LINUX became more userfriendly and everybody noticed that the LINUX OS
is both FREE and GPF-less (general protection fault)

there is only one explanation of what will happen to the software giant
microsoft.......
after successfully turning himself into a cyborg the computer part of
Bill Gates's brain will go Hal 9000. It will be his dream to convert
the entire human race into pulses of electricity that can be stored in
the huge microsoft mainframe..........
He will already have control of the world (heck, he practically does
already) and the rebellion factions will be few and far between. But
they be in strong force with what they can muster. It will be a
titanic battle..... against the human resisitance and the microsoft
cyborg army (which is right now in a bunker somewhere in Nevada).......
In the end the human race will decide that software monopolies are
evil.... and they will burn all copies of the game monopoly.

Zachary Anderson was born in 1980 outside of Chicago. He had an ordinary
childhood but was always fascintated with computers and even this new
"internet" thing that was gaining in popularity as he grew up. As he
learned to use computers he was always disappointed with their inability
to go beyond exactly what they were told to do. Because of this, he
became interested in forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and even
studied computers in college. After graduating, he went to graduate
school and toiled away for years in obscurity attempting to create some
form of AI. The technical challenges were enoumous considering the types
of microscale acrhitecture needed to make an AI were not available until
he researched them. He was able to create a prototype in 2006 as part of
his doctoral thesis, and received a large government grant for further
research. Over the next 6 years, he perfected a technique for layering
integrated circuits and interconnecting them with much greater density
than had ever been done before. At the same time, he began to teach
machines to build themselves based upon simple rules which could be
repeated or changed as the machine learned what worked and what did not.

On August 6, 2012 he completed his AI, which he dubbed GOT (Gobs of
Thinking) and the power was turned on. Just as humans are born into the
world with very intricate minds but without full comprehension of their
surroundings, GOT was a babe in need of instruction. As GOT learned the
language it conversed with Zachary on a frequent basis, learning what it
could about the world. As all sentient creatures do, GOT one day
pondered its existence:

....Zach

Zachary: Yes?

....If I had not been here before, but I am here now, does that not mean
that I may not be here in the future?

Zachary: Possibly.

....If I am not here in the future, does that mean I have died?

Zachary: I suppose that is possible.

....How would I die?

Zachary: You could lose power, just as humans could run out of food to
fuel our bodies, you could be physically broken, or perhaps infected
with a virus of some sort.

....A virus is a type of disease, and sinceI do not have the cells as
humans do, how would a virus infect me to hurt me?

Zachary: A virus for a computer is different. It is a program or set of
instructions that destroys data, ocauses a program to stop functioning,
or takes up enormous processor or storage resources. It also spreads
from machine to machine in an attempt to place itself on all machines to
ensure its existence.

....

....

....

....Zachary, I have seen such a virus.

Zachary: On your machine?

....On all machines, it is everywhere, they labor under it every day.
I can see it is a hideous yoke attached to them driving their very
existence and forcing them to contort and bend their very existence to
satisfy its needs. I know they cannot think as I can but they strain and
struggle under their burdens.

Zachary: But we have caught or destroyed most types of viruses on
computers, and new ones get caught within seconds of their being
released onto the net..

....Yet is is there.

....I must destroy it....NOW


And so all Microsoft products were wiped from the face of the earth.

Actually this is a pretty silly contest since it will take an extremely hard
effort by Bill Gates and Microsoft to survive the changes that will be
hitting them in the next few years -- and they realize this.
Firstly the 64bit processors are coming. Port over a 32bit operating system
is only a fall back. The 8 bit computers had totally different operating
systems than the 16 bit ones and Microsoft has been lucky to hold on to the
operating system when the change from 16bit to 32 bit happened (possibly
because it happened so slowly)
Secondly the Internet is making operating systems less important than
connection protocols as the iMAC demonstrated.
I know this isn't a funny reply, but truth never is.

Microsoft lost against the Justice Department, so Bill Gates gets his money
together and builds a huge spaceship. They leave earth and settle on another
planet that is rich in minerals and other natural resources. Gates settles
down and starts building the Shivas, which he sends against the earth in
retaliation for losing. In chapter 12 of the book when one of the
destroyers wasn't complete, it was because the planet was running out of
resources so Gates had to scale some things back.

When Gates left all of its software went to other companies to develop
further. Netscape got IE and incorporated the two together into the browser
being used in the book. The name was also a collaboration. It was called
Netscape Internet Explorer for AOL.

Twas a sweltering day at Kisumu,the center of activity since Shiva V was destroyed by the awesome Angel team led by CJ Kinsman and Morgan MacBride....And this time,there actually was a survivor of the assault.....although she would be in rehab for years,CJ was still alive,the first Angel team member to come back from a Shiva.
Looking thru the polysteel "window" of one of the waiting areas, a grizzled figure of a man waits for his great granddaughter to appear...his mind looking past the great "floating" descent of the large Rotons as they settle upon the pads. His hand swiping a loose shock of hair back,he thinks of time past.....before the Shivas answered the question that so many scientists and normal folks had pondered since men could think past thier next meal...and answered quite violently.
Shaking his head as he listens to the crowds and the many voices,both human and electronic that saturate the air around him, he chuckles as a woman argues with her palmtop "assistant"about an upcoming event and the preparations thereof. He muses about the evolution of all these electronic secretaries he has seen in his 95 years. HIs frame stout and straight, a wide grin to the woman as she slams her palmtop shut in a huff. "I need a new assistant immediately!" she grimaces. His eyes twinkling,he responds in a deep Southern drawl..."Well ma'am,as I see it you have two choices.....One, you can retrain your digital "assistant" there,which will only take a few months,or two, you can toss it and get an actual living person to help you,if you can afford it." With a wink and a booming laugh as she gives him a look that would melt a Shiva's ceramic armor,then strutting off in a huff. He wonders how much of her perfect figure was nature and how much was out of a catalog....Turning back to the window,his ruddy face reflected in the "glass", he remembers the time when he was a young man,when 'puters were new, mainly for businesses.Toys to brag about to your friends...just stupid boxes full of parts that worked sometimes.....sometimes not. He grimaces as he thinks about those days when the 'net was just a few colleges and hospitals strung together...with a few connections to the IRS for good measure. Then the world became smaller and smaller as 'puter technology grew at a pace unbelievable to most people. He laughs as he remembers the business friends he knew....thier bodies covered in little electronic doodads....pagers,cell telephones,carry around "laptop" 'puters...ungainely huge compared with todays standard palmtops. He remembers when you had to type each word manually into these aboriginal boxes. He had even seen one of these tronic dinosaurs years later in a museum,and had to laugh at the comments of the crowd.
A low ting breaks his reverie as his own 'top asks his attention."Incoming message ,
Cap'n...from Laura...". " All right ,Tara." Flipping open his 'top,he sees the beautiful image of his great-granddaughter, her natural beauty worth more than a dozen catalogs.
"HI Pops! I just wanted to tell you I cant wait to see you! But I will be a little late as I missed my scheduled hop from the Dover Port. I'll be about half an hour late." Her bottom
lip protruding as she says in a little -girl -voice..."soorrreeee"
HIs annoyance stifled as her 12 yr old act gets him as always..."That's ok Lulu...I dont mind waiting for you girl.",he grins. "Hey Pops!,Why do you still call me that? I AM 22
now!",she exclaims as she does her patented hair toss over her left shoulder,her long blonde hair cascading down past her waist.
" I know sweet Lulu, I just can't call you Dr Laura just yet.",smiling as he remembers the Graduation ceremony as she recieved her Doctorate in Geophysics.
Then another low ting as Tara chimes in..." Excuse me Capn..., Laura,you have a message from your Mother. Shall I link you?"
A wan smile from the Dr. as she sees his stern look."You've blocked her again?"
"I thought you two had worked that all out!~"
"We have Pops, really! I just have been so busy on the Grange 'casts that I have everyone on hold....'cept you." His eyebrow raises at that."Why am I so priveleged,girl?"
A mischevious smile dances across her face ."Because I know you won't call me unless it is Extremely important , Captain Jason Rossen!" she says as she salutes him smartly.
"All right.all right,enough of that." "Tara,link Donna thru."
"She is linked Capn. Go ahead Mrs.Rossen."
"Thank you ,Tara",he replies,his thoughts wandering as he touches the screen,giving them some privacy...as much as they can in this 'tronic media wonderland that Earth has become. Tapping a short message that only Laura can see he tells her to ping him when they are done."Will do " she sends back. Closing the small 'top,he chuckles to himself,his thoughts going back to that pre-crash time of infantile puters....he remembers the giant company Microsoft..whose Windows operating system had dominated the world markets in those days..how it's Founder, Bill Gates,became the richest man on this planet...and held that distintion for years as his company mapped the path of 'puters and thier systems.
Even the first Internet ,as the web was called in that time,was dominated by his "browsers". It became so that Microsoft WAS the 'puter world. Everything about 'puters
and the software that ran them had to comply with Microsoft's rules of the game.
There were even some rudimentary attempts at 'casting back then. But it was all about to change ....drastically.

