Ferdinand F. Liu

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DOS AIR All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it until it gets in the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again. Then they grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, etcetera.

WINDOWS AIRLINES The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants are all very attractive and the pilots very capable. The fleet is immense. After your plane arrives 6 months late, you begin to wonder why it has not arrived yet. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet it crashes without warning.

MAC AIRWAYS The cashiers, flight attendants, and pilots all look the same, feel the same and act the same. When asked questions about the flight they reply that you don’t want to know, don’t need to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.

OS/2 WARP SKYWAYS The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems.

FLY WINDOWS NT All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet swooshing sounds as if they are flying.

WINGS of OS/400 The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes that ever flew and painted “747″ on their tails to make them look as if they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need, though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour, unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and membership in the frequent flyer club.

MVS AIRLINES The passengers all gather in the hanger, watching hundreds of technicians check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers. All the passengers scramble aboard, as do the necessary complement of 200 technicians. The pilot takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors!

UNIX EXPRESS Each passenger brings a piece of the airplane and a box of tools to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, they build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there.
For some strange reason, many teens like to fly Unix Express, but they don’t carry their own box of tools and don’t know what to do during the fly so they keep bothering other passengers.
Yet, they feel top flyers and tease people who fly with other companies. Neverthless, they most likely fly Windows Airlines on the way back.

1. “We come in peace” replaced by “We come to make money.”
2. New slogan: “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” (Oh, I’m sorry, that’s the Borg slogan.)
3. The first 2 or 3 Revisions of all equipment (rocket, space suit, etc.) kills its operators.
4. Apollo 13: “Houston, we have a problem.” Mission Control: “Please hold for Tech Support, and have your credit card number ready.”
5. Hubble Space Telescope flaw described as “a feature, not a bug”; astronomers told to squint.
6. U.S. actually second to land men on the moon; had to wait for somebody else to do it first so we could copy them.
7. General public still believes NASA was first thanks to superior marketing.
8. Mars Pathfinder misses planet due to Pentium FDIV bug.
9. Instead of actually building the International Space Station, NASA just buys the Russian space program and renames Mir.
10. After buying Mir and upgrading its systems with NASAsoft Windows 95, the on-board computer crashes twice as often.

Note: During the last ten years of the XX century, 1700 billion dollars was spend all over the world to fight the “Millennium Bug”, most of them was unnecessary and enriched suddenly self-claimed computer experts… this millennium hysteria is something that will make future generation make fun of us. While we believe we will be fully Y2K compliant by January 1, 2000, and most of our subsidiary units and contractors claim they will also be fully compliant, we obviously need to make some preparations in case unexpected challenges impair our ability to meet the needs of our customers.

Enclosed with this memo is a “Y2K Backup System” device designed to meet short time emergency needs in case of a computer operations failure, or operational delay. This device is the company’s Primary Emergency Network Computer Interface Liaison device (P.E.N.C.I.L.).

This device has been field tested extensively, including certification testing, as well as volume and stress testing. Properly maintained, the device meets all the requirements for coding and data input.

Prior to use, the P.E.N.C.I.L. will require preparation and testing. Tools and supplies required will be: A sharpened knife or grinding device; and a supply of computer paper (with or without holes).

Gripping the device firmly in your hand, proceed to scrape or grind the wooded end until it has a cone-like appearance. The dark core area must be exposed to properly function. (Left-handed employees should read this sentence backwards, and then go to your supervisor for assistance.)

Place a single sheet of computer paper on a smooth, hard surface. Take the backup device, place the sharpened point against the paper, and pull it across the paper. If properly done, this will input a single line.

CAUTION: Excessive force may damage components of the device or damage the data reception device. If either the P.E.N.C.I.L. or the paper are damaged, go back to the preparation instructions above.

Proper use of the device will require data simulation input by the operator. Placing the device against the computer page forming symbols as closely resembling the computer lettering system you normally use.

At the completion of each of the simulated letters, lift the device off the page, move it slightly to the right, replace it against the page, and form the next symbol. This may appear tedious, and somewhat redundant, but, with practice, you should be able to increase your speed and accuracy.

The P.E.N.C.I.L. is equipped with a manual deletion device. The device is located on the reverse end of the P.E.N.C.I.L. Error deletions operate similarly to the “backspace” key on your computer. Simply place the device against the erroneous data, and pull it backwards over the letters. This should remove the error, and enable you to resume data entries.

CAUTION: Excessive force may damage the data reception device. Insufficient force, however, may result in less than acceptable deletion, and may require re-initialization of action as above.

This device is designed with user maintenance in mind. However, if technical support is required, you can still call your local computer desk supervisor at (800)-YOU-DUMMY.

