--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Microsoft Pie - Copyright (C) 2000 "Cujo The Wonder Puppy" (http://www.psychokitty.com/~cujo)This parody is free; you may redistribute it and/or modify it as long as this copyright notice remains intact and you agree to abide by the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html); --------------------------------------------------------------------------------(1) Before it was called Windows 2000, the media referred to the next release as Windows NT 5.0 (2) Information Technology(3) Hardware Compatibility List - A list of hardware that doesn't instantly burst into flames when used with Microsoft products. Based on comments and presentation materials from the Windows 2000 launch, this means that if you're lucky, it'll run for a week without hanging up or requiring a reboot under NT 4.0 or 3 months in a "clean room" scenario under Win2K.(4) Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer - A designation that certifies that you either know your way around Microsoft products or that you bought a set of Exam Cram guides and you're good at memory work. Neither of which actually has anything to do with engineering.(5) Operating system - In the "good old days", the core software which provided a set of tools and interfaces to the hardware. The OS would consume a fraction of the system resources and provide the bare necessities required for the applications to have a common interface to the hardware. Now it refers to a huge pile of unrelated applications tied together seemingly at random to consume the greatest possible percentage of memory and CPU while still providing the false hope of usability.(6) Vice President. ie: any senior manager that shouldn't be making technology decisions, but feels empowered to do so.(7) Fault Tolerant (system). A term that no longer has any meaning outside of mainframes and some clustered environments. A system with sufficient redundancy and fail-over capabilities that it can continue running uninterrupted even when a major component fails. There is no such thing as a FT system running Windows. There are "High availability" (HA) Windows configurations, but this just means that if one node dies, you lose your session and pick up again on another node. (ie: Who cares if one of the twins dies? We've got a backup.) In an FT environment, you wouldn't even notice the failure.(8) "PC Week" is meant to encompass the entire gamut of publications that managers somehow get their hands on during long business trips. (search for "Management by In-Flight Magazine") PC Week is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. It's just that these magazines dumb down the technology far enough that managers believe themselves to be computer literate and subsequently start making technology decisions without understanding (or even caring about) the implications. (9) North AmeRican Air Defence. NORAD isn't actually stupid enough to trust Windows with anything beyond a game of Minesweeper or Solitaire. This verse is just poetic license(10) Blue Screen Of Death - The blue screen that indicates that Windows has crashed. I've actually seen monitors on servers with the page fault message burned into them (since the screen saver cuts in during normal operations, but a Page Fault stays on-screen until reboot.)(11) The US Department Of Justice declared Microsoft a Monopoly (no kidding, Sherlock....you could have asked anyone in IT and you would have found that out in a matter of minutes)(12) This is not an exaggeration. At the Windows 2000 launch in Feb 2000, the audience actually applauded when Gates indicated the Windows NT 4.0 ran (on average) for a week without a reboot. If IBM told companies that they'd have to reboot their 370's every week, there'd be hell to pay.(13) It was actually a Pyramid, but Sun fit the cadence better. I've had NCRs SUNs and AT&T 3B2 systems that have run literally for years without ever *requiring* a reboot (excluding administrative reboots for kernel tuning or to install new hardware)(14) Yeah...I know it doesn't jive with the original song, but I wrote it, liked it and then realized that it was the wrong verse. Tough. If you don't like it, you're entitled to double your money back.(15) See #12. (16) I originally had Kernigan, Ritchie and Torvalds. But since the Open Source movement and not Unix per se, is really the nail in Microsoft's casket, I thought that I'd update it.