Yes, it's a long dream, but it's worth it I hope... It opens with a shot of a Press Release... For Immediate Release... Microsoft Corp. acquire rights to the Weather. ---------------------------------------------- [Redmond. About Now] In a surprise announcement from his self-styled Campus for the Terminally Scary, multi-billionaire and hairstyle guru Mr William Gates announced a new exclusive licensing deal with Nature Corp. (a division of Pagan[1] inc.) for all rights to the new release of 'Weather' (tm) due to be released at the beginning of 1996 (tm). Mr Gates enthused lyrically about his ideas for this major new venture into controlling climactic events. "This will be a real boon for all users of Weather. In the past, I think a lot of people have found the Weather difficult to use and so we intend to bring a whole dimension to using the massively powerful climactic and solar energies that are available in these modern times." "My idea is to integrate all aspects of Weather into one simple Point and Drool (tm) interface, whereby it only takes one click to have a monsoon appear in your back garden and _at the very same time_ be able to have snow in the front garden." "My vision is that everyone, no matter how clueless (yes, even the Mac users) will be able to have Weather with the simplest of operations. We intend to release a special 'Crunchy-Fruit' version which only needs one mouse button and half as many brain-cells to use." Early releases of Weather 96 are currently in beta-testing on other planets in the Solar System, and while early results have proved discouraging, Gates is hopeful to have the problems resolved in time for the scheduled release date of 1st January 1996. "Sure, we've had some problems elsewhere. Admittedly, one of the very early releases did turn Venus from a paradise into a 500C hell-hole with atmospheric pressure 100 times of that on Earth and clouds made of PH 1 Sulphuric Acid which rain constantly, but we believe that problem can be overcome by giving the planet more Oxygen and Carbon-Dioxide eating algorithms." "Mars on the other hand has been turned from a lush paradise into a carbon-dioxide encrusted, meteor-pocked ice-cube. Again, we believe that adding more resources to the planet, by, in this case increasing the Solar Input and Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere element will solve this one." When pressed on the issue of how Jupiter was turned from an Earth-like haven for flora and fauna into a planet 300 times bigger with a highly toxic atmosphere and a core not to dissimilar to diamond, with lightning storms big enough to swallow the Earth, Mr Gates refused to comment. --- End Press Release ---- We now skip forward to the beginning of 1996 - Weather 96 has been released simultaneously in all the countries in the world in a blaze of publicity which cost 3 times more than its development. Currently, every country in the world is hidden under a blanket of bright turquoise clouds with a heavy drizzle coming up from the ground. Some of Weather 96's users are a little disenchanted. We are currently watching one such user trying to contact Microsoft Technical support. This one call will tell a tale. (to skip the 5 minutes of waiting) Tech Support: Hello. Microsoft Weather support line. How may I help you. User: Hi. I'm having a few problems with the Weather. TS: It's your hardware. User: Excuse me? TS: Your hardware. Weather was tested on every available platform. It even runs on a moon. User: but... TS: I assure you it's your hardware. There are no known bugs which are our fault. User: Which platforms? TS: Venus, Mars, Jupiter. User: But not Earth? TS: Umm. Excuse me? User: Earth. I think most users of this product want to use it on Earth. TS: Oh. OK. Umm. Er. I'll pass you to my supervisor. Sv: Hello, how may I help you? User: I'm having a few problems with Weather. Can you help? Sv: Certainly. Tell me the problems and I'll tell you how to fix your hardware. User: Umm. Well. Erm, I'd like to use the Sunshine feature... Sv: Well, you're currently running Winter 96 yes? User: Yes... Sv: Well, I'm sorry, but Sunshine is an undocumented, unsupported feature in that module. User: Oh. Erm. Well. OK. What about some snow? Sv: Snow? I believe you are referring to a rival climactic system invented by some person in Finland. We don't do that, and anyway, you'll find they release a different version of the atmosphere everyday. I'm sure sir doesn't want the hassle of re-installing the atmosphere every 5 days? User: Umm. True. Sv: Any other questions? User: Yeah - can I download dirty pictures from the Weather? Sv: No sir. You cannot. This is a family climate. However, if you perform the Rite of AsheKente backwards and say Our Beloved Leader's name three times, then a list of Weather 96's developers will scroll across the sky in an amusing fashion. User: Wow, that's cool. . {February 96 - Netscape Inc release Weather support for their popular Navigator. They write in fancy things like centred clouds and flashing rain. Bill is pissed because he didn't think of it and cunningly re-writes the RFC for Weather to sneak them in through the roof}. April '96 - Things are starting to settle down now. Some cleverer users have found the way to change the default sky