- Chastity belts require a password rather than a key.
- Last year’s pitchfork not compatible with this year’s hay.
- Lord Gates claims he has no memory of any memo describing his intention to “wipeth my arse with the Magna Carta.”
- The “Good Plague” hoax.
- Horses routinely stop in mid-stride, and require a boot to the rear to start again.
- The Microsoft Rack would work, but it would be 3 times larger than it should be and never completely kill anyone.
- Forget about William Tell; William Gates shoots Apple off the head of Steve Jobs.
- Use of a large, clumsy broadsword instead of yet-to-be-invented scissors helps explain Lord Bill’s haircut.
- Archbishop of Canterbury gets hit in the face with a pie.
- Stained Glass Windows MCCCXXXXV actually not released until Spring of MCCCXXXXVI.
- The Y1K bug threatens to cripple high-tech industries, like stonemasonry and weaving.
Category Archives: Microsoft/Bill Gates
A New Microsoft Legal Product
Microsoft (MSFT) Announces New CD_ROM Software to Aid Consumers In Suing Itself
(REDMOND) In an effort to make it easier for computer users everywhere to file a law suit against itself, Microsoft Corporation today announced Microsoft Litigation ’06, a multimedia reference library complete with 139 frequently used legal writs, briefs, templates and forms which are accessible from within other programs with a single click.
With this handy tool, a user will be able to combine elements of the popular Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office Professional desktop productivity suites in conjunction with the Litigation ’15 CD-ROM package to quickly and efficiently bring suit against Microsoft for a variety of reasons, whether legitimate or frivolous.
What is new this year:
- Litigation Builder:
Located on the QuickSuit information retrieval toolbar, Litigation Builder provides instant access to an enormous variety of case law and civil code from within any program on the Windows platform. - Suit Wizards ™:
Suit Wizards ™ guide the user through the many mazes of ‘legalese’ required to bring suit against Microsoft, whether in city, county, state, Federal, Appellate, or Supreme Court. Localized versions of Litigation ’15 will provide for the equivalent of lawsuits in any nations’ format. - Year in Review:
The Year in Review section highlights lawsuits, findings, settlements and other legal events of the past year which affect Microsoft, including the Justice Department suit, Judge Sporkin’s refusal to approve the settlement and the Stacker suit. - All New Forms:
View more than 650 legal templates and forms from around the world, 930 country-specific case law findings, and 180 bar associations. Also click a Latin legal term to hear it pronounced. Nothing could make it easier for a non-lawyer to bring suit against Microsoft. - More Multimedia Elements:
Litigation ’15 contains all new video for a total of 45 clips, 150 new audio clips for a total of five hours of sound, and 550 new images for a total of 3,000 pictures. The law dictionary contains more than 80,000 spoken pronunciations (the feature can be turned off if desired).
New Keyboard from Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation has just announced a new PC keyboard designed specifically for Windows. Sources say a Macintosh variant is in the works. In addition to the keys found on the standard keyboard, Microsoft’s new design adds several new keys which will make your Windows computing even more fun! The final specs are not yet set, so please feel free to make suggestions. The keys proposed so far are:
- GPF key — This key will instantly generate a General Protection Fault when pressed. Microsoft representatives state that the purpose of the GPF key is to save Windows users time by eliminating the need to run an application in order to produce a General Protection Fault.
- $$ key — When this key is pressed, money is transferred automatically from your bank account to Microsoft without the need for further action or third party intervention.
- ZD key — This key was developed specifically for reviewers of Microsoft products. When pressed it inserts random superlative adjectives in any text which contains the words Microsoft or Windows within the file being edited.
- MS key — This key runs a Microsoft commercial entitled “Computing for Mindless Drones” in a 1″ x 1″ window.
- FUD key — Some thing to do with the display … self explanatory.
- Chicago key — Generates do nothing loops for months at a time.
- IBM key — Searches your hard disk for operating systems or applications by vendors other than Microsoft and deletes them. (Is very effective at removing Netscape).
- MSN Key — With a single keystroke you will install and setup the world’s second slowest web access (AOL takes first place). And you thought it was tough deleting all of the SetupMSN files from Win 7!
- RW8 Key — Stands for Re-install Windows 8. Because it’s usually a weekly ritual for most Win 8 users, why not make it easier?
- FDISK Key — Microsoft’s new compression utility gives you 100% data compression guaranteed. Could stand for Format Disk, but we all know what it really stands for.
If The IRS Was Run Like Microsoft
- The IRS, as always, announces new tax forms will be mailed the week before the new year. However it will follow Microsoft’s example and actually ship them the following May.
- Responding to pressure from some large corporations and a users’ group, some early copies of the tax forms will actually be released in March. The recipients must sign non-disclosure agreements.
