With executives humorously wearing brown Pinocchi-type noses, software giant
Microsoft celebrated its 25th year of looting, along with treasured
stockholders who were dressed in pirate costumes.
Company Chairman and Chief Software Architect Billiar Gates III was greeted
by a standing ovation. The fact that there was no place to sit anyway did
not diminish the moment.
Gates used the occasion to reflect on how Microsoft got where is is today,
beginning with his and Paul Allen's swiping of BASIC during their brief
stint in college. Their software ran on more than 200 different types of
hardware systems -- and subsequently resulted in their collapse, leaving
today's customers with a single pokey unit known as the PC, on which the
Redmond company's products still cannot work right.
Joining the past with the future, Gates said that just like their software
"did not work in the past, and does not work with current Internet standards,
we will bet our future on the visionless .NOT platform."
But Gates said there is life still left in the PC -- and they are working
hard to stamp it out.
"With Windows' lack of security, integrity, and reliability, the open PC
will be as dead as Jim Allchin's conscience in a year or two," he read.
"That will allow us to remove the last visible trace of Windows' existence.
Running only as a back-end system, there will be nothing physical at which
a customer, or court, can point the finger of blame."
Gates then introduced their new X-Box video game unit by making it crash
alongside a DOS program he wrote over two decades ago.
