[humorix] Suspicious Fire Destroys Microsoft Building

[James Baughn <jbaughn@xxxxxxx>]

Suspicious Fire Destroys Microsoft Building
February 13, 2005
Justin Morgan, justin [at] corfizz [dot] com

REDMOND, WA -- Earlier today, a building located deep within
the bowels of the Microsoft Campus was destroyed by a  fire of
unknown origin.  The blaze reportedly started at 2 AM, when
the building was thankfully devoid of all human life (and
Microsoft lawyers).  Bureaucracy Wing #23, Lawsuit Documents
Backup Storeroom #63, and Dancing Office Assistants Training
Center #3 were all totally destroyed.

The fire alarm was set off immediately -- not by the fire, but
by a bug in Microsoft's own Audible Basic .NET alarm system.
It took just two and a half hours for the  Microsoft General
Protection Fault Investigator to respond by signing the
numerous administrative authorization documents, 78 of which
were short-term patent license agreements for the firefighting
technology.

Conspiracy theorists have already speculated that the monopoly
wanted to let their HQ burn so that they could build a new one
with all the extra cash they just received from the MPAA and
RIAA to put subliminal anti-piracy messages in one of their
recently acquired video games.

The Microsoft Emergency Action Committee took a record time of
three hours to decide on the right course of action. It was
then just five hours before firefighters arrived at the scene,
who promptly went off and had a picnic on the shores of Lake
Washington. The fire was actually extinguished by
specially-commissioned helicopters about an hour later, who
were supposedly seen to be throwing out assorted CD media,
aerosols, posters of penguins, gas cans, and Palm PDAs into
the fire long before releasing any water.

Bill Gates, just arriving from a European meeting of the
International Cartel For Promoting Software Patents, strode
down one of his favorite entrance paths (his Microsoft Way),
staring at the burning building in the distance.

"I used to like Bureaucracy Wing #23," he mumbled to himself,
"It had a novel ventilation system," he explained when he
noticed that one of our reporters had overheard him. "I'll
miss it."

Mr. Gates was informed of the odd practices of the fire
service: sending a brigade of firefighters who didn't do
anything, then reportedly throwing on inflammable materials,
and only then putting the fire out.

"It's our policy," he replied, "Embrace. Extend. Then
Extinguish."

Those that got their head round the whole brouhaha started
looking into the causes of the fire.

"It is quite clear to us," said a spokesmanoid who had got his
head round the whole brouhaha, "that the cause of the Redmond
blaze was paperwork. An independent Apple-sponsored study has
shown that if the administrative paperwork from Microsoft was
put into one stack, it would reach half as far as the moon --
that's nearly a quarter of the way around Bill Gates' bank
account. It would take only a small electrostatic spark or a
brief vi versus emacs debate and the whole lot would go..." He
gestured vaguely with his hands to indicate how exactly the
whole lot would 'go'.

Sun Microsystems was quick to make a statement: "There's no
doubt that the bureaucracy of all large corporations nowadays
is spiraling out of control. Our studies show that Microsoft
alone has contributed to at least 15% of the destruction of
the natural environment through unnecessary paperwork. The
text of all their patents combined is nearly 50 million words
long. That's equivalent to over 12 Libraries of Congress."

"Or 17 internal revenue codes," someone else added to put
things into perspective.

"Sun, on the other hand, has invested millions into cutting
out the red tape. We estimate that we saved 20 million trees
by removing the phrase 'network infrastructure' from our
departmental reports and key note speeches, and forty thousand
by deleting every twenty-fifth word on each of our web pages.
And you can't even tell the difference!"

"Microsoft expects people to read over three thousand words
for the terms and conditions of their website alone," a Novell
employee told us, "Over two thousand for the privacy
statement. And the EULA for XP Home is nearly a thousand words
longer than the US Constitution. Combined, that's as many
lengths of the Lord's Prayer as there are vulnerabilities in
MS Solitaire."

Later, Steve Ballmer, CEO of the company, arrived on site,
passing the firefighters' picnic briefly to confiscate a
basket of fruit while muttering "Apples? At a time like
this?"  He made his way to HQ and one of our reporters waited
just inside the door of Bloat Think-Tank Room #79 to accost
him by surprise.

"Argh!" he screamed, "What was that? Quick! Patent it!" After
seeing that it was just a paparazzi, he calmed down and
composed himself. When asked for his feelings on the matter of
the fire, he replied: "I'm not concerned. A burning building
isn't half as serious as a patent violation, after all."

After the fire was finally extinguished, firefighters soon
discovered the first non-human victim: the Microsoft Office
Assistant.

It is a little known fact that the Office Assistant is -- or
was -- a real entity. Of course, like all of Microsoft's
products, it wasn't created by Microsoft, but rather started
its life as a failed experiment at the California Institute of
Technology, who were researching dancing polymorphic
helper-robots in the early 1990s. All of the experiments went
horribly wrong, however, as the robots became too frustrating
and unhelpful, and so it was that Caltech prepared to put the
project on the scrapheap.

However, Bill Gates himself, who was visiting with his wife
and children at the time, happened by chance to catch one of
the lead engineers kicking and hurling abuse at a
gorilla-sized paper-clip with football-sized eyes. He
immediately realized the potential of the invention for a
Microsoft product. Although the Caltech engineer insisted that
he could take the damned things without charge, Gates insisted
that he pay twelve million dollars in case of intellectual
property disputes.

"He said it would encourage innovation," said Melinda Gates in
passing.

The Caltech robot  had escaped from the Dancing Office
Assistants Training Center #3 and was roaming the Bureaucracy
Wings before the fire started. It was found in its paper-clip
form, squashed beneath a copy of the Windows End-User License
Agreement. It is thought that there may have been an initial
explosion that triggered a shock wave -- although an early
seismologist's report showed there could never be a shock wave
quite explosive enough to topple a Windows EULA.

"It's a sad loss," said Gates, "It's a very sad loss.
Especially Merlin."

"Yeah," Ballmer agreed, "But at least our paperwork is easily
replaced. We have 250 backups in every state of the US, and
everybody has a copy of the Windows EULA on their computer, of
course.  However, I suspect this disaster will provide another
excuse to delay Longhorn again."

In a meeting in Board Room #420 it was decided that a monument
to the Office Assistant would be constructed in the area after
the clearing of the wreckage.

We tried to get a comment from Apple, but the party was going
too strong and they didn't notice us.


--
Humorix:      Linux and Open Source(nontm) on a lighter note
Archive:      http://mail.nl.linux.org/humorix/
Web site:     http://www.i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/