Hey, yet another quick post. Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, has an amazing way with words. He was earlier noted for his Developers Developers Developers speech where he ran around stage sweating and shouting “Developers” over and over again. It’s sometimes worthwhile to read his press communications for similar reasons:
We didn’t say absolutely we don’t do innovation. We didn’t do that. We say when we embrace standards, we’ll be transparent about how we’re embracing standards. We’re going to embrace a lot of standards, we’re going to be transparent about how we embrace those standards. If we have deviations, we’ll be transparent about the deviations.
Ignoring the fact that, “We didn’t do that” actually kind of says that they didn’t not say that they don’t absolutely do innovation… He said “embrace” 4 times, “transparent” 3 times, and “standards” 4 times also — all in the span of half a paragraph. I suppose he is a man of few words 
Ok, this is seriously funny. Its no funny, in fact, that I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose it. I would just link to it, but the Ubuntu Forums tend to archive stuff and I’m not sure if the link would be preserved. Anyway, here is the link currently:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4411307
And the contents:
“liquidjellos” says in his topic entitled, Dear Windows, It’s over :
Dear Windows Professional Service Pack 2:
I didn’t want to tell you this in person, because I thought it might be too complicated, and might take too long. After all, we’ve been together for a long time, almost five years and running now. I know, i know. I know you so well; your control panel, your installation procedures, even when you get mad and go all blue screen on me; what can I say, you kinda grew on me.
But to be honest, things have been going downhill for a long time now. What happened to that lean, fast OS that i first installed? You know, the one that ran Civ 4, Vice City, and even True Crimes without a problem? The one that burned DVD’s, CD’s, the one that shared music with my xbox without a problem? I don’t know. It seems like you’ve let go of yourself, to be honest. You take over 20 minutes to boot up, you run Civ4 slowly, heck, you even freeze up on me now when i try to watch video. What happened windows? Did you get so confortable that you thought I’d just deal with it?
Well, i’ve been cheating. See, back in tenth grade, i messed around a bit with this chick, her name was Red Hat Linux. We met in school in my networking 5 class, and i got to know her pretty well. I was all up in her terminal, if you know what i mean
. Well, I took her home, and we had a really rough one night stand. I decided she wsn’t for me, and i went back to you, because i knew what i was missing. Well, Red Hat has a south african cousin, and her name’s Ubuntu…she’s kinda hot, too. SHe’s got three cousins, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, and Kubuntu, too, and their all sexy.
Well, I guess this letter is to let you know that it’s over. I’m not going back, either. You can tempt me with your games, and all the software, but it’s alright. I can get to know ubuntu, i can learn to work her terminals. Her freeware. Her internet support. After all, what can i say…she’s sexy, fast, and free. ANd you’re expensive, bloated, and well, always sick with viruses. I’m done.
I know, i know. I freaked out and formatted you off my hard drive, and then i called you begging and pleading to take me back, and we had angry make up sex. But what was i thinking? I remembered all the bad times we had, and i called Ubuntu up and she understood me just fine. Before I knew it, we were hitting it off again. She installed really quickly, and didn’t even need any drivers or anything. Worked beautifully. And did i remind you she’s free?
So Windows Professional Service Pack 2, i’m leaving you for Ubuntu know. It’s over, we had a good run, but all expensive, virus laden, bloated software relationships must come to an end, right? I guess that’s just how it has to be.
Thanks for all the good times though! NOthing like a BSOD when i’m trying to watch a live debate on MSN or CNN, or crashign on me int he middle of civ4.
But i have to go now. It’s time to get down and dirty with ubuntu, and if i ever really miss you again, i’ll just drink it away with some WINE.
Sincerely,
Bruno
Makes my breakup look like a cup of jello, eh? AS per the hacker’s dictionary, we all know that “SEx” stands for Software Exchange.
Apparently, a new comic is starting up which has a distinctly XKCD-ish flavour, although with a mostly different art style. I think it’s bound to turn out rather well and I recommend it to fans of XKCD. www.SphericalCow.org.
Preview:
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