• Word processors never display a cursor.
• You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
• Movie character never make typing mistakes.
• All monitors display inch-high letters.
• High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
• Those that don’t, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain english. Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES” on any keyboard. Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS” (see “Fortress”).
• All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer, even if it’s turned off.
• Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn’t go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer (see The Hunt For Red October or Alien).
• All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
• People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
• A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
• Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see “Demolition Man”).
• Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
• When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
• If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (see Clear and Present Danger). If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automagically asked for a password when you try to access it.
• No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
• The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (Aliens). However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren’t labelled.
• Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.
• Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.
• Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see “Alien”, “2001″).
• Either a Jacob’s Ladder or a Van Der Graaf Generator is absolutely necessary for the operation of new, experimental computers (especially when built by brilliant scientists), although in real life, these devices do absolutely nothing.
• One can issue any complex set of commands in a few keystokes (Star Trek).
• The internet connects to everything in the movies. You can edit credit records, search hotel registries, lookup police criminal files, search (and edit) drivers license databases, edit social security files and more just using the internet! (see The Net).

Redmond (BNN) — Microsoft (MSFT) has announced a 54 million dollar lawsuit against Tamagotchi maker, Bandai Ltd. Microsoft is claiming that the Tamagotchi (the Japanese electronic pet that’s all the rage with kids) is an infringement of its intellectual copyright.

Microsoft spokesperson, Erik Loregard stated “Software that needs constant, even hourly, attention, or else it dies? Sounds like Windows to me. This is clearly an infringement on our technology”.

The Bandai company spokesperson refused to comment on the suit. 

Redmond — In a move that today stunned industry observers, Microsoft Corp (MSFT) has defused what is widely viewed as the biggest threat to its operating system monopoly by patenting the Open Source movement. Open Source is considered to be the biggest rival to monolithic application and operating system development, methods epitomised by Microsoft but used by almost all other major software companies with the recent exception of Apple Computer (APPL). Instead of all work on a computer program being done in-house by one company, which then jealously guards the instructions needed to make it — the “source code” — the Open Source movement freely distributes the source code with the programs. It is there for anyone to examine, modify, tweak or, more importantly, fix. “Bugs often take a while to be discovered, tracked down and then fixed”. said Raymond S. Eric, a leading light of the Open Source movement. “Instead of waiting for the company, a user can simply fix it himself”. The user would be encouraged, though not forced, to make this change available to others but cannot charge money for it. “The Open Source concept has been proved in Linux, networking security and cryptography and it looks set for the big time” said Mr Eric. But now, perhaps not.

Microsoft appears to have nimbly side-stepped this threat by a clever use of intellectual property laws. In its patent, headed “Multi-Optional Nodeless Open Protocol Outsourced Licensing Yield”, Microsoft has laid claim to a method for “program development by multiple authors given almost unrestricted access to source, subject only to the necessary conditions needed to self-support the enterprise”. According to Microsoft spokesman Mr A.C. Doyle, it is a perfectly legitimate application: “Well, we knew we couldn’t beat it, so we did a quick search of the USPTO [US Patent & Trademark Office] database to see if anyone else had registered it and when it was free, we thought ’sod it, it’s as much of a ‘process’ as any other in the decided cases’, so we nabbed it, along with a couple hundred other unclaimed things, like cold fusion, bottomless bit buckets and a machine to recycle ‘chad’ ‘.”

Microsoft also reportedly paid $10,000 to acquire the opensource.org and monopoly.com domains, after sending around men in dark glasses to convince the former owners of the wisdom of this move.

The success of this initiative has spurred other efforts on the software giant’s behalf. Microsoft is also expecting final evaluation of its Boies patent, which should end the long-running antitrust suit against it. The patent, “Effective Methods of Cross-Examination by the Utilisation of Contradictory Circumstantial Evidence”, would mean that Microsoft would own all means of asking embarrassing questions and showing up inconsistencies by directly contradicting witnesses’ testimony with their own previous words.

“Microsoft is finally taking as much control of the courtroom as it does of the desktop”, said one observer, “although we hope they won’t try to make us use active channels in court”. Said Mr Doyle: “If the patent is approved, Mr Boies will now have to pay substantial licensing fees if he wishes to continue pursuing us in court, or change his methods to avoid infringing on it. Maybe he could stick to asking questions about the weather or the great new features of Windows 2000″. If the patent is approved, there should also be no opposition to acquiring Mr Gates’ ultimate objective, the patent on “The Use of Metal or Paper Medium as Currency”, in which the Government would be forced either to use Microsoft-minted currency for circulation in the economy, or license the greenback. “We don’t really want to get rid of our trusty old currency, but the nifty little OEM code and holographic sticker should help the treasury defeat counterfeiting, or money piracy as it would know be known,” said Doyle. However, he refused to be drawn on claims that the licensing move might also require putting Bill Gates Jr’s faces on all banknotes, claiming that only the ones on the front of the banknote might need to be replaced, perhaps in a compromise for putting Steve Balmer on the 20 dollar note. The Governments of several African and European countries are said already to have agreed, in principle, to start using MS-Money^TM instead of their own currencies, as part of a Microsoft-sponsored equity for debt bail-out. But, as Mr Doyle conceded, “we don’t really know how popular the MS-Drachma or MS-Mark would be among the populace”.