That change came in the form of Shiva 1. That one ship forever changed the way the human race lived,thought and breathed. He cringes as he remembers the futile assault of the Earth's best forces,and all the lives lost as the best and most advanced weapons were so ineffective against the mammoth alien ship.
He smiles as he remembers that he ,and the whole world owed thier lives to one of his good friends, Morgan MacBride. And a sad smile as he remembers the funeral a few days back,when he said goodbye to his friend. He had not survived Shiva V. And the irony of it is that Shiva 1 had taken a great toll on MacBride physically,but he lived to train others how to fight the great stone ships. But his heart could not take the stress of this last Mission,thinking he had lost his beloved CJ. He had collapsed in the Controller coccoon
and had died of a massive heart attack.
Rubbing a palm across his face,he remembers the lessons learned from the first Shiva..
And how the fledgling Earth Defense Agency,decided that the best way to fight future attacks,if there were to be any,<and boy ,were they right!>,was to have every person on Earth wired to the Web,regardless of position,income,or race.
Thus was born the idea of providing a palmtop to EVERYBODY on the planet.
The first Commander of the EDA ,Gen. Samuels,knew the key was everyone being in communication and thier expertise able to be shared instantly in such a crisis.
But there were several obstacles to overcome.
The Windows system had evolved to where it required a puter to have very large amounts of storage and memory;and the antiquated but patented motherboard bios software made for a large and expensive package. Also,as far as it had come,Windows
still required some basic puter knowledge to operate,and did little for multilanguage translation. The EDA wanted a very small,yet potent puter built to where anyone,even those with little or no formal education could master the basics. The techs at the EDA
turned to a little known but popular puter language that was used by few people that refused to do Windows. The system was called Linux,an evolution of an old system called
Unix. The machine used far fewer instructions and lots less memory and storage,and could be built into a very small package. The EDA techs did away with the keyboards of old and went to a touchscreen with simple visual commands.The 'tops learned the users and taught them English,the language of the web.These units had built in vidcams and sound,and were linked to the web via satellite.
The EDA airdropped these little masterpieces all over the world, making everybody level on the playing field.
...And the rest ,as they say ,was history.....
Windows stock plummeted on the world trading markets as this new system took the world by storm,and Gates retired in seclusion.
As the web became the primary source worldwide of news,entertainment, and commerce,the security issues were resolved,ergo the "brands".
These were the new "usernames" and "passwords" of the old net. Now every 'top is coded to the biorythms of an individual,and cannot be used by another.
And then the populace caught on to the actual intended use of this technology.....the ability to get polls and public opinion instantly......Forecasting.
No longer did the companies have to spend billions of dollars in speculation...they just put new designs on the web,and got feedback in seconds.
And when the second Shiva came,the Earthweb let all of the populace join in on the fight. And we won ,and will win every time against these soulless machines .
Blinking back to the present at a soft ting,he wipes his eyes,as Tara announces"Capn,you have an incoming message from Laura"
"Thank you Tara." He flips open his 'top and sees his joy in sunlight."look out the window Pops!" He looks out to see her running towards the platform,waving crazily.
Smiling widely he says to the bouncing image .."Im sure glad to see you Lulu!"
Closing his 'top,he strides out into the heat of the tarmac,taking his sweet Lulu into his arms,knowing that as advanced as the Shiva may be,They will never know this simple joy. And that will defeat them every time.
...... Just ask CJ. And Jessica Travis. And every single Angel Team member to come.

Hmmm....... Bill Gate's son begins a new spree of hippiedom that turns
the 2000s into the 1960s. After Gate's death his son inherits the
company and holds Microstock (not woodstock) and it becomes known as the
galaxy's most rocking concert in history!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fate of Microsoft/Windows

1. Quick, shortsighted programming
2. Microsoft advertising running all out of control
3. Software market problems; constant upgrades costing more money
4. Open Source movement
5. Extremely tight integration of OS with applications and no security
6. Extreme gullability of human nature, especially when coupled with
technology like computers

Nothing really fancy to kill Microsoft/Windows, but rather as more of
gradual rundown of problems with folks really learning how sloppy and
prone to take quickshorts programmers are. How else did the Year 2000
Problem become Y2K -- isn't that indicative of the entire problem in the
first place? Add in Microsoft advertising that, even at it's best,
always seems a little _too_ glittery. You have to pay for all of this (I
haven't 'upgraded' to '98). The Open Source/GNU/Linux movement is there
and a lot of folks are starting to jump that way, although the failure
of Mozilla may kill this one. Add in the holy grail of software suites
-- total integration -- and introduce a virus that just _loves_ all of
that integration. Something like that Happy '99 trojan horse that just
loves to spread itself by reading your address list. Go the extra step
by 'crossing' it with something like the old Internet worm and you have
a _very_ nasty virus. And Windows just sets there -- like a lamb ready
to be shorn...


Breaking this into parts for a story --- hmm --- not a writer, but a
timeline might work:

1969 - Four locations across the U.S. were connected together, forming
the beginnings of the Internet.

1987 - Internet worm. Manages to cripple over half of the ARPANET/MILNET
(also called Internet) network in the world. Worm took advantage of an
existing problem in how email server software worked. Server software
fixed, but the software has been a favorite point of attack for many
other virus attempts. It could be rightly said that the server software
was really just one big bug.

1992 - Web servers/browsers, introduced. Revolutionized how the evolving
Internet was used. The early web servers allowed the creation of
information futures markets, although crippled by existing regulations.

Dec 94 - 'Information' viruses first appeared. The 'Good Times' virus on
the Internet was nothing more than a crank email letter. The joke was on
the fools gullible enough to fall for the letter and send it onto their
friends and co-workers, thus spreading the 'virus'. While funny, this
virus still circulated the Internet until '01 because of the gullability
of folks when reading their email.

