Brief History Of Linux (Part 4)

Feature written by James Baughn on May 27, 2000

We're back with the next "brief" installment in our series on the history of Linux. We apologize for the delay in publishing this fourth installment, but it takes time to make this stuff up. Sit back, grab a caffeine-laced beverage, and follow along as we trace the development of the Linux Cathedral.

The GNU Project

Meet Richard M. Stallman, an MIT hacker who would found the GNU Project and create Emacs, the operating-system-disguised-as -a-text-editor that everyone loves to hate. RMS, the first member of the Three Initials Club (later joined by ESR and JWZ), experienced such frustration with software wrapped in arcane, forbidding license agreements that he embarked on the GNU Project to produce and share free software.

His journey began when trying to get a printer to work with his system. The printer's proprietary drivers simply would not function properly and RMS was unable to fix the problem without the source code. RMS discovered the fine print for the printer's driver software, written in Flyspeck-3, that no other end-user had ever to read, or even noticed. This license stated:

You do not own this software. You own a license to use one copy of this software, a license that we can revoke at any time for any reason whatsoever without a refund. Since we did not sell you this software, we are not responsible in any way if it contains bugs or doesn't work, or if it causes millions of dollars of damage. You may not copy, distribute, alter, disassemble, or hack the software. The source code is locked away in a vault in Cleveland. If you say anything negative about this software you will be in violation of this license and required to forfeit your soul and/or first born child to us.

The harsh wording of this license shocked RMS. He would be unable to use the printer because the drivers were locked behind a reinforced wall of legalese. The computer industry, RMS reasoned, was in it's infancy, which could only mean one thing: it was going to get much, much worse.

He had a dream that night... a horrible, terrible nightmare set in 2020 in which all of society was held captive by copyright law. In particular, everyone's brain waves were monitored by the US Department of Copyrights. If your thoughts referenced a copyrighted idea in any fashion, you had to pay a royalty. To make it worse, a handful of corporations held fully 99.9% of all intellectual property rights.

Coincidentally, Bill Gates experienced a similar dream that same night. To him, however, it was not a horrible, terrible nightmare, but a wonderful utopian vision. The thought of lemmings... er, customers paying a royalty everytime they hummed a copyrighted song in their head or remembered a passage in a book was simply too marvelous for the budding monopolist.

RMS, waking up from his nightmare, vowed to fight the oncoming Copyright Nightmare. The GNU Project was born. The idea was simple: develop a system with built-from-scratch free software covered by a viral copyleft license. Such a system would slowly infiltrate the computer industry and put a stop to marketers and lawyers.

The plan called for a kernel, compiler, editor, and other tools. Unfortunately, RMS and his fledgling GNU Project became bogged down with Emacs, the editor, that the operating system kernel, HURD, was shoved on the back burner. Built with LISP (Lots of Incomprehensible Statements with Parentheses), Emacs became bloated in a way no non-Microsoft program ever has. Indeed, for a short while RMS pretended that Emacs really was the GNU operating system kernel.

Over the years RMS and his crew continued to hack on Emacs and waste time in doctor mode, but HURD remained in vaporous pre-alpha development for years.

Of course we all know what happened next. Linus Torvalds, thanks to alien intervention as documented in the previous installment, throws together a Unix clone from scratch and places it under the GNU viral license. The Revolution begins.

Right place, right time

Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create their own operating system from scratch. No, we're not talking about Tim Peterson, the person behind MS-DOS, since DOS isn't an operating system. Other people working from their leaky basements did create their own operating systems, however, and now they are sick that they didn't become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds (or at least a Beta Geek like Alan Cox).

Unlike these other failed projects, Linus had one advantage not many else did: Internet access. The world was full of half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were sitting isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to be destroyed by a hard drive crash or thrown out into the trash can. Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly because everyone with Net access could download a copy instead of paying the $50 shipping charge to receive the code on a three-foot stack of unreliable floppy disks.

Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan sits a stack of still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing the only known copy of "Windows Killer", a fully functional Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so easy-to-use that Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design. Unfortunately, before the system could be distributed, the author's mother threw out the stack of floppies (along with a Babe Ruth rookie card) in a bout of spring cleaning. The 14 year old author's talents were lost forever as his parents coerced him into attending Law School.

