Intel’s (INTC) business. Because the chip-maker has decided against upgrading to Vista–ever.

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans told the New York Times.

Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista. If that’s not a diss, then neither is “Windows Vista sucks.” Because if one half of the Wintel hegemony is balking at deploying the latest iteration of the OS on which it’s built, well that’s pretty ugly.

“I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft,” longtime Windows development chief Jim Allchin said in January of 2004. And so too, perhaps, would Intel, if it wasn’t partners with the company.

I am a media-relations nightmare. I never prep, and I generally say what I think–and sometimes I say things before I think. I don’t know how many times people in the company have heard me say something to a reporter and later told me, ‘Jesus Christ, that’s going to be in the paper!’”

–Henry Nicholas, July 2004

According to Forbes, former Broadcom Corp. chief and founder Henry Nicholas ranks 677th on the list of the world’s wealthiest individuals. But according to a federal indictment unsealed today (full document below), he’d rank quite a bit higher on a list of the world’s most debauched. Scattered among charges related to improperly backdating stock options while he led the computer and cellphone chip-maker are some heavy drug violations. According to the indictment, it seems that while Nicholas was fraudulently backdating stock options that resulted in more than $2 billion of restated expenses, he was also conspiring to distribute controlled substances.

Those he didn’t use himself, that is. From the indictment:

In or around 2001, Nicholas distributed and used controlled substances during a flight on a private plane between Orange County and Las Vegas, causing marijuana smoke and fumes to enter the cockpit and requiring the pilot flying the plane to put on an oxygen mask.”

Nicholas also apparently had a habit of spiking the drinks of associates and customers with drugs. Generally ecstasy. Hell of a way to close a sales meeting, eh?

As noted here before, it’s hard to believe that an entrepreneur and philanthropist like Nicholas would conduct himself like a roadie on Zeppelin’s debauched 1973 tour. But then no one probably thought he was serious about building that subterranean sex lair, either. Anyway, here’s the drug indictment. Click on the box in the far right-hand corner to enlarge: