Hey, Is That Unread Email From 1998?

Feature written by James Baughn on February 28, 2001

It's that time to clear out all of the accumulated stuff from my email inbox that I haven't bothered to respond to since 1998. Keep reading for "Swifties" (no, not "Quickies", that's a Slashdot trademark) about red hats, spam, Word's auto-incorrect feature, and the ultimate video game controller.

Red Hats And Earthquakes

Kit L. Lo writes,

When I was reading the NY Times, I saw a picture of the Pope installing new cardinals in Vatican City. Question: Does Red Hat have anything to do with giving away red hats to the newly installed cardinals? Does Linux have a place in the Vatican (well, the Vatican web site uses Tru64)?

I don't know the answer to that question.

In related news, a major earthquake struck the Seattle area right in the middle of a Bill Gates speech about the innovative new features of Windows XP.

Coincidence? I think not.

Scams And Spams

Recently, my inbox has been filling to the brim with the following piece of spam:

Dear Windows User,

Now you can boost the reliability of ordinary Windows ME, 95 and 98 to nearly the level of Windows NT or 2000, Microsoft's professional and industrial version of Windows (sic).

The new WinFix 4.4 is a very effective way to improve the reliability of Windows, because it makes Windows fault-tolerant and self-repairing. And WinFix is very safe, because it operates completely independent of Windows.

After I stopped ROTFL, I dispatched the Vast Spy Network(tm) to do a little research on the company promoting this gimmick.

The results? "WinFix 4.4" is a distribution of Linux.

But you already guessed that, right?

The Paperclip Did It

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer sent this item:

Tech pundits were shocked earlier today when Microsoft issued a press release entitled "Windows XP Can't Beat Linux".

The article, however, was far less interesting. It merely rambled about the increasing progress and "innovation" of Windows, without mentioning Linux at all.

At first many readers suspected that Microsoft was merely Linux-baiting to draw more attention to their otherwise vapid press release. However, one should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by Microsoft software flaws. In this case, we have learned that a bug in Microsoft's Word spellchecker auto-corrected the title "Windows XP, CE, NT beat Linux" without prompting the user.

Microsoft officials were not available for comment.

Another Millisecond, Another Bluescreen Joke

I usually ignore email from Hotmail that arrives with an image attachment in Windows Bitmap format. However, the following image, sent in by "Meep!", was too good to pass up. Let's just be thankful that The GIMP can handle .bmp graphics, saving me from booting into Windows (Or did I format that partition to free up more space?) and experiencing yet another bluescreen.

Death And Microsoft Taxes

Fake News written by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer on February 26, 2001

REDMOND, WA -- No more Mr. Nice Monopoly. That's the message Microsoft is sending with a new initiative called "Microsoft Tax 2.0". Well, it's not actually called that. In order not to upset the ongoing appeals process, Microsoft is using the euphemism "Intellectual Property Royalty And It's For The Children Fee".

Microsoft claims that they have an ironclad trademark on ".NET". Therefore, starting today, Microsoft will charge a US$100 per month royalty fee on all .net domain names, ranging from a.net to linux.net all the way up to dammitmynamedotcomandmynamedotorg werealreadytakensoihadtogetmyname.net

At a press conference, WIPO spokesperson C. Ashley Quick showed approval for Microsoft's new anti-piracy fee and tax.

"Clearly .NET is a registered trademark of Microsoft," he said. "In order to protect this valuable property from the hordes of Napster-using, anti-capitalistic, immoral, no-good pirates that span the globe, it is only natural, and legal, that Microsoft collects these royalty payments. It is, after all, designed to protect the interests of Microsoft's shareholder's children."

That same spokesperson was later seen on the street carrying two large sacks bearing the words "MICROSOFT BRIBE MONEY" and a large dollar sign.

Lawyers from Network Solutions have questioned the validity of Microsoft's claim on the entire .net TLD. "We at NSI have always had the exclusive right to charge exorbitant taxes...er, fees on domain registrations and then turn around and sell our captives'... er, customers' marketing data to other companies. We have a patent on this business model. Our patent trumps your trademark any day of the week!"

