[humorix] The Geek Independence War (Part 1)

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

The Geek Independence War (Part 1)
Jon Splatz, jonsplatz@i-want-a-website.com
July 10, 2000

Americans celebrate their independence day on July 4th, but
this is not correct. The Declaration of Independence wasn't
actually signed and shipped off to England until July 10th.
Why? Take a guess.  Lawyers were to blame, as always.

The same is true of Humorixia, that independent geek
paradise in the Pacific. The lawyers, politicos, and
marketers acted fast to thwart Geek Independence. They
almost succeeded.


   "We the Geeks of Humorixia, in Order to form a more
   perfect, bullshit-free Society, establish real Justice,
   insure domestic Freedom, provide for the common defense
   of Geeks, promote the general Quality of Software, and
   secure the Blessings of Free Software to ourselves and
   our Posterity, do ordain and establish this... Nation of
   Humorixia..."

       -- Preamble to the General Social License of
          Humorixia


Ever since the founding of the first law college in the
1500s, the legal "profession" has been steadily increasing
in power. In 1776, several attorneys held up American
Independence by bickering over the exact wording of the
Declaration.  Lawyers were overheard saying,
"'Inalienable'? Is that even a word?", "This sentence in
paragraph 3 isn't gramatically correct!" and "How much of a
contingent legal fee will I receive if this Revolution is
successful?"

It wasn't until Thomas Jefferson threatened to throw the
lawyers into the Hudson River that they finally capitulated
and allowed the Declaration to be signed on July 10th. 

History has a tendency to repeat itself. Humorixia declared
its independence on December 17, 1999, only to be dealt
setback after setback by hordes of lawyercrats. Naturally,
the idea that geeks could form their own nation without a
lawsuit-happy court system scared them to death.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to go back to
October of 1999, when the island of Humorix didn't exist
yet and I was an unpaid pundit for a lame humor site
instead of the esteemed Benevolent Dictator of the world's
first meritocracy.  

I was sitting in my rat-infested apartment one day,
dreaming of forming my own independent nation (little did I
know that the "Royal Family" of Sealand had already
achieved this), when word came via my Neural Implant From
the Future(tm) of an astounding discovery made by the
Humorix Vasy Spy Network(tm).

Microsoft was planning to form their own island nation to
escape from US anti-trust laws.  Forget Canada, Bill Gates
wanted to live on "Innovationia", a Pacific enclave for
Microserfs.  But all the good islands were already taken by
American billionaires and multinational corporations.  

It was Humorix Operative Double-Oh-Zero who uncovered their
plan when he intercepted yet another internal Microsoft
memo (Why do they even bother with security?). According to
this document, Microsoft had captured the Anomolous Sewage
Lagoon #5 in Roswell, Georgia. This lagoon contains a
temporal singularity that periodically spits out items from
the 24th Century.  Apparently one of those items was a
terraforming machine.

Their objective was to use this ActiveTerraforming(tm)
device to create a new island in the international waters
of the Pacific.  It should come as no surprise that this
new island would be in the shape of the Windows logo.
Bill's new mansion would sit at the southwest corner, while
the thirty square mile Microsoft Campus/Sweatshop would
occupy the northeast part.

Once built, Innovationia Island would become a bastion for
corporate greed like the world has never seen before.
Microsoft would issue a press release stating, "The sudden
appearance of this island out of the blue is a clear sign
that God Himself approves of Microsoft's Freedom To
Innovate. Take that, Judge Jackson!"

Foreign policy for this new nation would be simple: If a
country ticked off Bill Gates, he'd just punch a red button
near his desk, and every Windows machine in that country
would instantly crash and burn without any hope for repair.
That's the beauty of proprietary, closed-source software.

An End-User License Agreement would form the constitution
by which the DirectGovernment(tm) of Innovationia would
operate. Citizenship would be automatically granted to all
Microsoft employees at no charge, and to everybody else for
only a nominal fee of US$10,000 to cover the required
"re-education" treatment.

The License Agreement would guarantee certain rights, such
as free speech -- well, sort of.  Here "free" refers to
free beer, not... um, free speech.  You would never have to
pay any money to speak, but if you said something bad about
Microsoft, you might wind up receiving "Re-Education 2.0".

In addition, the EULA would prohibit certain acts that
might threaten national security, such as running a
non-Microsoft operating system, or deliberately crashing
Windows machines by typing in "C:\CON\CON".  Meanwhile, all
Internet (er, Microsoft Network) traffic would be funneled
through a single 386 DOS-based firewall that would filter
out subversive material (i.e. Humorix).

But let me get back to the story.  It was agreed during an
emergency meeting at Humorix World Headquarters that we
needed to do something about this hideous James Bond-ish
plot.  Going public wasn't an option, we thought, since
nobody would believe stories told by an organization whose
name contains the word "humor".  

We finally sent our crack investigative reporter, Dances
With Herring,  to complete this mission. I'll leave out the
details, since you probably don't care. Besides, I don't
want the networks to use this story to produce any lame
made-for-TV movies.

The upshot is that Dances was able to easily crack into
Microsoft's computer network and make a few "innovative"
changes to the blueprints for the new island. The
Microserfs didn't realize their plan had been
booby-trapped. When they started their
ActiveTerraforming(tm) machine, they stood in horror as the
new island took the shape of... Tux Penguin!

The Microsoft employees all fled in horror back to Redmond,
not wanting to be near such obviously unholy and sinister
ground.  They also happened to leave their terraforming
machine behind.

Humorixia was ours.  

But the battle wasn't over.  Microsoft would come back
fighting. Then Raymond S. Eric would spread rumors that
Humorixia was committing "atrocities against lawyers",
which would provide an excuse for the American Attorneys
Association to attack us.  After all, they weren't about to
let us get away with our crusade to prevent the
Lawyerclysm.

I was trapped on Humorixia for six months while the island
was under siege by lawyers.  But this was a small price to
pay to advance the cause of Geek Independence.  In Part 2
of this series, I'll chronicle the epic struggle of Geeks
vs. Lawyers, a conflict that will affect geeks everywhere
for decades to come.

Write me at jonsplatz@i-want-a-website.com

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