[humorix] Microsoft Plan To Kill Off Linux Fails

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Microsoft Plan To Kill Off Linux Fails
March 29, 2002
Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, bero@redhat.de

Through a Microsoft employee who thought he was still
reporting to vastspy.NET, the real Vast Spy Network(tm)
learned about a new ploy to kill off Linux: Microsoft will
port of all its applications, most notably Office, to
Linux, and make Word install symlinks that invoke it 
whenever someone wants to run vi, emacs, kword, kate,
kwrite, gedit, nedit, lyx, abiword, or thousands of other
half-finished open source text and document editors. The
goal of this, of course, will be to "make Linux easier to
use".

"It is the best way to kill Linux for good", states an
internal Microsoft memo. "By making them use Word, we can
expect the productivity of all Linux developers to go down
by at least 94%. That's even better than the productivity
loss we'd achieve by the other investigated method, hiring 
George Dubya to throw nukes at all Linux companies for
providing terrorists with an operating system for free."

The memo adds, "We will also allow Linux users who left a
credit card number in their Passport account to connect to
windowsupdate.microsoft.com, and offer a 'security update'
to the kernel which actually installs Windows XP without a
description.  That should wipe out any remaining
productivity."

Since nobody in his right mind would install any Microsoft
software (and Linux users are typically in their right
mind), Microsoft had to be creative in getting users to
install Microsoft Office for Linux.  Microsoft developed a
VBScript virus that automatically downloads Office from a
warez server, installs it, and distributes the VBScript
virus to everyone else through an internal spambot.

Initial testing was negative, though. "We received only 12
replies from sending the virus to the Redmond Linux User
Group", the memo goes on to explain, "11 of which
complained about our use of a bad format (whatever that may
mean), and another one threatened to sue us for spamming
unless we pay $2000 for his network traffic. I have ordered
the Outlook development team to remove the 'disable
VBScript in emails' button, but unfortunately this means we
won't have much success with this until Outlook RC is
released."  This memo was written by Claus U. Less, Senior
Executive Manager of the Department of Monopolization and
Establishing Despotism.

Fortunately, through the recent merger of the Anti-Linux,
Anti-Freedom and Monopoly Departments at Microsoft, the
originator failed to notice that many other email clients
besides Outlook exist. Unfortunately, the original memo
can't be presented to the judge presiding over the
antitrust case because the document was lost forever when
Mr. Less opened a spammer's attachment only minutes later.

--
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