Microsoft's own lawyers shot back in a press release, "We have considerable prior art. Indeed, we have a restaurant napkin from the 1970s in which Bill Gates sketched out his world domination plan, part of which included snatching up really obvious trademarks on popular things and then hitting everyone on the head with royalty taxes. So there!"

Microsoft Ports Wine To Windows

Fake News written by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer on February 23, 2001

REDMOND, WA -- Microsoft announced today that, after a month of intense development, it had successfully ported Wine to the Windows 9x operating system. Microsoft®(tm) Wine®(tm) for®(tm) Windows®(tm) is a closed-source fork of the Wine project (an open source Windows emulator). It consists of a standalone .exe file that uses less than 2 kB of diskspace.

Steven P. Ammer, Microsoft Marketing and PR Manager, explained during a press conference:

"Microsoft®(tm) Wine®(tm) for®(tm) Windows®(tm) was implemented to prove that Windows is ultimately more efficient than Linux and other Communist open source systems. We guarantee that Microsoft Wine for Windows can run all Windows applications perfectly... something the Linux/*BSD versions of Wine aren't even close to accomplishing (and never will, once we unveil the many new innovative APIs in Windows XP that aren't backwards-compatible)."

He added, "Similarily, Wine for Windows ultimately demonstrates the vast superiority of the Win32 API, which allows us to produce more efficient code. We're pleased to announce that WinWine reduces 5 megabytes of obsolete UNIX calls and related bloatware into a nice, sleek 2 kilobyte exectuable."

[What Mr. Ammer fails to mention is the 25 megabytes of help files, dancing paperclip animations, wizards, and license agreements that are bundled with WinWine. -- The Editor]

Asked by reporters on whether Microsoft intends to embrace-and-extinguish other open source programs, Ammer replied, "Microsoft has the world's largest concentration of talented programmers, marketing geniuses, and crafty lawyers. Of course we could! But why bother? We chose Wine simply as a proof of concept of why the GPL license is evil. If Wine wasn't available under a BSD-style license, we wouldn't have been able to innovate a Windows port. Nevertheless, we don't intend to port any other open source applications, since all of them are clearly inferior to Microsoft's own solutions."

Mindcraft, the Gartner Group, and several Ziff-Davis pundits immediately issued advisories and statements entitled "More Proof Linux Sucks", "Microsoft Beats Linux Again", and "Could You Get Fired For Trying To Compete Against Microsoft?" Microsoft stock rose 150% in heavy trading before collapsing after rumors leaked that Bill Gates had unsuccessfully tried to "lobby" Bill Clinton into pardoning Microsoft for anti-trust violations.

BSD And Microsoft On The Same Side?

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 22, 2001

Several members of the Open Source community nearly fainted yesterday upon hearing the news that Microsoft's Jim Allchin had implicitly supported the BSD license while trashing the GPL as un-American.

Soon after the shocking news broke, leaders of the FreeBSD project denied allegations that they had allied themselves with the Evil Empire. "That's bullshit," one hacker said on IRC. "Besides, everyone knows that it's the GNU Project that has allied with the Evil Empire -- Communism, that is."

A representative from the GNU Project fired back, "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." He added after a brief hesitation, "I have no idea what that means."

This latest battle in the GPL vs. BSD (and Linux vs. FreeBSD) flamewar ends the cease-fire that was created by the 1999 Treaty of Helsinki. Industry observers expect hostilities to flare up again, with the possibility of casualties.

Indeed, the Internet Weather Bureau has already issued a "High Flame Warning" for Slashdot and portions of Usenet. "Users should expect high bandwidth use, extreme CPU usage, and a slight chance of server explosions during the warning period," the advisory states. "If your Web, news, or mail server begins to overheat under the load, please seek shelter immediately to reduce the risk of injury."

Many agree that the prospects for peace appear dubious. "This will go on until either Microsoft or the GNU Project is destroyed. We'll see lasting peace in the Middle East before this one is settled," explained one neutral observer. "Besides, now that Microsoft is involved, any hopes of a peace summit are gone. Do you know what will happen if Richard M. Stallman and Bill Gates were to meet in the same room?"

Have You Downgraded Your Browser Today?

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 18, 2001

Humorix is much more than a lame humor website that constantly pokes fun at Microsoft and lawyers while plotting improbable world domination attempts.

