Bill of Wrongs
by Andy Moore

I hereby challenge Bill Gates to a duel.

Every morning I, like dozens of other red-blooded Americans around the world, sit down and read the paper over a cup o' joe. And every morning (well, nearly every morning) I'm treated to another example of Microsoft's tyranny. Violation of antitrust agreements. Violation of its Java agreement with Sun. Unfair software bundling practices. The brutal invasion of Poland and other European countries... (Uh, wait. No. That was Hitler. Sorry.)

Anyway, as I read these headlines of barbaric acts, I'm thinking what I'm sure you other red-blooded Americans are thinking. "That <your favorite expletive here> Bill Gates. Somebody needs to take him out!"

I know that these days it has become quite fashionable to bash Microsoft in general, and Bill Gates in particular. But I'm not some Johnny-come-lately to the legions of Gates Haters. I've been building up to this for a long time. Its become personal...

I used to LIKE Microsoft. I've used a lot of their software; still do! I'll even admit to a grudging respect for Mr. Bill. He's done quite well for himself! But let's be real here: Gates was just in the right place at the right time. (Don't you just HATE people like that?) Bill Gates got rich because he threw together an operating system called MS-DOS and licensed it to IBM for their stinky new Personal Computer. The IBM PC, in turn, just happened to hit at the right time, and went on to become widely used (in spite of being horribly stinky).

For the non-computer scientists among those of you who are suffering through this rambling novella, here's a concise technical analysis of MS-DOS: It was a piece of shit.

I still remember quite vividly my first exposure to DOS. See, I grew up Unix and VAX/VMS, Real Operating Systems used back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Then one day they (my employers, not the dinosaurs) sat me down in front of a PC. Right away I knew something foul was up. I looked at the prompt...

C:\>

"What's with the backwards slash?" I asked. My torturer just smiled an evil smile and said "It gets worse..." It did, LOTS worse. It *looked* just enough like Unix to lull you into trying some of the powerful things Unix lets you do, but I quickly discovered that it was NOTHING like Unix. It was a pitiful, twisted, toy of an operating system that I would have been ashamed to turn in for a computer science project.

Practically every "success" Microsoft has had since then I've written off to excellent timing and brute-force marketing. Sure, some of their products are actually fairly well designed and quite useful, but they almost always retain some sign of that twisted, sick mentality that I first noticed with MS-DOS. The latest example? Windows NT (at least the Workstation 4.0 version). Before you can log in, you have to press CTRL-ALT-DEL...

For the less technically sophisticated of you, allow me to explain how utterly EVIL this is. To begin with, no other operating system in the whole damn world makes you do *anything* to log in. What's the first thing you want to do after booting up? Right, log in! So just give the user a log-in prompt, right away! But NO, Microsoft decided that Windows NT had to be Different (aka Difficult). So you don't automatically get a log-in prompt. You have to ASK for one! It's a lot like a person at a customer service counter who won't help you until you take a number and they beep the little "Now Serving" sign and call your number, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE STANDING THERE!!!

But that's not bad enough; Microsoft had to add insult to injury. Of all the possible key sequences they could have chosen to get a log-in prompt, they chose CTRL-ALT-DEL. Every unfortunate soul who has used an IBM PC clone knows this as the "three-fingered salute", the last, hopeless act you perform when your Windows (by Microsoft, thank you) operating system has locked up (which, depending on which version of Windows you're running, is either Daily (Windows 3.x) or Weekly (Windows 95)). It is the perfect Microsoft twist to take this last desperate act, and turn it into the FIRST desperate act!

The icing on the insult/injury cake is that you get a slick, fancy, helpful little box that shows a cute little animated hand reaching down and hitting keys, along with a pleasant message, "Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to log in". They might as well have put up a big message that says "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here". I figure Bill came up with that one personally...

But back to the task at hand. I'm sure there are a few whiners who would object that offing Mr. Gates would be "unlawful." Well, I've got news for you, skippy: That Executive Order prohibiting assassinations is talking about Heads of State! And as much as Bill Gates might like to think otherwise, Microsoft ain't no sovereign state (yet). So I figure he's fair game...

But hey, what's the fun of sneaking around the Microsoft campus and rigging his PC to blow when it boots up. (The icing on the cake would be to show a BOMB dialog like the Macs used to!) Nah, that wouldn't be sportsmanlike. And nobody but his secretary would get to see it happen...

Nope, when I take ol' Billy Boy down, I want it out in the open, in front of God and everbody! I want to make him beg and plead for his miserable life. I want to humiliate him before I smash him like a bug!! I want to make him PAY for those hostages he held! (Er, wait, no, that was Khomeni. Sorry again...)

I challenge Bill Gates to... a programming contest!!

Whatjda expect, a knife fight?! This is BILL GATES, the Mother of all Geeks, the Master Nerd! Any toddler with a letter opener could *stick* him. But it takes BALLS to go up against the Evil One on his home turf.

For those of you who aren't familiar with programming contests (do they even do these anymore?), the idea is simple. Each person or team is given a list of specific computer problems to solve by writing computer programs. Usually there's a time limit, and whoever correctly completes the highest number of the problems is the winner.

So all that's left to sort out are the details. Bill (you don't mind if I call you Bill, do you?), you can choose the place and time. I'll even fly out at my own expense (even though you could probably "earn" the money to pay for my tickets and hotel in the time it takes you to blink).

I get to choose the weapons--in this case, the programming language and operating system on which we'll compete. I choose: Java and Unix. <smile>

"Hold it!" I can hear some of you shouting (damn, these are thin walls). "How're you gonna '...smash him like a bug...' in a *programming contest*? We don't just want an intellectual ass-kicking (we got enough of that with the Kasparov/Deep Blue contest). We want BLOOD!!"

Oh, did I forget to mention the post-contest phase? If I win, I get to drop ALL of Microsoft's documentation on his head from a height of ten feet. ALL of it; every fucking single worthless unreadable piece of shit "users" manual they've ever published.

And if (by some miracle) Billy G. wins? Then he gets to drop all the documentation *I've* ever written on *my* head.

I'm not too concerned about losing.

Pinback's Web Central

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That was in case any of you devious types were thinking of stealing all my cool stuff. So there.
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