Bad Windows

God called a meeting of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Bill Gates and said: “I’ve given you all the tools you needed to make a better world – you’ve blown it and I’m ending the world in two weeks.”

Barack Obama went on TV and said “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that God exists. The bad news is that the world will end in two weeks.”

Vladimir Putin called his advisors together and said “I have bad news and really bad news. The bad news is that God exists. The really bad news is that the world will end in two weeks.”

Bill Gates called his co-workers together and said “I have good news and really good news. The good news is that God thinks I am one of the three most powerful people in the world. The really good news is that we don’t have to fix the bugs in Windows Vista.”

Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Bill Gates all died in a plane crash and went to meet their maker. The supreme deity turned to Al and asked, tell what is important about yourself.

Al responded that he felt that the earth was the ultimate importance and that protecting the earth’s ecological system was most important.

God looked to Al and said, ” I like the way you think, come and sit at my left hand”. God then asked Bill Clinton what he revered most.

Bill Clinton responded that he felt people and their personal choices were most important.

God responded, ” I like the way you think, come and sit at my right hand”. God then turned to Bill Gates, who was staring at him indignantly.

God asked “What is your problem Bill Gates?”

Bill responded ” I think you are sitting in my chair”.

You know what Microsoft doesn’t get? — For one thing, the Internet.

Microsoft doesn’t control it. What it used to be able to do in the dark now falls out of its noxious bag of tricks into the Internet’s bright light, stage front and center. And there stands Microsoft in the spotlight, with its pants down, and let me tell you, it’s not a pretty sight.

Take the failed patent hustle of a couple of days ago, apparently maneuvering to enable proxy patent trolls to sue Linux. The idea, I gather, was to damage Linux, but without any way to trace it back to Microsoft. Thank you OIN and AST for foiling the plan. And by the way, are courts supposed to be used like this, to attack the competition? The court system is designed for adjudicating conflicts that are real. If you get damaged, you can go to court and try to be made whole. And so far as I know, there is no definition of abuse of monopoly that would exclude what just happened from being part of what antitrust law covers.

Read more at Groklaw

Moore’s Law has been a powerful enabler of innovation because every 36-48 months you get twice the CPU cycles at half the price. In 8-12 years, Moore’s law delivers 10x the performance at 1/10th the price, making the seemingly impossible relative cheap, if not free. Consequently, venture capitalists-even after the Internet bubble and the financial meltdown-largely prefer to invest in technology-driven companies in preference to almost anything else. Moore’s Law simply opens up so many new business frontiers.
Except for one small problem…Patent Trolls, aka non-practicing entities.

Read and look more at Michael Tiemann’s blog

Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue.
Press any key to continue or any other key to quit.
Press any key except… no, No, NO, NOT THAT ONE!
Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.
This will end your Windows session. Do you want to play another game?
Windows message “Error saving file! Format drive now? (Y/Y)”
This is a message from God Gates “Rebooting the world. Please log off.”
To “shut down” your system, type “WIN”
BREAKFAST.SYS halted… Cereal port not responding.
COFFEE.SYS missing… Insert cup in cup holder and press any key.
File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
Bad or missing mouse. Spank the cat? (Y/N)
Runtime Error 6D at 417A32CF Incompetent User.
Error reading FAT record. Try the SKINNY one? (Y/N)
WinErr 16547 LPT1 not found. Use backup. (PENCIL & PAPER.SYS)
User Error. Replace user.
Windows VirusScan 1.0 – “Windows found. Remove it? (Y/N)”`
Your hard drive has been scanned and all stolen software titles have been deleted. The police are on the way.

Top 12 Things You Don`t Want To Hear From Tech Support
12. `Do you have a sledgehammer or brick handy?`
11. `… that`s right, not even MacGyver could fix it.`
10. `So — what are you wearing?`
9. `Bummer Duuuuuuuude`
8. `Looks like you`re gonna need some new dilythium crystals, Cap`n.`
7. `Press 1 for Support, Press 2 if you`re with 60 Minutes, Press 3 if you`re with the FTC`
6. `We can fix this, but you`re gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery.`
5. `I`m sorry, Dave. I`m afraid I can`t do that.`
4. `In layman`s terms, we call that the Hindenburg Effect.`
3. ` Hold on a second…. Mom! Timmy`s hitting me!`
2. `Okay, turn to page 523 in your copy of Dianetics.`
and the number 1 thing you don`t want to hear from tech support…
1. `Please hold for Mr. Gates` attorney.`

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 mi/gal.” Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement “Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?” and also noted the following consequences of GM imitating Microsoft:
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.
4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought “Car95″ or “CarNT”. But, then you would have to buy more seats.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
7. The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car fault” warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag system would say “are you sure?” before going off.
10. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

Windows 7 is better than Vista. Great. But saying that is like saying you’d rather catch the common cold instead of swine flu. I’ve demoed the release candidate for Windows 7, and I can safely say that I still don’t like it. Aside from the default options being obnoxious and hard to use (the icons for running applications are identical to the directly-adjacent Quick Launch icons; running programs have no text to show you what they are; unless you have the hardware to back up the Aero interface, you can’t get the window previews to help you, either), there are several things I need to see in a Windows operating system before I’ll even contemplate switching back.

Read more at Linuxphilia

Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin issued a scathing condemnation of Microsoft’s recent attempts to unload Linux-related patents to patent trolls. He calls for the company to “stop secretly attacking Linux” and compete on the basis of quality rather than FUD.
Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin has a message for Microsoft: he wants the software giant to stop attacking Linux. Zemlin contends that Microsoft is engaged in a covert war against the open source operating system and that the company’s hostile behavior is detrimental to the growing number of Microsoft customers who deploy mixed Windows and Linux environments.

Zemlin’s comments about Microsoft are a response to a patent auction carried out by Microsoft to sell a number of patents that the company allegedly said were related to Linux. The patents, which were originally obtained by Microsoft from SGI, were sold to Allied Security Trust (AST), a patent-holding group that grants its members perpetual licenses before reselling the patents.

Read more at ars Technica

i4i has filed its responsive brief in the appeal of the i4i v. Microsoft patent litigation. It says it had a business, and Microsoft ruined it. Techflash has was the first to provid the brief that I saw, as PDF, and I have done it as text for you.

i4i answers Microsoft’s brief point by point, and the overarching question it asks is this: is Microsoft not supposed to follow the law? The points i4i make are clear and simple: Microsoft infringed, it knew it. It can still sell Word, just not the separable infringing component. If it’s hard for them to do that — and i4i points out Microsoft has never said it is impossible — that is the cost of infringing.

As for Microsoft’s arguments regarding the public interest, i4i is blunt:

The simple fact is that Microsoft has never shown any public interest in its ongoing infringement and cannot.

And responding to Microsoft’s saying that i4i is an add-on, not competing with Microsoft:

Read more at Groklaw