He should've patented the idea

While 1999 was the year of the Linux Portal Gold Rush, the first ever Linux portal was actually founded in 1992. A small newsletter published by Lars Wirzenius, titled "Linux News", was distributed via FTP, Usenet, and e-mail. With the exception of flame wars and gratuitious spelling errors, this ancient (pre-Web) newsletter featured the same type of content as today's Slashdot, Linux Today, and Freshmeat.

Issue 3 (October 1992) contains what may very well be the first published Linus interview. Some quotes from this issue:

"I doubt Linux will be here to stay, and maybe Hurd is the wave of the future (and maybe not)..."

"I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed as much when things stabilize." [If only he knew what he was getting into.]

"I've planned the 1.0 release for a long time, and I've always waited just a bit longer. Right now my final deadline is "before X-mas" [Apparently Linus was unintentionally using the Microsoft vaporware tactic of giving a release date without actually giving a release date. Is that Christmas '92 -- or '94, the year when 1.0 was actually released? What works for Microsoft sometimes works for Linux, too.]

"World domination? No, I'm not interested in that. Galactic domination, on the other hand..."

"Several people have already wondered if Linux should adopt a logo or mascot. Somebody even suggested a penguin for some strange reason, which I don't particularly like: how is a flightless bird supposed to represent an operating system? Well, it might work okay for a Microsoft product or even Minix..."

"I would give Andy Tanenbaum a big fat 'F'."

The Snowball Effect

Back in early 1991 Linux was just some magnetic fields sitting on some Finnish student's hard drive. By the mid-1990's the Linux community was burgeoning as countless geeks fled Redmond monopolistic oppression, Armonk cluelessness, and Cupertino click-and-drool reality distortion fields. Even as early as 1991 there was an informal Linux User Group in Finland, although its primary focus was Linux advocacy and help, not drinking beer and telling Microsoft jokes as most LUGs do today.

Kernel development continued at a steady clip, with more and more people joining in and hoping that their patches would be accepted by the Benevolent Dictator himself. To have a patch accepted by Linus was like winning the Nobel Prize (without the prize money, at least), but to face rejection was like being rejected from Clown College. The reputation game certainly sparked some arguments and good old-fashioned flame wars.

One of the most memorable crisis was over the behavior of the delete and backspace keys -- a legacy problem that persists to this day just like MS-DOS' 640KB nobody-will-ever-need-more limit. A certain faction of hackers wanted the Backspace key to actually backspace and the Delete key to actually delete. Linus wasn't too keen on the proposed changes; "It Works For Me(tm)" is all he said. Some observers now think Linus was pulling rank to get back at the unknown hacker who managed to slip a patch by him that replaced the "Kernel panic" error with "Kernel panic: Linus probably fscked it all up again".

Transmeta

That secretive Silicon Valley startup known as Transmeta is, according to our Vast Spy Network(tm), really a conspiracy within a conspiracy. "Trans" is a seldom used slang word in Finnish that means "cover-up", so the name Transmeta is literally "meta-cover-up". Or at least that's what our Chief Linguist tells us, although he's been wrong about such things before ("Windows" is not really an old Native American word for "gullible white man staring on to hourglass" as he previously claimed).

On the surface, Transmeta was a startup that hired Linus Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet) which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more visitors than the typical dotcom portal.

Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta is actually supposed to start selling something.

But does Transmeta intend to sell anything? Long-time Humorix readers know the answer: Transmeta is really a front for an illegal Finnback smuggling operation, while also acting as the US branch of the sinister Helsinkian Underground. It's all a meta-conspiracy. We here at Humorix have found that our readers are getting a little sick of far-fetched conspiracy theories, so we'll move on now.