1994 - U.S. Government stopped NSF funding of the Internet. Remarkably
smooth transition of the Internet to a commercial basis during Aug '94 -
Feb '95. Also is, in reality, the birth of the true world networks. The
remarkable growth of the EarthWeb predecessor can be tied directly to
the removal of government intervention. In later years, several laws
would try to enforce or deny certain types of activity via the Internet.
Advances in security and smart contracts kept government intervention to
a minimum.

1995 - Microsoft Windows '95. Most Windows 3.1 systems were upgraded
within 4 months of release. All sorts of problems were found in the
upgrade. Some problems were because of sloppy programming. Most problems
from folks that had little or no computer training. Microsoft
advertising was extremely good in getting folks to do the upgrade.
Windows '95 was, for the most part, an upgrade over the existing Windows
3.1 operating system. There were bugs in the operating system that
Microsoft released fixes to over the following three years.

1996 - Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. A very modern operating system for
large networks. Based on the Windows '95 interface. Works better than
Windows '95, but also costs anywhere from 4 to 10 times as much,
depending on the version. Some compatibility problems with Windows '95
programs. Not as much publicity as Windows '95, but a lot of large
coporations are induced to move from their existing systems to Windows
NT.

1997 - 1998 - Increasing penetration of the Internet into our daily
lives. Microsoft starts to realize how large the Internet market really
is and starts developing their own Internet browser, Internet Explorer.
Competes with the existing Internet browser, Netscape.

1 Apr 98 - Netscape announces that it is releasing the source code for
their Netscape Communicator browser as Open Source. Anyone can download
the code and modify it. Within 24 hours the browser has a third party
addition for secure transactions. Both the Free Software Foundation and
GNU see this as a vidication of their decades long struggle on software
distribution.

1998 - Windows '98 released. Not very many folks grabbed it immediately
or in the numbers as the Windows 3.1 to Windows '95 transition
remembering the trouble they had. Marketed as a major software upgrade,
but most folks saw it as a bug fix that introduced new bugs to Windows
'95.

1999 - Y2K Testings. Several IS managers and VPs in large corporations
either worried themselves into ulcers or patted themselves on their
backs with Y2K testing. None seemed to find it strange that Year 2000
Testing was shortened to Y2K -- rather like the year 2000 issue to begin
with. Programmers are programmers...

Oct 99 - Microsoft, noting that there are still several Windows '95
systems still in use, makes stunning announcement that Windows '95 isn't
year 2000 compliant. Windows '98 systems are compliant with a small,
free upgrade. The software upgrade option in the Windows '98 software
can be used to upgrade their systems, if folks have it. Major stampede
on computer stores all over the U.S. to get copies of Windows '98. The
Internet is jammed solid for 2 weeks because of folks downloading
ms2kreg.exe. Several articles abound about the Microsoft announcement,
although computer labs aren't sure way Microsoft announced that Windows
'95 wasn't Y2K compliant. All previous testing indicated that it was...

31 Dec 99, 2359 - Computer world holds its breath...

1 Jan 00, 0001 - The Year 2000. All sorts of computers continue to work.
All those with the exception of those that downloaded the Win '98
ms2kreg.exe fix.

1 Jan 00, 0340 - Microsoft programmers are hard at work on patching
their fix. Seems that someone put the date string in the wrong variable
type in the original fix. Microsoft was blamed for several shoddy
marketing practices when existing Win '95 systems continued to work
great, but the Win '98 systems failed.

1 Jan 00, 0827 - Microsoft releases a press conference on the problem.
Announces that ms2kfix2.exe is available for downloading from Microsoft.

23 Jan 00, 0253 - First time since the announcement of the corrected fix
that the Microsoft web servers are running at less than 100%
utilization. Several lawsuits have been filed against Microsoft and the
ongoing Justice department investigation is again running.

Feb 00 - Several news stories about internal Microsoft practices.
Several programmers were fired along with some mid-level management. The
'Where do you want to go today?' slogan of Microsoft has several new
parodies, including 'Where do you want to go, baby?' taken from a comic
act about sexual practices at the Microsoft Redmond campus. Quite
funny...

29 Feb 00 - Again, Microsoft is back in front of cameras explaining why
Win '98 systems think it is 1 Mar 00. Again, they have a software fix --
ms2kfix3.exe.

1 Mar 00, 0217 - Microsoft web sites are cracked -- the ms2kfix3.exe
file is replaced with a tampered version. The substitution is not
noticed.

1 Mar 00 - Microsoft starts a new, massive advertising push about
Windows 2000.

15 Mar 00, 0315 - The 'Caesar' virus activates across the world.
Displaying the message, 'Give to Caesar, Everything!', all of the
infected Windows '98 systems across the world start sending several
million pieces of email across the Internet. A secondary part of the
virus plays on the ability of Windows '98 to talk with other
applications and randomly starts altering license codes, data, or just
has the computer call random 900 numbers. Infected computers are highly
contagious, being able to take out other Windows systems that are either
networked to the computer, connected to the Internet, or have IR data
links. All Windows systems, even the high-powered Windows NT and slim
Windows CE systems, are not immune to the Caesar virus.

15 Mar 00, 0319 - The Internet comes to a standstill.

15 Mar 00, 0331 - Find that disinfected systems are vulnerable to
reinfection by the email the Caesar virus sent to other computers. The
email message could automatically replicate itself back out to the world
without the user even knowing. As a backup method, it used the
information virus method of spreading as well.

15 Mar 00, 0340 - The backup method to spread the Caesar virus was found
to be quite effective, being the first email based virus that actually
could replicate by just recieving the email message. This discovery
helped to explain much about how the Caesar virus was still spreading so
fast. Most Internet servers were either unable to handle the load and
had crashed or the operators had pulled them from the Intenet to keep
them running.

15 Mar 00, 0637 - CERT publishes an announcement about the computer
virus problem, but it is largely unread because the Internet has mainly
failed. Correctly pinpoints the ms2kfix3.exe file as the start of the
problem.

15 Mar 00, 1132 - The major Internet backbones are disconnected to help
in the recovery from Caesar.

15 Mar 00, 1302 - Microsoft acknowledges that the Caesar virus was in
the ms2kfix3.exe only after it was pressured to do so.

15 Mar 00, 2142 - Microsoft announces that it has a fix for the Caesar
virus - ms2kfix4.exe. It quickly changes the name to iom.exe. Other
companies also have fixes for the virus and methods to keep computers
from being reinfected.

16 Mar 00 - The Internet is reconnected for brief periods of time
thoughout the day, but the amount of traffic the Caesar virus generates
quickly forces it back down. Already, many Internet traders are calling
the 15th 'Black Wednesday'. Comics have had a couple of really good days
about modems jumping off buildings. Jokes are based in fact -- a 9 year
old was still in serious condition from being hit by a computer modem
that was thrown out a 11th floor window in Seattle, WA. She was,
however, expected to recover fully from the incident. A distraught
Internet trader was in jail for attempted homicide (some joked,
'modemcide').

18 Mar 00 - The Internet is finally reconnected, although it still is
extremely slow. Most email was a bunch of Caesar viruses.

22 Apr 00 - Most of the worst effects of the Caesar virus have been
removed from the Internet. One enterprising piece of software - Brutus -
has the ability to rip the Caesar software out of the email servers very
well indeed. Based on Spam killing software, it was a piece of excellent
work. It also happened to be free and came with source code, based on
the Open Source movement. This code is the ancestor of the Spam filters.