Humorix is an institution dedicated to positive social change. (You can stop laughing now.) For instance, we're spearheading a movement to convince people to downgrade their browsers in an attempt to fight off the effects of Sturgeon's Law.

Years ago, 90% of everything was crap. Unfortunately, thanks to the Web, that number is now much closer to 99%, and is asymptotically approaching 100%.

It's time to put a stop to the madness. Everybody needs to downgrade their browser to a version that only supports the HTML 3.2 standard.

We don't need JavaScript. We don't need proprietary plug-ins that only work with Microsoft shoveware. We don't need stupid animated GIFs of dancing babies. We don't need superfluous eye candy that sucks up 100% of virtual memory and turns a Pentium into an XT (that's what Windows is for). We don't need pages created using tables within tables within tables within tables within tables within frames within frames within pop-up windows that invariably cause Netscape to segfault.

Most of all, we don't need some snot-nosed webmaster or clueless Pointy Haired Boss* telling us to piss off when we try to visit his website using something other than Internet Exploiter 2002 running under the latest incarnation of Microsoft Windows XP (eXtremely Pathetic).

*Of course, using "clueless" and "PHB" in the same sentence is redundant.

Can you imagine what would happen if a dotcom PHB became the manager of a brick-and-mortar store? "Sorry, Ma'am, this store only supports the latest Nike(tm)®© brand shoes. Anything else is incompatible with our carpeting and will prevent you from getting the most out of our store. You will have to upgrade your shoes before we can let you in."

Just think of all of the crap we can eliminate if everyone used an HTML 3.2 browser with JavaScript turned off. We can nip Sturgeon's Law in the bud, but only with your help.

Downgrade to an older browser that hasn't been infected with Microsoft or AOL commercialism. Boycott sites that say "best viewed with IE 5.5" (which is really a warning label). And if somebody tells you to upgrade your browser, just reply, "You'll pry Lynx from my cold, dead hard drive."

With your help, we can stop the JavaScriptization of the Web.

Thank you for your support.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Thank You, Jim Allchin!

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 15, 2001

Humorix's stock (Nasdaq: FAUX) soared 50% in heavy trading today after word spread that Microsoft's OS chief, Jim Allchin, had claimed that open source would "stifle innovation" and had boasted, "We can build a better product than Linux."

The latest Microsoft FUD barrage is expected to produce a windfall for online humor publications. "You simply can't make this stuff up," said one industry observer. "We haven't seen this kind of humor gold mine since Jesse Berst or Microsoft Bob."

Morale has improved drastically at Humorix World Headquarters following the news. "Finally, something to live for!" explained Dances With Herring, Humorix's investigative reporter. "We now have a nice easy target to poke fun at. What a morale boost for humor writers everywhere."

Indeed, Jim Allchin's "What's Good For Microsoft Is Good For The Country" pronouncement might single-handedly avoid a second Humorix strike. "Things were getting a little tense... we're losing money and there just wasn't anything worth poking fun at," explained one Vast Spy Network(tm) member. "Until now."

Unfortunately, some workers haven't quite gotten over the first strike from last year. Humorix's Investment Relations Weasal & Executive Book Cooker never got the memo about the first strike ending; he's been picketing alone outside the front gates for months and hasn't figured it out yet.

Several investment houses have upgraded Humorix's stock from "Only a complete idiot would consider this stock" all the way up to "Go ahead and buy some, at least it's worth the paper it's printed on, unlike most dotcoms". Some analysts were startled to learn that Humorix has been online for two-and-a-half years, a length of time that exceeds the life expectancy for a typical dotcom by at least 90%.

If You're Reading This, Prepare To Get Sued

Fake News written by Timm Murray on February 13, 2001

We need money fast. Two years ago we had to shoo Venture Capitalists off our property with cattle prods. But nowadays, thanks to the Dotcom Downturn, the flow of free money has dried up. We can no longer maintain the standard of living that we have become accustomed to -- no more Faberge-Egg-Of-The-Month Club, no more New Ferrari Fridays, no more 512-node Beowulf Clusters for every employee.

While our Plan A ("mooching off of Venture Capitalists") has failed, we do have a Plan B ("file lawsuits against everybody in sight"). Hey, all the other struggling dotcoms are doing it. Our legal counsel, Mr. Noah Morals, Esq., has concocted a way to raise money quick -- and we'll get some bonus evil points for using the DMCA to do it!