Meanwhile, back in Redmond

Microsoft's position as the 5,000 pound gorilla of the computer industry didn't change during the 1990's. Indeed, this gorilla got even more bloated with every passing Windows release. Microsoft's continued success prompted countless MBAs and PHBs to shell out megabucks for content-free books hoping to learn Bill Gates' secrets. As the Alpha Marketer, Bill Gates could spin flaws into gold, but he really had no secret. His business strategy was simplicity itself:

1. Pre-announce vaporous product.
2. Hire monkeys (low-paid temps) to cruft something together in Visual Basic.
3. It it compiles, ship it.
4. Launch marketing campaign for new product and remind peons just how innovative Microsoft is.
5. Repeat (GOTO 1).

With such a plan Microsoft couldn't fail. That is, unless some external force popped up and ruined everything. Such as Linux and the Internet perhaps. Both of these developments were well-known to Bill Gates in the early and mid 1990's (a company as large as Microsoft can afford a decent spy network, after all). He just considered both to be mere fads that would go away when Microsoft announced some new innovation, like PDAs -- Personal Desktop Agents (i.e. Bob and Clippit).

Chairman Bill explained in an internal memo (don't ask how we obtained this document), "Linux and the Internet are both non-profit anarchies dominated by kids. Real people -- in other words, people with money -- aren't going to mess with these things. Users don't want anarchies, they want pre-digested content and controlled environments. They want Windows and the Microsoft Network experience."

Free, Open, Libre, Whatever Software

Eric S. Raymond's now famous paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", set the stage for the lucrative business of giving software away. In CatB, ESR likened the software industry to an anarchistic bazaar, with each vendor looking out for himself, trying to hoodwink customers and fellow vendors. The produce vendor (i.e. Apple), for instance, felt no need to cooperate with the crystal-ball seller (Oracle) or the con artist hocking miracle drugs (Microsoft). Each kept their property and trade secrets to themselves, hoping to gain an edge and make money fast. "With enough eyeballs, all bug-ridden software programs are marketable," ESR observed.

ESR contrasted the "caveat emptor" Bazaar to an idealistic Cathedral model used by free software developers. European cathedrals of medieval days were built block-by-block with extensive volunteer manpower from the surrounding community. Such projects were "open" in the sense that everybody could see their progress, and interested people could wander inside and offer comments or praise about construction methods. "Those medieval cathedrals are still standing," ESR mused. "But bazaars built in the 14th Century are long gone, a victim of their inferior nature. Of course, the same fate will hold true for proprietary software."

CatB is credited by many (especially ESR himself) as the primary reason Netscape announced January 22, 1998 the release of the Mozilla source code. In addition, Rob Malda of Slashdot has also received praise for the decision because he published an editorial ("Give us the damn source code so we can fix all of Netscape's annoying problems ourselves!") about the subject a few weeks earlier.

Of course, historians now know the true reason behind the landmark decision: Netscape engineers were scared to death that a large multi-national corporation would acquire them and crush Mozilla. Which indeed did happen much later, although everybody thought the conqueror would be Microsoft, not AOL (America's Online Lusers).

The Netscape announcement prompted a strategy session among Linux bigwigs on February 3rd to find ways to sell the concept of Cathedral-style development to businesses and venture capitalists. They decided a new term to replace the confusing 'free software' was needed; some rejected suggestions included "Free Source", "Ajar Source", "World Domination Source", "bong-ware" (Bong's Obviously Not GNU), and "Nude Source". We can thank Chris Peterson for coining "Open Source", which became the adopted term and later sparked the ugly "Free Software vs. Open Source", "Raymond vs. Stallman" flame-a-thons that persist to this day.

Not the end

We're not finished with this Brief History of Linux quite yet. Check back eventually for the next installment, in which we make up some more stuff about the founding of Slashdot, the Linux Gold Rush, and the continued journey towards that state-of-mind known as World Domination.

To be continued...

Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell

Fake News written by James Baughn on May 24, 2000

HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we want to make sure it stays that way!"

One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what? We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our exclusive operating system."

And what a stand it is. Even the most ardent Linux hacker will find Hellix to be a pain to use. Everything is configured via cryptic, inconsistent text files with spotty documentation. The system only contains one text editor: evil, a clone of vi that's even more user-hostile and, well, just plain evil. Most of the man pages and FAQs have been either omitted or condensed "in order to save space for more important things like Quake".

