"We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security."
Now that would be funny if it came up in the anti trust lawsuit:
"You developed this competitor to a popular application and released it for free. Do you deny that this is anticompetitive?"
"Actually, we didn't develop that application, we didn't fund it, I have no idea where it came from - it just appeared on the CD we shipped Windows on."
What a toll this kind of thing must take on oneself. I mean, in some ways it's good, becuase there's nothing that will make you appreciate the absence of pain like the prolonged presence of it. Still, his wrists were a mess, he was developing gastro-intestinal disorders, and I'm pretty sure he didn't have any friends during that time period.
I hope I'm not in the majority when I say this, but my most productive periods (in the sense of producing something) have all involved some kind of death march, almost always self imposed. It's fun, and then painful, and then it brings up a lot of existential angst. Why am I here, and all of that.
http://www.pacifict.com/Story/