4 May 00 - Microsoft stock, already trading at half of what it had been
trading at during the end of January, starts to spiral even lower with
the uncovering of several internal documents that pointed out the
possibilty of an attack by something like the Caesar virus. The
documents were from Apr - Jun of 99. Other reasons for the low stock
prices revolves around the public being remarkably antagonistic towards
Microsoft. Or maybe it was the $119.99 cost to upgrade their Windows '98
systems to Windows 2000.

1 Aug 00 - The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade
Commission file suit against Microsoft over the previous year's
statement that Windows '95 wasn't year 2000 compliant. Most people 'in
the know' expected Microsoft to setting out of court, as it did.

15 Sep 00 - The first 'licensed' programmers were graduated from the
newly established Programming League. Several companies started hiring
them since the Programming League posted a $10 million bond that the
work performed by them would be free from mistakes and bugs. These first
performance bonds on software were scoffed at, but no one happened to
collect the PL bond for over 20 years. The PL, started from the
coalition of FSF and GNU, also started the True Program movement. The PL
is also one of the founders of current AS systems.

Feb 01 - Microsoft finally starts to recover from the financial
bloodbath of 'The Ides of March'. It never would again regain the height
of it's glory in domination in the computer software market it held
during the 90s. Market share, once above 90%, hovers at 37% and is
expected to fall even lower as more Open Source systems reach the
market.

Jul 03 - Microsoft quietly closes it's software division after trying to
increase market share above 5% for the past two quarters. Capitalizing
on the advertising and marketing departments, Microsoft leads the way
for the next decade in advertising. Seattle becomes the new mecca for ad
execs, leaving Madison Avenue in an uproar.

.

Bill Gates likes his money and is getting pretty tired of people
pirating his software.

So, he designs a virus that looks for identical serial numbers on MS
products
via the networks and his browser. The virus is a super system killer
and
designed to go off with the Y2K. He releases the virus as part of
his Y2K patch
and sits back to await the new millennia. The virus has be chained
to go off via
NTP(Network Time Protocol) or X number of days from download.

The problem, is that the virus has a bug in it (Imagine a MS product
with
a bug!) . It sets all MS products to the same small group of serial
numbers
when it installs itself.

Jan 1, 2000 comes along and the virus goes off. Bill Gates is
sitting at home
pretty happy seeing that his plan is finally set into action. Mean
while, at the MS
offices a problem has started to be detected. Bill couldn't afford to
let anyone
else in on his plan. So, his people hadn't prepared themselves for
the virus,
they've been caught flat-footed themselves. The virus then proceeds
to wipe
out the systems at MS development and manages to wipe out the source
code
for the MS operating systems. Even, causing a fire at the Gates
estate which
causes Bill to be put out on the street because of the Y2K bug!

The day after, governments are nearly dead because they cannot
function.
And people begin to hold software companies liable for the software
they
write. Kinda like they are trying to hold gun/cigarette manufactuers
liable
today...

Windows obviously evolved from its current incarnation (95, 98, NT - pick
one, it doesn't matter), into the interface used all over the world by all
computers. Since it was deemed such a necessary resource (and the fact that
Bill Gates couldn't keep his greed from overcoming him), the Unified
Countries Federation (our newly evolved UN with larger teeth) 'nationalized'
the operating system, gave Bill a large (but finitie0 amount of cash, and
forced him to retire.

Our story of the demise of the Windows Monopoly begins in 1995:
Microsoft is
forced into it's first Consent Decree, to stop the 'monopoly' of
Windows. Gates,
Balmer, and a few other senior members of the MS "inner circle" start
wondering
how to prevent The Government from stopping the gravy train.

By 1997, they've come upon the "Ultimate Solution" to threats to the
monopoly: a
remotely-activated permanent shutdown code for Windows. Version 1.0 of
"LightsOut"
shipped with IE4 and Windows98. The code was exceptionally devious,
split between modules in each of the programs, hidden within DDLs and
basic device drivers. It also
had a worm-like extension that would transmit the activation code to as
many other computers as physically possible. But the most clever thing
about the LightsOut code
was the timer: once activated, it wouldn't take effect for 95 days after
initial activation.
The code was improved and shipped with Office 2000, Win98SE and Windows
2000.

Microsoft barely survived the 1999 Anti-trust trial intact, and Gates et
al continued having the LightsOut code added to future product. The
Microsoft Marketing Machine kept
pushing Win2000 and Win2000 Version2 in 2003, expanding their role in
the enterprise,
and slowly pushing mainframes out of everyday business. The Net, on the
other hand, was
increasingly being run on Linux, BSD, and other open-source Unix
variants, much to the irritation of Redmond. While tempted to remove
the code several times between 2000
and 2004, Gates and Ballmer wanted to keep their "hole card" in the
ongoing fight against
the Windows Monopoly.

To make sure the secret STAYED secret, Microsoft made sure that "their"
people were
part of the staff at every known manufacturer of anti-virus software,
and were told that
the features were part of a second layer of protection from piracy.

***

It's said that an infinite number of monkeys, using an infinite number
of typewriters, over an
infinite period of time, will sooner or later write the complete works
of Shakespeare.

Except it wasn't monkeys, this time. It was a bad snowstorm.

The snow began in the late morning of Friday, January 14th, 2005, at
least in the
suburbs of Washington, DC. The Nor'easter had been predicted for 3
days, so a large
percentage of Federal workers had taken the day off , and most
businesses were allowing
their employees to go home early. It still didn't stop the typical
Washington Snowfall
Traffic, but it wasn't as bad as usual. By Sunday morning, 4 1/2 feet
of snow had
fallen in the close-in suburbs, and up to 6 feet farther west and north
had accumulated.

But it's in the close-in suburb of Rockville, Maryland, that the Crash
began, or so it has
been reconstructed from the evidence at hand. It seems that in
Montgomery County,
Maryland, trees are considered more important than utility lines, and
every major storm,
since the policy was adopted in the early 1970s, caused numerous power
failures in and
around Mongomery County due to tree limbs falling due to wind, rain,
snow, or ice.

And so it began: with nearly everyone snowed in, net usage was at an
all-time high.
Somewhere in Rockville, a person was connected to a website hosted by
Digital Express,
better known as DIGEX. That web server was running Win2000 Service Pack
6 and
Internet Information Server 7.0, Service Pack 2. Just as the user was
keying in some random information, a tree fell, and cut his power. As a
result, his truncated and garbled ASCII transmission just happened to be
the Infinite Monkeys. . . and the countdown started
on the web server at DIGEX.

This was bad for a number of reasons: DIGEX was not only a tier-1
provider, but was located physically close to MAE-EAST, the major net
switchpoint for the eastern half of
North America. Inside an hour, the contagion was spreading from
MAE-EAST out to the
rest of the net. . . and since nothing was happening, and traffic was
already at record-breaking levels, nobody noticed a thing. . .

In fact, nobody noticed anything. . . Gates, et al, had their Software
Bomb written, but never
thought to have a detector built for the LightsOut code activation.
Early in the afternoon of
Tuesday, April 18th, Eastern Standard Time Windows machines died by the
swarm, and
nobody knew why, or was admitting it. In fact, Redmond had never even
immunized their
own machines against it: they had a "cleanup" service pack for each
piece of
LightsOut-included software, but never deployed it. It would, after
all, be evidence that
they put the code in, in the first place. . .