The modified X Window System is particularly nasty. You won't find GNOME or KDE on this beast; you've got Xhellwm. This window manager (if you can call it that) doesn't take advantage of the mouse much; most operations are done via keyboard. If you want to move a window, for instance, you have to hit META-F2-M, and then enter the new X, Y coordinates (in hexadecimal). And that only works if you've properly configured ten different text files hidden throughout your hard drive like easter eggs.

Installation of Hellix is -- as you would expect -- a complete and utter nightmare. Everything is done via command line, with no help and only limited prompts provided. Then, assuming you are able to finish that, you must manually enter the FCC identification numbers for each and every piece of hardware in your box. Finally, before anything will run properly, you must create your initialization scripts, the XF86Config file, the multiple Xhellwm dotfiles, the terminfo database, and several dozen other files that you will spend six hours trying to find buried within the /etc and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/etc/share/lib/etc hierarchies. If you make a typo in entering the display parameters in XF86Config, then your monitor is liable to explode.

The amount of bundled software in this distribution is limited. For web browsers, you can choose between Netscape 1.1 or MissingLynx 1.0 (a modified version of Lynx that is, well, harder to use). For graphics, all you get is a stripped down version of The GIMP operated via character-cell command line.

Reaction to the new distribution has been mixed. One Anonymous Coward was overheard (overwatched?) saying on IRC, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive interface around was still the nipple. I'm going start hacking on this system... I'm so elite."

Jesse Berst said in a recent column, "I can't tell the difference between this and any other Linux distro. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Linux sucks." John Taschek has been so busy engaging in flame wars with his readers that he hasn't been able to review the new Distro From Hell.

Hellix is now available for download buried deep within the bowels of your favorite sluggish overseas FTP archive.

Security Holes Found In Microsoft Easter Eggs

Fake News written by James Baughn on May 19, 2000

REDMOND, WA -- It's damage control time for the Microsoft Marketing Machine. Not only have exploits been found in IE, Outlook, and even the Dancing Paper Clip, but now holes have been uncovered in Excel's Flight Simulator and Word's pinball game. Even Minesweeper's undocumented cheat mode is vulnerable to script kiddie attacks.

"If you enter Excel 97's flight simulator and then hit the F1, X, and SysRq keys while reading a file from Drive A:, you automatically gain Administrator rights on Windows NT," explained the security expert who first discovered the problem. "And that's just the tip of the iceberg."

Office 97 and 2000 both contain two hidden DLLs, billrulez.dll and eastereggs.dll (actually billru~1.dll and easter~1.dll), that are marked as "Safe for scripting" -- but, like everything else made by Microsoft, are not. Arbitrary Visual BASIC (Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control) code can be executed using these files. More disturbing, however, are the undocumented API calls "ChangeAllPasswordsToDefault", "OpenBackDoor", "InitiateBlueScreenNow", and "UploadRegistryToMicrosoft" within easter~1.dll.

Microsoft spokesdroids have already hailed the problem as "an insignificant byproduct of Microsoft innovation." Said one, "There's no need to worry. Trust us... this is not a big deal. For those really paranoid security freaks out there, we're preparing an Innovation Pack that fixes these known issues and adds several new innovative features."

Just as this story went to press, Bill Gates announced, "This is exactly why the DOJ needs to go back to Washington D.C. and leave us innovative software architects alone. If we didn't have to worry about Janet Reno and her vigilantes, we could spend more time testing and improving our software. The entire US economy will crash if Microsoft is ever broken up!"

The Mother Of All Lawsuits Filed Against Network Solutions

Fake News written by Noah Morals on May 17, 2000

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's a wonderful time to be a lawyer. The epic struggle between hackerdom and corporatedom is a win-win situation for us litigators. If the wind is blowing one way, we can make money filing lawsuits on behalf of Big Evil Yet Deep Pocketed Corporations. If the wind shifts, we can still make money defending the little guy against the corporate tyrants. As I'm writing this, the wind is blowing towards Virginia -- Network Solution's home state -- as the mother of all trademark infringement lawsuits offers to make me and my cohorts a whole lotta money. We're talking Bill Gates money here, folks, and I'm celebrating.