According to the DMCA:

A technological measure 'effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

Since it clearly does not state that the access control measure be of any strength, plain old ASCII falls under the above definition. Since your computer had to decode the ASCII sequence to put this on your computer screen (and did so without our explicit permission), you are now in violation of the DMCA (Direct Money Capturing Act).

You might say that just because we posted it to our publicly accessible website, that gives you permission to decode it. Not so, says Noah Morals. According to him, that's only implicit permission, not explicit. Ha ha, suckers.

"This should put a stop to all those pirates who blatently decrypt our stories!" he said. "This was costing us tens of dollars a year. It's good to know that the horror is finally over... Now if you'll excuse me, I have a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to have lunch with my heros, Jeff Bezos and David Wetherell."

Operation Killer Penguin

Fake News written by Nicholas Curran on February 10, 2001

Recently, Humorix reported that Microsoft had declared war against Linux by launching a Denial Of Service Attack aimed at Linus Torvalds. The next week, Microsoft's website was hit by a Denial Of Service Attack, denying millions of Hotmail users from accessing their spam.

Coincidence? Of course not. Operation "Killer Penguin" is in full swing.

On the morning of the Anti-Linux Patch Attack, Linus sent the following strongly worded message to Microsoft: "Stop your DOS attack or ELSE!"

The response? "Or ELSE what? You'll attack us with an army of killer penguins? Ha! I'd like to see that! Signed, Steve Ballmer."

Unfortunately, Linus didn't have any killer penguins on hand, although Tux Penguin has promised to recruit a small army from Antarctica within the next month. Instead, Linus retaliated with his own Denial Of Service Attack.

"We decided to first hit Microsoft's soft underbelly: their marketing department," explained one participant in "Killer Penguin". He continued, "If Microsoft can't spew marketing hype, then Pointy Haired Bosses around the globe will emerge from their brainwashed state and realize just how crappy Microsoft shoveware really is."

The plan, while a paragon of brilliant military strategy, hit a small setback early on: it was discovered that Microsoft's PR department relies heavily on Linux servers.

"No matter how many spoofed packets and spam emails we hit them with, those Linux servers just kept on chugging. And then the obvious dawned on us: since these servers were administered by PR flacks, they wouldn't have any recent (or even ancient) security patches applied. Alan Cox and his band of hackers -- the 'Sneaky Bastards' -- were able to gain root access within minutes, and the PR department was toast."

Reports from our Vast Spy Network(tm) indicate that Microsoft's vast PR department has not fully recovered from the attack. Humorix reported that the crash of Microsoft's website was not the end of the world -- and while that's still true, it may just have been the end of the Microsoft's extreme profits and hopes of dominating the world.

Or maybe not. These are the same people that recovered from the disastrous release of Microsoft Bob, so these people can recover from anything. They've already launched a counter-FUD attack (albeit weak), calling Linux a "crummy operating system". We'll just have to wait and see.

Linux Increases Brain Power

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 8, 2001

We here at Humorix are always on the lookout for news items that we can put a proper spin on to "prove" that Linux is a superior operating system. When we heard about the scientists in Japan claiming that young people are losing their memory abilities and are "becoming stupid" because of their reliance on computers and PDAs... well, we were quite ecstatic.

Let's think this through.

Item: We have a number of people in Japan suffering from severe memory loss and mental impairment.

Item: We can safely assume that many of these people have been using Windows on their desktop machines; and perhaps even a few might have been using Windows CE on their PDAs.

Item: Windows is built around a click-and-drool, mind-numbing, dumbed-down, interface-from-hell that is enough to make any person lose their mind.

Conclusion: It's all Microsoft's fault.

Wasn't that fun? But it gets even better:

Item: Installing a Linux system is often a challenging mental exercise.

Item: A command-line interface requires a certain amount of concentration; if you don't pay attention you might do something stupid as root.

Item: Effectively using each command requires memorizing vast tracks of man pages.

Conclusion: Linux increases brain power.

As a result of these findings, we here at Humorix urge every school and college in the world to immediately replace all PCs running Windows with Linux (or FreeBSD -- which is even better for your mental prowess). The mental health of our children is at stake! Won't somebody please think of the children?!?