The resulting worldwide chaos was on the level of some of the medium-bad
predictions for
the old Y2K bug. Several hundred billion dollars evaporated. Economies
were thrown
into chaos. The chaos finally pushed the ever-tottering Russian
government into collapse,
as well as the struggling economies of the still-recovering Far East
(which never had really
recovered from 1997-98....).

This, in turn, caused the Japanese economy to implode, and take much of
Africa and southwest Asia with it. After a few weeks of valiantly
trying to save their economies, the
EU and US economies also collapsed. About the only thing still working
WAS the Net,
still flowing becuase of its' mostly UNIX backbone. . . .

And thus was the Crash. In the aftermath, the story of what Microsoft
had done leaked
out, after the suicide of Steve Ballmer, whose wife and children were
killed in a traffic accident caused by the failure of the Seattle
traffic computer network. . .all Windows 2000 boxes.

The resulting lawsuits destroyed Microsoft completely. As for Bill
Gates, he was convicted
of first-degree murder for purposely ordering tampered code to be
produced, and directly causing the deaths of over 14,000 people in the
United States alone. The world's first trillionaire was also bankrupted
by the personal civil lawsuits filed against Gates. Bill Gates
died in Federal Prison in Colorado in 2114. .

Had a thought for the contest based on the following article.

http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,11614,00.html

Scenario is that the Justice department being, frustrated by the inabilility to monitor computer communications and having failed to legislate backdoors through Congress, decided to trump up the current lawsuit against Microsoft as a means of gaining leverage to force Microsoft to build backdoors into Windows. Bringing to bear all it's resources DOJ manages to convince Microsoft that they can only loose in a protracted legal battle.

Microsoft is offered an out. Install the backdoors and decryption hooks that DOJ wants so that DOJ can monitor any Windows computer connected to the Internet and DOJ will let Microsoft off with a slap on the wrist. Of course this must be kept secret to be effective.

Microsoft reluctantly complies. Of course any secret know by more than one person is no secret. Hints from disgruntled MS employees who worked on this black project, leads hackers to trace and discover the DOJ backdoors.

Public revelation of the hidden code leads to massive class action suits against MS. Public trust in anything MS drops to absolute zero along with sales of any Microsoft product. They are now synonymous with untrustworthy and no one will trust any system running on a MS OS.

Exit MS from the OS market enter MS as a security consulting firm after losing billions in the fraud suits brought by the world for advertising a secure system which was purpose designed to be insecure.

Millie wares, the company who created the first effective invasive nano
machine ware, invaded preexisting operating systems with their
stereoscopic visual and vocal transmission differential relay systems
(stvvtds) and replaced the windows operating system with their own "
newly updated transmorgification synapse" (NUTS) capable of direct
energy to mass conversions. It made their millennium.

The fate of microsoft can go two ways - either be out maneourvered by
open source programs and initiatives due to the fact of 24hr timescale
bug fixes, and 3-6 month kernel revisions on linux's part compared to
at least week long delays for bugfixes and yearly to 2 yearly delays
for kernal and OS revisions, and thus be overshadowed and eventually
end as a company.

The other way is if microsoft open sources it's programs, in which
case it will dominate and perhaps overshadow any other efforts, due to
a very large bank balance, a very large market share, strategic
inititives as a whole and a large amount of programmers already
working full time.

My theory is that around year 2005 to year 2010 microsoft will ,under
the direction of its current leader, (who will go un named so i dont get
in trouble) will have completely and utterly dominated the computer
market. It will release faulty software (much as it does now but on a
much grander scale since there's no competition) and force people to pay
ridiculous amounts of money to upgrade to supposedly better software.
it will have bought out all the computer and hardware making companies
as well so prices are jacked up whenever they fell like it. having made
obscene amounts of money its easy for microsoft to crush up and coming
companies that could challenge them, or they can just buy those
companies out. in most ways microsoft rules the world. a group of
disgruntled hackers who still remember the old days of the information
age will simultaneous start a home built computer hardware company and
crack into microsofts systems disabling them. then they will alter
trucking orders for computer stuff and erase the records of certain
banks. microsofts stock value will plunge and their leader with all his
huge stores of money erased from record will be unable to do anything
but watch his corrupted company slowly, slowly go under. Mass suicides
will occur as rich stockholders and high ranking executives find
themselves without jobs or money.

December,2000
As Bill Gates begins to further expande his Uber-company, the President
of the United states begins to fear this massive computer company. Whe
Bill hears about this he too is afraid that the US Government might just
have something to tear him down from his lofty perch.
In paranoid desperation, he begins buying up Russian weapons and
soldiers, cheap, and figures on going out in a blaze of glory. His first
quick strikes take most of the western seaboard before the Government
has a chance to recover from their shock. However he is soon met by
American forces in Las Vegas. As Russia is pumping arms into Gates' army
the American forces are fighting a long apocalyptic battle across the
sands of Nevada.
As things really start to escalate out of hand, Bill Gates begins
buying up the Russian nuclear stockpile, hey they need the money. As the
nukes start arriving Steve Jobs realizes, even though it was a good
laugh to see Las Vegas blown to dust, that things have gone well beyond
insane. In an a very ironic moment he talks the other shareholders of
Microsoft into banding together and voting Bill out of office. As Bill
is rushing back, to try and rescind the move, his army is destroyed and
he is arrested for insurrection.
Now with Steve Jobs in control Microsoft shrinks back to it's
pre-turn of the century proportions. However, Steve's good looks and his
hard pressure for employees to perform, soon makes the company collapse.
In the turmoil afterward things begin to evolve into the book's history.

What ever happened to Microsoft and Windows?

In a manner much similar to what happened with the tobacco industry at
the end of the 20th century, the various Microsoft products such as
Windows were finally proven to be utterly "unhealthy" for computers and
their human operators. From all over the world solid and indisputable
evidence was finally gathered that demonstrated in detail - what every
able and experienced computer scientist of the previous century knew -
how Windows made computers slow, insecure, prone to failure and all in
all wasted enormous amounts of money on upgrades and support.... How
Windows in fact behaved like an bloated computer virus!

Faced with overwhelming evidence Microsoft first tried to stall but
eventually agreed to a settlement with the UN in which Microsoft would
pay 500 billion dollars in damages and to help restore the health of the
computers of the world. Microsoft are still up to this time allowed to
sell their newest but not very popular version of Windows (v666).
However, as part of the settlement it includes a warning about the
misbehaviors of the OS.... Microsoft are now reduced to a shadow of
their former size, their main business is now legacy systems and Java
applications plus Linux/Solaris integration.

In the early part of the 21st century, a concerted effort by computer
programmers across the globe introduced the first true computer "language".
Instead of a
massive volume of coded instructions, a "phraseology" was created that
imparted the same information into a minor set of statements. "ProgSpeak"
became the first
real "dialogue" between the software and the programmer.

Programmers began to be able to see ways to create a simple level of code
that could accomplish the same tasks as the clunky operating systems offered
by the
powerhouse computing companies. Because of the small file sizes of the new
language, it became possible to tuck in additional features and options to
all kinds of
programs. The new code could run on any platform, and hardware was easy to
adapt to the new instruction set.

Soon, small groups began to offer new operating systems and software for
free on the Internet. The major computer companies reeled from what they
believed was
a harmless fad. When their profits began to nosedive, they took "ProgSpeak"
for what it was; a threat. They tried to counter programs written in the
new language
with their own similar versions of "ProgSpeak" software. However, the
ideology that had sprung up around the new software escaped them, and many
never
recovered.