In a recent court case, the judge upheld NetSol's claim that they own their customer's domain names. It doesn't take a Harvard Law School graduate (which I'm not) to foresee the consequences: NetSol is the owner of every single trademark-infringing domain in existence -- registered or unregistered!

My law firm, Rilley, Lowe & Morals, is on the case. We're filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of every single trademark holder in the US (and possibly the world) alleging that, for every registered trademark, NetSol must own some domain (registered or unregistered) that violates it. Take RilleyLoweMorals.com, for example. We just registered it with NetSol, but of course they claim ownership of the domain according to a clause in their license agreement printed in Flyspeck-3 font (my personal favorite). That's a trademark infringement (or will be as soon as we fill out the mountain of paperwork with the USPTO), plain and simple. And that's just one domain out of billions of possibilities.

We're licking our chops. This could be the biggest piece of litigation in the history of the Universe. Those poor schmucks in 1849 all thought they could get rich panning for gold... but the real money is found in America's courtrooms. We've just struck the NetSol Lode. As Metallica's head lawyer recently said, "Cha-ching!" (By the way, he was my roommate at the Chattafoocheeble Downstairs Discount Law School. For those of you wondering about my stance on the Napster case: Whatever brings the greatest gold to the greatest numbers of lawyers is a Good Thing(tm) in my book.)

Now, some of you might be wondering about the strength of our case. It's rock solid. I can just hear the NetSol weenie lawyers trying to argue in court, "But we can't possibly own all unregistered domains!" To which I'll rebut, "What's the difference? If someone pays to register a domain, does your ownership of it suddenly spring into existence? Are your customers paying for the privilege of creating intellectual property for NetSol's exclusive use and benefit? If not, then you are liable for all unregistered domains. If so, then you'll shortly be out of business -- there's only so many suckers to go around, and most of them have only GeoCities homepages without domain names."

Stay tuned. If you own a trademark of any kind, you should be receiving a snail mail with the subject "You might already be a plaintiff!" within the next three months. Unless you have any kind of moral objection (an unfortunate weakness some humans possess) and wish to excluse yourself from this class-action lawsuit, you'll be on the road to riches.

And my law firm gets to keep 30%. It's a wonderful time to be a lawyer.

MP3's Are Ripping Band Off -- Says High-Priced Lawyer

Fake News written by Dave Finton on May 17, 2000

A few weeks ago Metallica® condemned the actions of 96% of its fan base when it announced a lawsuit against Napster, Inc. Today in a followup press release Metallica's chief lawyer further raised MP3 users' ire by claiming that they were "ripping Metallica off" and would persue legal action to the fullest extent of the law, "no matter how long it takes".

"These MP3 users are taking money straight from my client's pocket," said Metallica's lawyer in an exclusive interview with Humorix reporters. As he lit up a Cuban cigar with a hundred dollar bill and puffed leisurely into the air, he continued, "I will make sure these actions against my client are stopped, even if it means suing every single person who ever downloaded a Metallica song over the internet. If necessary, I'll work on this case continuously for the next twenty years, 365 days a year, 8 hours a day, $200 an hour.

"I'm gonna make a killing!" he added.

Lars Ulrich, drummer for Metallica, chimed in, saying, "We'll spend every cent we have to fight this. How can we stand by while MP3 users inflict millions in theoretical damages against us by violating outdated and arbitrary copyright laws designed and written by multi-billion dollar businesses who are more interested in protecting their somewhat illegally amassed wealth than in ushering in a new age of collaboration and progress? Our fans must be brought in line now!"

Metallica's lawyer followed this up by jumping up and down yelling, "Yes! There is a sucker born every minute! I'm gonna be rich!!! Cha-ching!"

Lars finished off the interview by arguing, "The bottom line is that nobody has a natural right to listen to music for free." I flipped on a portable radio, which just happened to be tuned to a station playing a Metallica song. Lars and his lawyers said in unison, "OH MY GAWD! How did we forget about radio? We'll sue every person who has ever listened to a Metallica song for free on the radio! We've hit the jackpot! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!"

