Joel on Backpedalling

Well, that didn’t take long. In his Thursday, December 28th blog entry, geek blogger Joel “Joel on Software” Spolsky wrote this rather absolute-sounding pronouncement on Microsoft’s Vista-loaded laptop giveaway:

Microsoft’s crazy offer, though, made me think a lot more about this whole thing, and I’ve decided that from this point forward I’m not accepting anything, full stop.

In the very next blog entry, he writes:

Anyway, only three days after announcing my new policy of “no gifts,” I’m stuck with this copy of the book I got in the mail for free. Should I send it back and buy my own copy? The New York Times policy on Journalism Ethics says, “Staff members may keep for their own collections—but may not sell or copy—books, recordings, tapes, compact discs and computer programs sent to them for review. Such submissions are considered press releases.”

Although I have to give kudos to Joel for being forthright and even though I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with his statement of principles or with accepting giveaways from companies, I can’t resist poking a little fun at him for backpedalling so quickly. I’m reminded of “Tom Tuttle from Tacoma”, John Candy’s character in the movie Volunteers, who resists communist brainwashing for a whole sixty seconds (the brainwashing is also undone with just one slap to the face). Dude, I have stationery that doesn’t fold as quickly as you do.