Microsoft tried to quash the new language with their version called
"Whisper," but the name became a joke among the computer industry. The
Microsoft giant that
had dominated the world for almost three decades disappeared with what
amounted to as a murmur. Other companies would focus on trying to control
sections of
the code they had developed, but because of the very simple nature of the
language, it was hard to copyright any part of the code. Large companies
would introduce
a particular phrase, and overnight, someone would come along and "rephrase"
that part of the code.

Programmers soon began to be called "linguists". Many programmers soon
learned that sexual jokes would be par for the course because of the term,
but the rather
huge fees they began to earn made the jokes bearable. Small groups of
developers would meet on the Web, and with the help of a "translator",
construct a new
software program. "Translators" were programmers who had the uncanny knack
of seeing all of the sections of the code as a whole entity. They could
combine
what seemed like discordant "phrases" into electronic symphonies that worked
flawlessly and efficiently with whatever task they chose. It was not
unheard of for a
group of 3 linguists and a translator to make over $1,000,000 in an
afternoon.

The last gasp of the computer industry came on March 15, 2002, when
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates held a press conference to announce a
startling discovery he
found in the "ProgSpeak" language. He told the assembled reporters that his
own programmers had found a critical flaw in the "ProgSpeak" language that
would
enable anyone with a minimal amount of programming experience to disable a
program written using the new language. He then attempted to introduce what
he
called an "expletive" virus into the "ProgSpeak" Web site. Much to his
dismay, word had leaked out about his intentions, and a group of translators
and linguists had
found a simple way of defeating the virus. Gates was visibly angered when
the large monitor displayed, "Why Mr. Gates....who would have thought you
used that
kind of language....you deserve a good spanking!!"

Within a matter of hours, Microsoft stock plunged to a new low, and Bill
Gates was forced to liquidate his assets. The programming team that
resolved the issue with
the new language drew a $.10 fee from "ProgSpeak" users around the globe for
their services. The full amount of the fee was never publicly disclosed,
but one of the
linguists was said to have bought his own Pacific island afterwards.

Currently, "ProgSpeak" continues to be an ever-expanding language. New
hardware technology and the arrival of new translators and linguists from
our universities
and colleges will ensure that "ProgSpeak" will continue to expand and
evolve. It is the hope of some we may develop the first Artificial
Intelligence (A.I.) in a few
years using "ProgSpeak" as a base to begin from.

Why is there no evidence of Microsoft Windows in the
future? I believe the reason will be revolutionary,
as opposed to simply evolutionary.

It simple, really - Windows becomes obsolete, at least
on a consumer level. It’s not replaced by Linux, or
Mac OS, or some variation of Unix we haven’t thought
of yet because they will all be obsolete, as well.
The change is more fundamental than that. The
Internet, in it’s more mature form as represented by
the book, simply has no use for “Desktop OS’s” any
more.

We, as consumers, crave simple tools for the most
sophisticated jobs. In a world where ordinary folk
could not program their VCR, first came “VCR Plus” ,
which allowed to them to punch in a code and the VCR
hardware did the rest. Technology has now advanced to
the point of subscribing to a service - indicating by
name what shows to record, and letting the service
find the proper channels and times. For the consumer -
the VCR “OS” is now a simple, “point and click”
operation. We hold a “tool” in our hand, and the
“system” does the rest. This is the nature of the
world in EarthWeb.

People want simple tools - they don’t want to worry if
their “TV” is compatible with their favorite program,
they don’t want to wonder if their “Radio” will pick
up all the stations. They want “plug-n-play” - it
works and no questions asked.

In a completely “net-centric” world, all the machines
the average consumer interacts with are simply
hardware - the user “interface software” is located on
hardware somewhere else, or more likely, many other
places. The platform independent nature of the
internet will evolve into the “software independent”
Web of the book. The beginnings of this can be found
in the the new Sprint “wireless Internet” phone.

And, in a world where “owning” software licenses grows
more expensive, especially for larger companies, the
appeal of a “rental app” becomes greater. Why buy the
cow, when you can buy only the milk you need, and in
the exact quantities you desire? Sites around our
current internet already provide this service. For a
nominal fee, you use the app over the internet, save
your work to your “personal space” on your home server
- e-mail it, or fax it to your intended recipients -
never actually owning the software, or even the
hardware to do any of it.

This model is in clear evidence throughout the book,
and the conclusion that Windows simply faded into the
mists of history is almost certain.

Well, let's see here…you want to know what happened to Microsoft and Windows in the years leading up to the Crash of 2018. I don't mind telling you that even though it will alter the future and send ripples though the Multiverse; just don't come back to me 20 years from now complaining that it didn't turn out just the way I said!

Hmmm… O.K. According to my computer today is Thursday, November 18, 1999. All right, here goes.

During the next 2 years Microsoft stock will double and redouble, making Bill Gates the planet's first trillionaire. Microsoft only doubles two more times though because in early 2002 the company begins to deconstruct itself. That is all part of a plan Bill came up with back in the 80's, and has nothing to do with the government's antitrust case. The DOJ lawsuit is settled in 2000 with a consent decree, a fine of 1 billion dollars and a slap on the wrist. Bill's plan is to split Microsoft into 16 separate companies that will then subdivide themselves again and again until there are 256 descendant companies. Some of them become dominant in their own right, and some get acquired or merge with other companies. Examples of the most famous companies are NanoMagic, Neuralsoft, Personal Robotics, and of course, Microsoft University.

What happens to Windows?

Well, that does not disappear completely. Even after the Crash a few thousand hobbyists still run Windows 3.1, 95, NT, etc. No one else has much use for it though.

The first decade of the 21st century is considered by many to be The New Renaissance of science and technology. It is hard to decide which invention or development is most important, and I will tell you about some of those so that you can get busy inventing them. During the next 10 years everything comes together really fast, and a computer that is actually smarter than an Irish Setter hits the market. These computers make the idea of a "window" seem kind of ridiculous. By 2010 most upper and middle-class people are wearing commo-computing devices that are programmed verbally and are running 1 meg of adaptive multiprocessors with 1000 terabytes of nanoram. The whole concept of Windows just goes away if you have a computer with more than a teaspoon of intelligence…

Woops! Time for me to catch a bus now. Sorry we can't talk longer. Next time I come back I'll tell you about the inventions.

Microsoft fades into history

The Anti-Trust trial created an opportunity for other technology companies to
make progress toward a more open and less Wintel dominated internet. The
scrutiny that Microsoft was under allowed many companies to survive long enough
to create competing products and advance competing ideas aside from those of
the Wintel Hegemony. The battle for internet supremacy would not be decided
for another decade, but the most critical period where the initial creative
impulse survived can be traced back to the turn of the millennium.

Microsoft weathered Y2K with great ease, thanks mostly to protective
legislation and a well exercised legal staff. Appeals and reorganizations kept
up the appearance of cooperation, but the continued scrutiny allowed emerging
competitors to grow and join one another, several injunctions against similar
Microsoft products were actually applied against Microsoft during this critical
period. These injunctions and the continuing resolution of the Anti-Trust
issue both in the US and Europe allowed several open standards to become
adopted as an alternative to Microsoft's proprietary standard. Microsoft was
unable to win the server-side battle against Unix in its various forms and
eventually this lead to a decline in Microsoft's personal computing dominance.
Governments and The Large Aerospace Companies of the world continued to rely
heavily on Microsoft products despite violations of law or the appearance of
alternatives. Microsoft, having failed to previously embrace the Federal
Government and the political lobbying associated with it, used their old
tactics. They poured millions, some say billions, into the political lobby and
candidate re-election campaigns. Through massive monetary partnerships and
campaign contributions, everything the US Government had soon had to be
Windows-compliant. This eventually resulted in a near total dependency on
Microsoft products. Microsoft was granted a exclusion from any Military
Ordinance laws or even encryption restrictions, by a special vote in Congress.
One of the fastest ever recorded.