It's All A Conspiracy

Fake News written by James Baughn on May 15, 2000

NEW HAVEN, CT -- Today is the last day of the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy Convention, the largest gathering of paranoid conspiracy theorists this side of Roswell. I'm reporting from the Humorix Booth on the showroom floor, where we've been recruiting Vast Spy Network(tm) members. However, the big news of the day is the speculation surrounding the Microsoft vs. Slashdot showdown.

The chairman of the Connecticut Conspiracy Club and organizer of the ConConCon, Bob Notmyrealname, said during his keynote speech earlier today, "Microsoft's actions against Slashdot indicate a sinister Redmond-based conspiracy. Microsoft obviously hired some Anonymous Cowards to post the comments containing the copyrighted Kerberos documentation just to give Microsoft lawyers a pretense to sue."

After the speech the general consensus among conspiracy theorists was that a Microsoft was engaged in a conspiracy. "Congress only passed the DMCA in exchange for Microsoft's secret Windows 98 version that doesn't crash. This whole Kerberos thing has been concocted from the very beginning by Microsoft's Linux Focus Group. There's all kinds of clues planted in the Halloween Documents."

Not everybody agrees, though. One person commented, "This is a GNUist plot! The only reason Microsoft was able to embrace-extend-and-smother MIT's Kerberos was because it's covered by the BSD license and not GPL. This is just an elaborate meta-meta-conspiracy concocted by Richard Stallman and the GNU Project to get the last word in the BSD vs. GPL flamefest."

One convention attendee shouted, "You are all idiots! There's no Microsoft conspiracy. Get a life!" He was greeted by shouts of "He's a government agent!" and "It's a Microserf! Get 'em!" He was chased out of the Offramp Motel and told to never come back.

Another hot topic of discussion besides Microsoft is the ILOVEYOU virus, which we covered last time. More than one person has speculated that an alliance between the RIAA and Unisys are behind the Outlook email virus. ILOVEYOU overwrites MP3 and GIF files, which leads many people to wonder whether the music and file compression conglomerates weren't behind the whole ordeal in an effort to "protect their intellectual property".

All in all, the ConConCon was an overwhelming success, except for the rumors that all attendees now have an FBI, CIA, and NSA criminal file if they didn't before. We've recruited twenty-five new spies for our Humorix Branch Offices in Helsinki, Redmond, and Washington, D.C. Plus, several people expressed interest in buying access to Humorix's Spy Satellite Number #2, the only spy satellite available to the general public.

If you're in the area, stop by before the end of the convention today at 8:00pm. The Humorix Booth is on the first floor of the Offramp Motel, just about 15 feet (or 4.5 meters, but we all know Metric is a French conspiracy) to the left of the lead-shielded wiretap-proof phone booths in the back.

Microsoft Split in Two!

Fake News written by Matthew "There is no conspiracy" Adair on May 14, 2000

REDMOND, WA -- The people of Redmond were jostled out of their normal life routine as a gigantic LASER struck the offices of Microsoft, spliting the campus in two and leaving behind a massive rift in the ground. All work has stopped at One Microsoft Way on the progress of the goal of One Microsoft Way as Borg drones crash into each other.

"I hate this!", complained one unnamed Microserf. "I was going to send my sub-adjunct this status report and then ZAP!, this giant LASER comes down and blows my Ethernet line, not to mention my PC, to bits. Damn Open Source zealots, now I can't get any work done!"

After the LASER attack, all Microserf eyes immediately turned to the Andover.Net Geek Compound in Holland, Michigan. Last week several Microsoft hired goons (lawyers) descended on the Geek Compound demanding that Slashdot replace a recent anti-Microsoft article with Bill Gates' "The Case For Microsoft" editorial. Certainly Rob Malda had the desire and motivation to forcibly split Microsoft in two, but he denies any connections with the attack. "I've been too busy cashing in my stock options and preparing my Webby Awards acceptance speech to worry about such trivial matters as destroying the world's most evil corporation."

