The mantle of malice, worn with such memorable panache by men from Caligula to Khomeini, slipped from his inadequate shoulders. Gates may have the mind of a Machiavelli and the soul of a satrap, but when it comes to being a worthy assassino , he's a day late and a dagger short. Which leads me to a current, nagging worry about the acute shortage of high tech villains. Not that there isn't plenty of thuggery in a business where, for all its talk of making the world a better place, competition is just as cutthroat as it was in the days of J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. Nice guys are just as likely to finish last in the New Economy as they were in the Old Economy.
Potential contenders do exist.
But Ellison tends to use PR spin to suppress his misbehavior, which is not the kind of arrogant self-celebration we expect from villains. Steve Jobs, a certified megalomaniac, might do quite nicely. He's known to fly into tirades when dissatisfied, has no problem taking total credit for everything Apple has achieved, and has been raised to the level of cult leader, which can lead to all manner of abuse. Try to imagine him at some giant torch-lit rally, exhorting thousands of lockstepping followers to go out and smash Windows. Go on down the line of tech top guns and you won't find any who look right in a black hat.