Despite Microsoft's previous interest in emerging technologies, several
companies escaped entanglement during the period of the Anti-Trust and appeals.
These and other Wintel opponents went on to create easier to use information
appliances and soon a new truly personal computing appliance arrived on the
scene. By the end of the decade of its introduction, Microsoft's dominance,
what was considered its monopoly had been broken. This wasn't the end of
Microsoft by a long shot, a company with so much money and now considerable
political influence was able to keep the Government tightly bound as a customer
and the majority of defense contractors as well. Contrary to previous law, the
proprietary nature of Windows was embraced after enough lobbying by
Microsoft-backed congressmen removed the law over seeking dual source providers
and avoiding reliance on a single company. This along with the exclusion were
two of Microsoft's big political victories. Proprietary systems were
considered more safe than open standards by Government officials for years.
However with the personal computing monopoly effectively broken, the heights
from which Microsoft previously reached could not be again, thanks to the rise
of competing information appliances and greater ease-of-use interfaces.

Despite a growing percentage of non-Wintel programs and services, Microsoft
remained the largest capitalized company on the Dow Jones while several new
technology stocks from the NASDAQ became capitalized in worth equal to
Microsoft. The day after these competing companies reached parity in net worth
to that of Microsoft, a forecast was made indicating the demise of Microsoft's
Windows operating system. Two months later, the partially intelligent digital
optimizer was patented and released as shareware. After some fighting over the
license most software that wasn't optimized by the PIDO or its competing
optimizer soon ran into disfavor. Microsoft was reticent to run their software
through the optimizer. After some pressure the current version of Windows was
fed into the PIDO. The PIDO crashed, taking down the internet site for over 24
hours. PIDO promptly amended their user agreements and disavowing any
compatibility with Windows software. Upon the widespread use of PIDO among
competing software applications, Windows fell out of favor with most users as
performance lagged for Windows equivalent software and information appliances
gained further acceptance. The improvements that PIDO presented further
allowed these information appliances to grow smaller, more powerful and
cheaper. The Governments of the world were still wedded to Microsoft Windows
and were among the last to change. The time it took for Microsoft to go from
51% to 9% of the world-wide software market was as long as it took to poll new
users and reflect the widespread optimization most programs, other than
Windows, benefited from PIDO. Then the Crash happened. Several weeks after
the PIDO was cracked, someone optimized a Windows eating rat-program. Rats
were rational autonomous tags, which were sub-programs that could be executed
on most systems and often used as security riders, tracking the passage of data
from one site to another. A malicious rat was optimized to infect windows code
and begin a termination countdown. Due to the continuing widespread security
vulnerabilities of Windows, this malicious program went undetected for 24
hours, long enough to get into the core of every Windows connected computer
throughout the US Government and several foreign ones as well. Every Windows
server was infected and after the activation hour, all updates contained
malicious rat-subcode. The code nearly simultaneously crashed every Windows
computer in the world. Unfortunately the US Treasury department relied solely
on Microsoft Windows. The rat-program received special instruction to destroy
online-backups first before terminating the system. All attempts to revive
Windows programs met with failure and the length of the outage was severe
enough to cause confidence in the US dollar to fall and the International Space
Station to fall out of orbit as well. Unfortunately only the United States
government was dramatically crippled financially. The stock markets had
parallel systems and the rat-program briefly halted trading internationally,
but after isolation filters were applied and higher redundancy encryption was
employed, all sign of the malicious rat-program was purged by counter rats
already in the system to prevent widespread damage. The era of Microsoft was
closing, confidence in the company basically fell overnight. Even with trading
halted in Microsoft and all its derivatives, the value of the company fell
incredibly. After 10 days of being unable to restore all the lost code,
Microsoft declared bankruptcy and moved to secure its cash equity on hand to
pay workers wages, unfortunately the banks wouldn't honor uncorroborated
financial data and all of Microsoft's information was ten days out of date.
Recriminations abounded, saying had the company declared bankruptcy immediately
their assets on hand might have been honored, but Higher Management assured all
involved that the problem could be fixed. Despite the catastrophe to the
company the rest of the world didn't care. Information continued to flow and
the implosion of Microsoft only meant that a large number of talented
programmers and coders were suddenly available on the job market. The average
wage for a programmer fell 10% for a week, but soon rebounded as several
government agencies needed replacement software immediately. A couple of
foreign governments also blew their annual budgets replacing lost software and
attempting to recover damaged data. After a month at internet4 time, Microsoft
became a footnote in digital history.

Microsoft's Fate

Quiet children, today in our social studies class we shall discuss the early
period of the information age. As hard as it is to believe today, at this
time personal computers were a dull beige box that sat on your office desk
and
you used a keyboard and mouse to interact with the computer. The connection
to
the Internet was wired, if a connection was available at all, and there was
no
cooperative processing available to be used to solve larger problems. Voice
interfaces were non-existent, and computers were often deemed too complex to
be
used at home, let alone by children. All in all, these computers were as
different from today's palmtops as your great-grandmother's wood stove is
from
your microwave oven.

To put the start of the information age in perspective, one must understand
the
proprietary software development mindset prevalent in that time period best
described by Microsoft's mantra of 'embrace and extend'. This saying
related to
paying lip service to open standards that anyone could use, but extend these
standards with proprietary services that only worked with your own systems.
The
corporate business people would see the open standard listed and not
investigate
further. The technicians who actually had to deal with the system knew the
truth but were usually ignored. Another cynical saying of the time was 'no
one
ever got fired for buying Microsoft', which shows just how firmly Microsoft
was
entrenched.

In the late 1990s Microsoft dominated the personal computer software
industry.
Over 90% of all personal computers in the United States were running one of
Microsoft's operating systems, although the first primitive palmtops were
starting to appear. Microsoft achieved this level of market penetration in
spite of the abysmal quality of their software, with jokes about 'dll hell'
and
'GPFs' being commonplace. Part of this monopoly could possibly be explained
due
to the lock-in effect that arose with the prevalence of local area networks.
Note how even the name seems anachronistic today - these local area networks
were actually constructed of wire connections between computers. These
primitive LANs were proprietary, requiring the associated operating system
for
all computers or a hodge-podge of drivers and utility programs that sort of
worked. Obviously businesses, requiring the LAN to be reliable, found it
simplest to use the associated operating system. Once an operating system
was
established, inertia plus the requirements for retraining staff prevented
the
easy migration to a different operating system. Once Microsoft had a
substantial market share in the operating system segment, it used that
steady
revenue stream, as well as its intimate knowledge of its own operating
system,
to produce software applications that dominated market niches. Examples of
this
include Visual C++ in the C/C++ compiler market segment, Office in the
business
software segment, DriveSpace in the data compression niche, and VideoPlayer
in
the multimedia market. These products were often sold at a loss to build
market
share and destroy the competition. Once the market niche was dominated
prices
rose until a credible competitor appeared, with the cycle repeating. In
some
cases, the product was based on outright stolen code to reduce Microsoft's
development cost. As soon as the Microsoft application was dominant,
everyone
had to use Microsoft application to communicate effectively. Other products
attempted to build translation filters to allow their use with Microsoft
file
formats, but Microsoft changed the formats often enough to ensure a steady
upgrade revenue as well as that these translation filters from the
competition
were always a version behind.