However, the mystery was settled hours later by the appearance of a large orbiting spacecraft. The UFO used sophisticated technology to broadcast the following message to all television sets in the world:

We interrupt "Who Wants To Be Embarrased On National TV By Regis Philbin" to bring you this warning from the spacecraft G.S.S. Linusgrad. We have detected a virus on your world called Microsoft. It will strangle your legal and economic systems and result in a global Segfault that will destroy civilization as you know it. A similar event occured 65 million years ago in which the dinosaurs faced extinction at the hands of 'Tyrannosoft'.

We are taking matters into our own hands to ensure that the GNUist Revolution(tm) extends through all possible universes and dimensions, including this one. We have already executed Stage 1 in our plan -- though not entirely successfully, as we meant to fully disintegrate Microsoft into ten billion pieces instead of exactly two, but we're still satisfied.

Long live the GNUist Revolution!

That is all.

[UPGR.GSSLinusgrad.localhost]$ cd /bin/weapons/alan-parsons-proj/
[UPGR.GSSLinusgrad.localhost]$ LASERcom
Welcome to LASERcom 1.0 -- LASER Annilhilates Software Empires Rapidly
Arming LASER... done.
Please specify intensity (0-Sunburn; 9-Supernova): 9
Please specify target: Microsoft HQ, Redmond, WA, USA, Sol III
Searching... Target locked on Bill Gates' office.
Ready to fire (Yes/Sure/Fine/OK)? Y
Building charge... done.
Firing in 5... 4... 3... 2...
LASER Energized... done!
Target Eliminated.
Thank you for using LASERcom, an evil program designed by Comrade Penguin. There Is No Conspiracy(tm).
[UPGR.GSSLinusgrad.localhost]$ wall "Mission accomplished. There'll be a party held on Deck 3 at 1800 hours to celebrate. Free beer and speech for everyone!"

Microsoft Chief Software Architect & Money Counter Bill Gates immediately announced, "We knew there was something fishy about the Evil GNUist Conspiracy. It's a trans-dimensional plot to take over everything and infect all universes with Open Source software! However, we are pleased to announce to our end-users that Microsoft is developing an innovative space platform to attack all threats to our suplica... err, users. Features will include the ability to attack through multiple probablitiy levels, which will allow us to strike bcak at the UPGR homeworld of Earth (probable version 8493257198251257956) and put an end to this menace."

The response Bill Gates received was this: "We of the UPGR laugh at this. More than likely the features described won't make the cut, and if they do they will be buggy as all hell. Our GNUist Starships use a special mix of BSD and Linux, ensuring maximum stability and usability. I assure you that your Space Station 1.0 will not survive long. The universe is a cold, cold place, Mr. Gates, so I hope you have a space suit on..."

We have already traced this message to the basement of Humorix World Headquarters, which leads us to the conclusion that a Humorix employee is actually a GNUist operative (although it's not James Baughn since we all know he's a computer generated program written in Perl). Our options are limited to Jon Splatz, Dances With Herring, and Mat... oops, ignore that. I am not the spy. I have no ties with the UPGR. I am not ComradePenguin Once and for all, I tell you that There Is No Conspiracy(tm)! So stop bugging me!

Email Virus Meets American Lottery Craziness

Fake News written by Dave Finton on May 13, 2000

In a bizarre twist of events yesterday, millions of Americans who are really bad at math stampeded to their nearest gas station to buy dozens of lottery tickets each. The reason? No, they weren't trying to win hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather, the FBI, lacking any real credible leads, has decided to hold a national lottery to determine who will be the next lucky ILOVEYOU computer virus suspect.

First, it was some guy in the Phillipines. Then it was an American high-school drop-out that seemed to fit the "lone crazed computer hacker" stereotype so well some of us here at Humorix openly wondered whether or not the guy was a computer-generated program himself (well all of us except for James Baughn, whom we all know for sure is a computer generated program). No one knows who will be next in the race to nab the ticket to become the next lucky suspect. Will it be you?

"Nothing categorizes the herd-instinct mentality of the American people quite like the national lottery," said Billy Bob Smith, a well-respected instructor and researcher at the University of Minnesota's science labs and chicken race farms. As Billy Bob munched on Dorrito's and guzzled down an entire two-liter of Coke while updating his portfolio using Microsoft Word, he continued "This is why we are at the mercy of the major corporate powers. We must stop our consuming ways before our rights are vanquished and our economy as well as our entire planet collapses under its own weight! Now if you will excuse me I have to run because I left the engine running in the second Sport Utility Vehicle I just bought for my wife. The three that I own seem to run out of gas awfully quick."