New Linux for Corporations

Fake News written by Geoff Lane on February 6, 2001

In an attempt to increase the use of Linux within Big Evil Companies corporations, I am pleased to announce a new service that will no doubt be very appealing to the kind of people who like this kind of thing.

As of next Thursday, ClosedOpenSource.com, will be open for business but only with those companies who's Dun & Bradstreet credit rating is suitably impressive of course.

What is ClosedOpenSource.com? Well, over the course of several months we've noticed through extensive monitoring of information sources (well actually, we accessed Google a couple of times) that one of the major obstacles that prevents the widespread adoption of Linux in the enterprise is... well, its open nature. The fear is that the availability of the source to the operating system in some manner enables hackers to more easily access sensitive services provided by the larger, more self-important responsible companies.

It is the intention of ClosedOpenSource.com to provide the kind of closed source operating system services that companies who normally deal with Microsoft have come to know and enjoy. Initially, the following services are offered:

1. A closed source version of Linux, ClosedLinux^TM. This will be identical to Linux from any other source with the following exceptions a) Some or all of it will be different, b) there may or may not be any security problems within the operating system, c) it may or may not make use of network protocols that are ever so slightly different to those used by everybody else, d) it may or may not be backwards or forwards compatible with any other version of ClosedLinux^TM that we may offer in the future.

   ClosedLinux^TM will be available at a massive discount to selected, valued customers.

2. Non-disclosure Agreements (NDAs). We at ClosedOpenSource.com realize that it is important for the modern business man or woman to think that they know something that others don't. Obviously this is almost impossible with open source operating systems and applications. To solve this difficulty, ClosedOpenSource.com will be offering, at very reasonable prices, a full range of NDAs on a number of topics. We at ClosedOpenSource.com will promise guarantee pledge that each NDA will be unique. For an additional fee we also offer MetaNDA^TM, a new concept in the NDA world that will boost your profile within any company. A MetaNDA^TM is a NDA under which we will tell you which other people in your company have signed NDAs with us.

   Of course, all NDAs issued by ClosedOpenSource.com are covered by a NDA (this service is free.)

3. Poor support services. It's widely recognised that one of the advantages with closed source software is the expensive and truly appalling support that most customers receive. To ensure that we at ClosedOpenSource.com live up to this reputation we will supply a Answer-Phone telephone call center to which incidents may be reported at a (prepaid, minimum number of ten incidents per year) cost of only US$100 an incident.

   We regret that, in accordance with the DMCA, all information supplied when reporting an incident becomes ClosedOpenSource.com company confidential. If When supplied, answers to an incident will be covered by a NDA (for which we will change a small fee.)

4. Unfortunately timed product withdrawals. A perceived problem with open source products is that they just will not go away. Once an open source application has been released it just keeps on getting improved. Obviously this can reach a stage where the product is almost perfect, lacking bugs but not lacking any necessary features. Should this unfortunate state of affairs be allowed, you may find yourself down-sized... after all, who needs a software support organization if the software doesn't need support?

   To ensure that ClosedLinux^TM never reaches this terrible condition, we at ClosedOpenSource.com will withdraw each ClosedLinux^TM release at the most unfortunate time possible for your and your company and replace it with a new release of ClosedLinux^TM which will have an undisclosed number of changes and problems. John, Can we sell the fools the change log under NDA?

5. Documentation. We fully expect that any demand for documentation for our ClosedLinux^TM will be covered by the full color sixteen page manual supplied free with every copy of ClosedLinux^TM John, if we use smaller type and take out the pictures can't we reduce that to twelve pages? Can we use "full color" if there are only two colors? Check with legal.

We at ClosedOpenSource.com hope that you will visit our web site (www.MechanicallyRecoveredMeat.com best viewed with Mosaic) soon and sign-up for one or more of our services.

ClosedOpenSource.com reserves the right to keep any of your money that we may obtain and to change products and services without notice. Contents may settle during storage and give the appearance of a partially filled box.

John, can you make sure that the indicated changes are made before this goes out? And also check something out with legal -- one of the bearded wonders down in the basement was screaming about someone called JMS and something he called a Grue. He said we would be in deep shit if we tried to sell ClosedLinux^TM, Thanks