- In June, the forms will be recalled because the IRS loses a suit for appropriating some other country’s intellectual property.
- When you move, the IRS will continue to send mail to your previous address forevermore, just like Microsoft sends its product upgrade notices.
- When you upgrade from form 1040 EZ to 1040 A, and then to 1040, you will pay an upgrade fee each time. Also you need to send in a new registration card and get a new Social Security Number. In order to upgrade, you have to submit the original first page of your previous year’s form.
- Like Microsoft, when you file a late or amended tax return the IRS will reject it on the grounds that the prior year is no longer supported.
- The IRS telephone help will remain similar to Microsoft’s, staffed by ill-trained, high-turnover personnel who sometimes give a correct answer, but the IRS will have to discontinue using a toll-free phone number.
- After struggling with reams of dense documentation of complex options and rules, you discover that you will need publication 3297, with a ten-word-long title, in order to answer (you hope) a single obscure question. The IRS, like Microsoft, will charge a minimum of $40 for that publication.
- The IRS, like Microsoft, will continue to issue immense volumes of bug fixes, interpretations, and clarifications. However the tax-rule updates should be neither easily searchable nor well-indexed.
- Instead of three-ring binders containing complete sets of tax code bugs and interpretations, IRS rulings will be promulgated in a haphazard fashion by individual taxpayers via BBS, Usenet, and Compuserve. A for-profit publishing subsidiary would also be nice.
- The new all-powerful (and eccentric) Commissioner of Internal Revenue will jet around the country giving speeches and granting numerous interviews, but only to sycophantic reporters. Changes to the tax code will be at the whim of the Commissioner and largely kept secret until they are published.
Microsoft Error Messages
Once upon a time there was a young man who wanted to become a great writer. “I want to write things the whole world will read,” he declared. “Stuff that will elicit strong emotions from people in every walk of life. I want my writing to make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger.”
He now lives happily ever after in Redmond, Washington, writing error messages for Microsoft.
Microsoft Copyrights Binary
REDMOND, WA–In what CEO Bill Gates called “an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors,” the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday.
With the patent, Microsoft’s rivals are prohibited from manufacturing or selling products containing zeroes and ones–the mathematical building blocks of all computer languages and programs–unless a royalty fee of 10 cents per digit used is paid to the software giant.
“Microsoft has been using the binary system of ones and zeroes ever since its inception in 1975,” Gates told reporters. “For years, in the interest of the overall health of the computer industry, we permitted the free and unfettered use of our proprietary numeric systems. However, changing marketplace conditions and the increasingly predatory practices of certain competitors now leave us with no choice but to seek compensation for the use of our numerals.”
A number of major Silicon Valley players, including Apple Computer, Netscape and Sun Microsystems, said they will challenge the Microsoft patent as monopolistic and anti-competitive, claiming that the 10-cent-per-digit licensing fee would bankrupt them instantly.
“While, technically, Java is a complex system of algorithms used to create a platform-independent programming environment, it is, at its core, just a string of trillions of ones and zeroes,” said Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, whose company created the Java programming environment used in many Internet applications. “The licensing fees we’d have to pay Microsoft every day would be approximately 327,000 times the total net worth of this company.”
“If this patent holds up in federal court, Apple will have no choice but to convert to analog,” said Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs, “and I have serious doubts whether this company would be able to remain competitive selling pedal-operated computers running software off vinyl LPs.”
As a result of the Microsoft patent, many other companies have begun radically revising their product lines: Database manufacturer Oracle has embarked on a crash program to develop “an abacus for the next millennium.” Novell, whose communications and networking systems are also subject to Microsoft licensing fees, is working with top animal trainers on a chimpanzee-based message-transmission system. Hewlett-Packard is developing a revolutionary new steam-powered printer.
Despite the swarm of protest, Gates is standing his ground, maintaining that ones and zeroes are the undisputed property of Microsoft.
“We will vigorously enforce our patents of these numbers, as they are legally ours,” Gates said. “Among Microsoft’s vast historical archives are Sanskrit cuneiform tablets from 1800 B.C. clearly showing ones and a symbol known as ‘sunya,’ or nothing. We also own: papyrus scrolls written by Pythagoras himself in which he explains the idea of singular notation, or ‘one’; early tracts by Mohammed ibn Musa al Kwarizimi explaining the concept of al-sifr, or ‘the cipher’; original mathematical manuscripts by Heisenberg, Einstein and Planck; and a signed first-edition copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being And Nothingness. Should the need arise, Microsoft will have no difficulty proving to the Justice Department or anyone else that we own the rights to these numbers.”
Added Gates: “My salary also has lots of zeroes. I’m the richest man in the world.”