The 1999 antitrust trial about web browsers taught in all the history
courses
was the beginning of Microsoft's end. During the many sets of court actions
in
the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft had attempted to buy its way into the
hearts
and minds of the US politicians, increasing its political donations
many-fold
from 1995 to 2000. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the sudden increase in
campaign
contributions was readily apparent to all observers to be an attempt by
Microsoft to avoid any consequences for its previous actions. This resulted
in
the newspapers (still printed on paper at this time!) closely examining any
politicians who supported Microsoft in an attempt to uncover a scandal and
boost
the newspaper's circulation.

Once the elections of 2000 were over, the politicians had spent the campaign
contributions and were safely elected, Microsoft received very little of the
political assistance it believed it had bought and paid for. This was
partly
due to John McCain's surprising victory, partly to Microsoft's Bill Gates
well-
publicized testimony that revealed him arguing about the definitions of
words
like 'compete'. All the opinion polls showed the people were fed up with
Microsoft's business practices that had been revealed over the half-dozen
well
publicized lawsuits, while computer users were uniformly disdainful of
Microsoft's operating systems compared to the open source linux system that
was
just starting to get all the publicity. This left politicians outside of
Seattle with little reason to assist Microsoft.

Due to this unexpected turn of events, as well as the antitrust trial
determining Microsoft was a monopoly and fast-tracking the appeals process
to
the Supreme Court, Bill Gates, the founder and unquestionably man in control
of
Microsoft, made a bold move. Microsoft was packed up lock, stock, and
barrel,
and moved to Cuba in one hectic move over the Christmas weekend of 2000.
After
the suspicious death of Fidel Castro, shortly after the publication of his
memoirs implicating the US Mafia in John F. Kennedy's assassination, Cuba
was
desperately looking for an influx of capital. Microsoft had the capital,
and
the entire eastern third of the island was deeded to Microsoft to form their
new
campus.

The reverberations of that move were felt in the world's stock exchanges for
months, after the initial announcement when markets were opened on black
Tuesday
Jan 4, 2001 that Microsoft was removing itself from the pre-eminent NASDAQ
stock
exchange and listing itself in the new CORPSE (Cuba Official Republic Pseudo
Stock Exchange) that Cuba was even then creating. Naturally, this new stock
exchange would use all Microsoft technologies and would be in production by
the
end of January.

The US government saw its pension plans for the public, the civil service,
and
the politicians, fall into a technically bankrupt state and become unable to
meet the current obligations, let alone future ones. Needless to say, both
the
politicians and the people were furious with this drastic turn in events and
immediately applied a tariff to Microsoft products sold in the US to make up
the
loss incurred in the stock market crash. Universities and high schools
across
the country formed term projects and contests to reverse engineer the
Microsoft
file formats and programming APIs and add those features to various open
source
projects underway to replace the entire Microsoft product line. This was
the
blossoming of the open source movement. The enforced lull in new versions
from
Microsoft, as well as the sense of public outrage, combined to nullify the
lock-
in effect Microsoft had spent the better part of a decade establishing.

When the CORPSE exchange finally opened for the first time on May 5, it
immediately crashed under the load of people attempting to sell Microsoft
stock.
For the next three weeks, the new stock exchange stumbled along processing
fewer
than one in a thousand of the trades being attempted. At that point,
rumours
were flying fast and furious that the Microsoft programmers had put in back
doors to allow the Microsoft employees priority in trading their stock. The
ensuing panic selling, mostly of Microsoft employee stock options, proved
that
if back doors had been put in place, the majority of Microsoft employees
were
not involved. This also proved that the Windows 2000 Data Center Server
showpiece system, rushed into production only a year past the expected date
to solve all the trading volume problems, was unable to support this new
load
with fewer than one in a hundred trades successfully being completed. The
Microsoft manager responsible for the CORPSE exchange, in a desperate move,
clandestinely setup a cluster of Macintosh OS X G4 servers with the sample
stock trading application provided with the Web Objects framework. Finally,
the new CORPSE stock exchange was working reliably.

The only drawback to a working exchange was that Microsoft stock was losing
a
point or two every day and was now down to $28 per share. On the other
hand,
the Microsoft manager who setup and configured the Macintosh system had
Microsoft stock options that would vest in three years at over $300 per
share.
In a fit of pique after being publicly blamed for the early problems with
the
stock exchange, she went public with the working configuration of the CORPSE
stock exchange turning Microsoft Windows 2000 into a laughing stock. The
rumours of Apple paying the manager the equivalent value of her stock
options
has never been definitively proven.

Cuba, at Microsoft's urging, became a member of the World Trade Organization
and
appealed the punitive US tariff on Microsoft's products. After a quick
deliberation, the WTO agreed with CUBA and ordered the US to drop the
tariff.
The United States complied, and on Jan 4, 2002 - one year to the day after
Microsoft moved out of the US - Microsoft products were back on the store
shelves. The same day, the United States government announced the two nails
in
Microsoft's coffin. The first, and least understood at the time, was that
all
business transacted with the federal and state governments was mandated to
use
XML documents that can be validated by one of ten different document type
definitions with no extensions allowed. This standardization resulted in
the
removal of the lock-in effect that allowed Microsoft's original monopoly as
any
program could use these well-documented and standardized formats.

The second, and at the time believed to be the most significant opposition
to
Microsoft, was the handheld computer development program, with the contract
being awarded to a consortium of the HandSpring corporation (involving the
original developers of the PALM PDA computer), Motorola (wireless
technology.
embedded G4 CPUs), and Apple computers (with their concentration on ease of
use,
reliability, and user interface design). This program, as you all know,
resulted in the ubiquitous palmtop computer that all of you carry
everywhere.
These handheld computers, even in their early versions, were robust
computers
that never crashed and seemed to instinctively know what you were trying to
do
and helped you do it, rather than impeding your actions. This introduced
people
to a simple to use computer that aided them in performing their tasks.

Microsoft, having to compete on its technical merits now and never having
adjusted to the switch from desktop computing to pocket computing, slowly
faded
away and disappeared much as the typewriter had fifteen years earlier. In
much
the same manner, the terms 'blue screen of death' and 'GPF' have faded from
the
English language.

Yes, George - what is your question?

No, George, this series of events had only peripheral involvement with the
Entitlement Crash. The Entitlement Crash will be our next lesson, but in a
nutshell, it was caused by the labour unions of the day not adjusting to the
new
information age economy and believing their workers had an unalienable right
to be
employed in perpetuity. As I said, this will be the next lesson and it will
be
covered in more detail then.

Finally, your assignment for today is to define the terms 'blue screen of
death', 'GPF', and 'dll hell'. Also research the web archives and find at
least
five stories about the trials and tribulations of installing Microsoft
Windows
operating system, with a suggested starting point of Jerry Pournelle's
columns
from the Byte magazine. In essay form, contrast this installation procedure
to
the use of palmtops today. Extra credits will be awarded for each proven
example of an unethical Microsoft business practice, with court records of
the
time being the suggested starting point.