Grrr...another Microsoft Story

[BuddMan]

News bit is here. I was already upset about Palladium, now this??

[Jon P. Inghram]

Good, they should kill OpenGL since nobody's making lots of money off it! What the worlds needs is more companies using Microsoft's excellent technique of captialisim taken to the absurd extreme! Eventually there'll be only a few ultragreedy companies left and it'll be far easier to herd all the executives into a room and suck all the air out of it.

[thop]

I wonder what JC thinks about this.
I guess this is just a big Microsoft is Evil bubble again though and not the end of the world.

[KvHagedorn]

What was it Princess Leia said to Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars: A New Hope?

"The more you tighten your grip the more systems will slip through your fingers!"

[Dogbert]

Time for some M$ jokes:

Three women were in the OB/GYN waiting room and they got to talking about sex and their husbands methods. One woman said, "My husband works construction running a jack hammer, so it's all hard pounding all the time." Another woman said, "My husband's very methodical and picky about details, so we have hours and hours of foreplay." The third woman said, "My husband is a MicroSoft programmer and he just sits on the end of the bed and tells me how good it's going to be when I get it."



There was a pilot flying a small single engine charter plane, with a couple of very important executives on board. He was coming into Seattle airport through thick fog with less than 10m visibility when his instruments went out. So he began circling around looking for a landmark.
After an hour or so, he starts running pretty low on fuel and the passengers are getting very nervous.
Finally, a small opening in the fog appears and he sees a tall building with one guy working alone on the fifth floor. The pilot banks the plane around, rolls down the window and shouts to the guy
"Hey, where am I?"
To this, the solitary office worker replies
"You're in a plane."
The pilot rolls up the window, executes a 275 degree turn and proceeds to execute a perfect blind landing on the runway of the airport 5 miles away. Just as the plane stops, so does the engine as the fuel has run out.
The passengers are amazed and one asks how he did it.
"Simple" replies the pilot,
"I asked the guy in that building a simple question. The answer he gave me was 100 percent correct but absolutely useless, therefore it must have been
Microsoft's support office. Knowing that, it was easy to find my way to the airport."


Bill's New House
While the Gates are moving in from their temporary quarters nearby, final construction of their new house is not expected to be completed until the end of the year !! Bill has a meeting with the contractor....
Bill: "There are a few issues we need to discuss."
Contractor: "Ah, you have our basic support option. Calls are free for the first 90 days and $75 a call thereafter. Okay?"
Bill: "Uh, yeah... the first issue is the living room. We think its a little smaller than we anticipated."
Contractor: "Yeah. Some compromises were made to have it out by the release date."
Bill: "We won't be able to fit all our furniture in there."
Contractor: "Well, you have two options. You can purchase a new, larger living room or you can use a Stacker."
Bill: "Stacker?"
Contractor: "Yeah, it allows you to fit twice as much furniture into the room. By stacking it, of course, you put the entertainment center on the couch... the chairs on the table... etc. You leave an empty spot, so when you want to use some furniture you can unstack what you need and then put it back when you're done."
Bill: "Uh... I dunno... issue two. The second issue is the light fixtures. The bulbs we brought with us from our old home won't fit. The threads run the wrong way."
Contractor: "Oh! Thats easy. Those bulbs aren't plug and play. You'll have to upgrade to the new bulbs."
Bill: "And the electrical outlets? The holes are round, not rectangular. How do I fix that?"
Contractor: "Just uninstall and reinstall the electrical system."
Bill: "You're kidding!?"
Contractor: "Nope. Its the only way."
Bill: " Well... I have one last problem. Sometimes, when I have guests over someone will flush the toilet and it won't stop. The water pressure drops so low that the showers don't work."
Contractor: "That's a resource leakage problem. One fixture is failing to terminate and is hogging the resources preventing access from other fixtures."
Bill: "And how do I fix that?"
Contractor: "Well, after each flush, you all need to exit the house, turn off the water at the street, turn it back on, reenter the house and then you can get back to work."
Bill: "That's the last straw. What kind of product are you selling me?"
Contractor: "Hey, if you don't like it nobody made you buy it."
Bill: "And when will this be fixed?"
Contractor: "Oh, in your next house, which will be ready to release sometime near the end of next year. Actually it was due out this year, but we've had some delays..."


A poor employee had been suffering dreadfully during the building ofGates' infamous new home. The poor architect had used a Mac to undertake the interior and the wrath of Gates had fallen upon him. In fact, this guy was so distressed at the thought of using Windows in a design environment that he just got up one day and took his own life.He reappears at the gates of heaven where St.Peter is sitting with his clipboard. Nervously he walks up to St.Peter."Ah", St.Peter says, "you're the poor fellow who suffered at the hands of Gates. Don't worry, you're in heaven now. Everything is allright."Still quivering, the poor architect says: "At last, that's wonderfull. But you promise me that Bill Gates won't appear here." St.Peter lets out a broad laugh: "Is the Pope Catholic ? You know what they say about rich men, needles and camels ... anyhow, we use Amigas ..."Then, suddenly, beyond the pearly gates a familiar figure appears. The poor architect falls into an apoplectic fit: "Look, look, you told me he'd never find a place in heaven, but it's him." St.Peter turns around to see the sight. "Ah, no my son, that's God, he just thinks he's Bill Gates ..."

[Dogbert]

and another:

Blue Screen of Death
In a surprise announcement today, Microsoft President Steve Ballmer revealed that the Redmond-based company will allow computer resellers and end-users to customize the appearance of the Blue Screen of Death

(BSOD), the screen that displays when the Windows operating system crashes. The move comes as the result of numerous focus groups and customer surveys done by Microsoft. Thousands of Microsoft customers were asked,
"What do you spend the most time doing on your computer?" A surprising number of respondents said, "Staring at a Blue Screen of Death." At 54 percent, it was the top answer, beating the second place answer "Downloading XXXScans" by an easy 12 points.
"We immediately recognized this as a great opportunity for ourselves, our channel partners, and especially our customers," explained the excited Ballmer to a room full of reporters. Immense video displays were used to show images of the new customizable BSOD screen side-by-side with the older static version.

Users can select from a collection of "BSOD Themes," allowing them to instead have a Mauve Screen of Death or even a Paisley Screen of Death.
Graphics and multimedia content can now be incorporated into the screen, making the BSOD the perfect conduit for delivering product information and entertainment to Windows users.
The BSOD is by far the most recognized feature of the Windows operating system, and as a result, Microsoft has historically insisted on total control over its look and feel. This recent departure from that policy reflects Microsoft's recognition of the Windows desktop itself as the "ultimate information portal."
By default, the new BSOD will be configured to show a random selection of Microsoft product information whenever the system crashes. Microsoft channel partners can negotiate with Microsoft for the right to customize the BSOD on systems they ship. Major computer resellers such as Compaq, Gateway, and Dell are already lining up for premier placement on the new and improved BSOD.
Ballmer concluded by getting a dig in against the Open Source community. "This just goes to show that Microsoft continues to innovate at a much faster pace than open source. I have yet to see any evidence that Linux even has a BSOD, let alone a customizable one."