According to experts, the full ramifications of Microsoft’s patenting of one and zero have yet to be realized.
“Because all integers and natural numbers derive from one and zero, Microsoft may, by extension, lay claim to ownership of all mathematics and logic systems, including Euclidean geometry, pulleys and levers, gravity, and the basic Newtonian principles of motion, as well as the concepts of existence and nonexistence,” Yale University theoretical mathematics professor J. Edmund Lattimore said. “In other words, pretty much everything.”
Lattimore said that the only mathematical constructs of which Microsoft may not be able to claim ownership are infinity and transcendental numbers like pi. Microsoft lawyers are expected to file liens on infinity and pi this week.
Microsoft has not yet announced whether it will charge a user fee to individuals who wish to engage in such mathematically rooted motions as walking, stretching and smiling.
In an address beamed live to billions of people around the globe Monday, Gates expressed confidence that his company’s latest move will, ultimately, benefit all humankind.
“Think of this as a partnership,” Gates said. “Like the ones and zeroes of the binary code itself, we must all work together to make the promise of the computer revolution a reality. As the world’s richest, most powerful software company, Microsoft is number one. And you, the millions of consumers who use our products, are the zeroes.”
Introducing the Microsoft Chair
PRESS RELEASE
July 7, 2001 (Seattle) — Microsoft announced today that it will provide office furniture with its software. The next release of Windows, code named Naugahyde, will include the Microsoft Chair at no extra charge.
“This is a natural for us,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We’ve conquered the desktop, so we’re looking at way of expanding our installed base.” The spokesperson denied accusations that bundling constitutes an unfair competitive advantage. “We’re just listening to our customers. They’ve asked for more built in features, and who doesn’t use a chair when they’re at their computer? Especially when they’re waiting for Windows to reboot.”
Beta testers noted its large footprint and found the chair to lack substantial features found in most of the competition. But when asked if they dislike it enough to purchase another vendor’s furniture, most stated that they would just take what Microsoft had to offer.
Also in the works is a small seat, dubbed the Microsoft Stool, soon to be bundled with laptops. Beta testers were surprised to find the backless chair at their doorsteps. “Then again, it’s not the first time we’ve received a shrink-wrapped stool sample from Microsoft,” noted one breathless customer.
Microsoft Bathroom Humor
The following were found scribbled into the stall wall at Microsoft, courtesy of MAD magazine.
- Bill Gates downloads here
- Where do you want to go today?
In the crapper! - Microsoft Word Speelchecker RULES!
- Do not flush mouse pads down the toilet!
- To flush, press handle. You do not need to hold Control, ALT and Delete at the same time.
- The Basic Program
10: Enter
20: Lower Pants
30: Try real hard
40: If nothing, then goto 30
50: If something then goto 60
60: Wipe Butt
70: Exit - Stop writing these mindless jokes and childish insults on the walls!
Yeah, that’s what the internet is for! - Why cant B*ll G*tes get dates?
Because he’s Microsoft - -Rajeey has a 3 1/2 inch floppy! – Carl
-Carl still plays with his wang! – Rajeev
-Yeah, well you both program in DOS – Fred
-Byte me! – Rajeev and Carl - Your mother’s so fat, it took me 25 minutes to download a picture of her from the web!
- For a good time, e-mail SUZIE@ohmygod/Im/about/tohave/an.org
- IBM we all BM
Signs Bill Gates is Having a Mid-life Crisis
- Gives his age as “39, version 5.”
- Hires someone to purchase a sports car and pursue young bimbos.
- Spends $6 on a new hairstyle.
- “No, honey. I didn’t say I bought *a* Porsche…”
- Replaced the animated paper clip Office Assistant with a Hooters waitress.
- Grows beard and tints it gray to simulate the “look and feel” of Steven Jobs.
- Keeps buying younger and younger companies.
- Supermodel eggs? Pffft. Bill’s got him a six-pack of supermodels.
- “The first rule of Microsoft Club is: Everyone Kisses My Ass In Microsoft Club!”
- Same as everybody else: Decides to run for President.
- Ignores his wife to spend time writing inappropriate code for a 16-year-old Apple Lisa.
- Changed the name of his company to EnormousHard.
- Joined the Personality Club for Men.
Microsoft’s TV Ad
The classically-minded among us may have noted a new TV ad for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer e-mail program which uses the musical theme of the “Confutatis Maledictis” from Mozart’s Requiem.
“Where do you want to go today?” is the cheery line on the screen, while the chorus sings “Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis,” which translates to: “When the accursed have been confounded, And given over to the bitter flames.” Which basically means: “When the accursed have been damned, and sent to Hell.”
Go Microsoft!