from bright turquoise to some pretty clouds. Copies of Weather 96 start appearing on alt.binaries.warez.earth, causing Usenet to crash horribly and overloading several small African countries who decide to move to Venus as it seems a safer bet. There are still a few glaring problems. Some weather won't run at all. Most notably, Microsoft's Rainbow (tm). In this case, the Rainbows form perfectly, but after a while of use start getting fuzzy and fall apart. All of the bands of colour sort of drop off and try to merge with the rainbows underneath them. Corrupted pieces of the atmosphere are starting to appear and Norton Climo-Doctor has marked them all as unusable. Most noticable of these appears over Antarctica. June - Several places start having problems with the early versions of Summer 96. Suddenly, for no apparent reason a large box appears in the sky with "General Protection Fault in SUMMER.EXE. Rain Dumped". The unlucky users then get half of the Atlantic Ocean dropped on their heads in one lump. Microsoft publicity agents admit on the quiet that there are one or two problems with the Rain386.exe program. Rumours abound that this is because this program is actually optimised for much older planets and was bolted on as a temporary measure for Weather 96 because a newer version was unavailable. People in Bangladesh notice the rain seems to flow very slowly. Microsoft inform the President of Bangladesh to install more mountains. In the same month, it's a quiet day in TCP Towers... Simes: Hello, TCP, how may we help you? - No, I'm sorry John's unavailable at the moment, he's having his body slowly rubbed with Coconut oil by three dusky maidens. Can I help? (It's Microsoft Technical Support) TS: Hi, one of your customers is having problems with Weather 96. The Hail (tm) module isn't working with your system. Si: Ah yes, I remember - the problem is that the Hail module you've used isn't compatible with anything that anyone else uses. TS: Ah - what can we do? Si: Hang on... -... There, I've just hacked up a 700 line awk script which should do the job for all the people who want to use Hail with your Weather. TS: Ah, cool. Now, could you add alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bill-gates to the news-feed please? . September 96 - The Microsoft Propoganda machine is chasing down the last few dissenters. People are now having problems with Autumn 96. The leaves appear to be falling OK, but have problems about 7 feet off the ground. They suddenly turn invisible and attain the density of lead. They then reappear on the ground but aren't real. The polygon graphics that's used to make the illusion of leaves isn't very good either. Some mavericks are running an excellent weather over Australia using an atmosphere from this guy in Finland. Big investors start to sell their Microsoft stock when they realise the wind is blowing backwards (commonly known as sucking). Microsoft release a patch called Weather for Solar Systems. It has a major security bug which means anyone on Earth can access the weather for Jupiter. Some nasty hackers download a thunderstorm the size of Maine into the middle of Nevada. People now talk about Las Vegas in the way they do Atlantis. November 96 - Mother, the CEO and sole owner of Nature Corp. announce the contract for Weather 97 has been sold to IBM. People think this is strange as no-one use volcanoes and dinosaurs anymore. December 96 - More problems still plague the now few users of Weather 96. For one, it won't de-install without entire destruction of the planet. Fortunately, Microsoft were nice enough to put an OK/Cancel dialog box on that option. There were a few close calls with some of those stupid users who click OK to everything no matter what, but the destruction feature didn't work anyway. For some reason it caused a Page Fault in the REALITY.DLL file. Everyone suspects that was ported directly from the original 6502 code anyway. Bill Gates is hiding in a bunker, working on a smaller project - Microsoft Pub (tm). 1st January 1997. A bright new day. A few people are surprised that the entire sky, the clouds, the snow and the sun are all blue. God[2] hopes he doesn't have to reboot the Universe because he will have to enter all sorts of strange parameters to the boot options to get Earth running again. Microsoft Pub is released, and the first few users are surprised to find their drinks floating exactly 97mm above the glass at all times. With the right amount of stirring, the bubbles in a pint of Heineken form the names of the developers... [1] I'm a sort of apathetic atheist - and I'm sure 'God inc.' will offend someone out there... [2] Now, _there_ is a sysadmin who knows how to deal with lusers... {Note, all Trademarks are duly acknowledged, and I deny all responsibility if this document causes the downfall of civilisation as we know it...} {Tell me if you think this is funny, and I may write the story of Microsoft Pub - it's amazing what you think of when waiting for large programs to compile under NetBSD...} -- John Vaughan (john@tcp.co.uk) | http://www.tcp.co.uk/ Technical and Sales Support Executive | Tel: (01703) 393392 Total Connectivity Providers Ltd., PO Box 454, Southampton, SO16 3WR "i still dream of lips i never should have kissed" - NiN