Indeed, some people are going nuts over puchasing the tickets en mass. Joan Frisbee, a local woman who teaches English at a rural elementary school, told Humorix reporters, "I bought 2,000 of these tickets. You know what they say about luck; you can't win if you don't try." When we informed her that she probably wouldn't win anyways if she did try she merely covered her ears and sang the "La la la I can't hear you" song over and over again until we had no choice but to do the same.

FBI agents were quick to point out that just because they had to resort to picking suspects at random didn't mean their investigative abilities were out of date. "We have a computer that does the random name-picking. See? We're just as tech-savvy as those darned virus authors," said FBI agent What's-his-name. "I fact, the agency has just authorized the purchace of a new computer for next year. We're all realy excited about it because this new computer will have a 'hard disk' and a 'monitor'! What will they think of next?"

Will the lottery craziness ever end? Maybe, says government researcher Jerry Ryan. "But I think the odds of that are only slightly higher than getting struck by 200 lightning bolts while getting hit by a bus and finding a five-leaf clover simultaneously."

But as he pulled out his 40,000 lottery tickets from his pocket, he exclaimed gleefully, "But hey, that's never stopped anyone before!"

Cartoonix: Dave Finton, Some Drawing Paper, And A Scanner

Cartoon drawn by Dave Finton on May 12, 2000

It's finals week. This can only mean one thing: college students everywhere are frantically trying to find ways to put off studying for that Calculus exam given by the foreign professor who hasn't spoken a single understandable word of English all semester. Studies have shown that more non-school related work gets done during finals week than any other week of the year as students try to justify waiting until the last millisecond to study. For Dave Finton, that means drawing cartoons that poke fun at Big Evil Corporations & Industry Associations...

View the cartoon (PNG format, 82 kilobytes, 700 x 420 pixels)

The Horrible, Terrible Email Virus Conspiracy!

Fake News written by James Baughn on May 4, 2000

NEW HAVEN, CT -- The truth is out there... at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy Convention, being held this week at the beautiful Offramp Motel on I-95. ConConCon is billed as the largest ever gathering of conspiracy theorists east of the Mississippi. Earlier today, preeminent conspiracy expert Bob Smith (not his real code-name) hosted a roundtable discussion about possible government or corporate cover-ups surrounding the recent rash of email viruses.

Bob Smith started the discussion with his own pet conspiracy theory. He explained:

The new "I Love You" virus is not the work of some snot-nosed acne-laced teenager working from a basement in the Phillipines. It's actually part of a conspiracy concocted by the unholy alliance of Microsoft and several well-known and well-despised spammers.

You'll notice that the ILOVEYOU, Melissa, and Tuxissa strains all extract email addresses from the victim's system. This is a gold mine for spammers, who are able to use these viruses to harvest active email addresses for them. Everytime ILOVEYOU, for instance, propogates, it keeps track of all the email addresses it has been sent to, so that when it finally boomerangs back to a spammer, they have a nice convenient list of addresses to send "laser printer toner" and "get rich quick!" advertisements to.

Meanwhile, Microsoft laid the groundwork for these outbreaks by infecting computers worldwide with Outlook (or should I say, "Lookout!"). It's not entirely clear what Microsoft hopes to get out of this conspiracy; I do know they will probably received a very accurate listing of the email addresses of millions of clueless Windows users.

Another vocal member of the panel, Senator Fattecat (R-WA), strongly disagreed with Smith's theory. He argued:

There's a conspiracy here, but Bill Gates is not the one in charge. I place the blame for Outlook viruses squarely on the shoulders of Linus Torvalds, who is really a front for the horrible Helsinkian Underground. They've obviously subverted the Microsoft Marketing Department with Linux weenies who convinced other Microserfs that "automatically executed email scripting" would be a cool thing to have in Outlook.

Why? One, so they could compile a listing of clueless Windows users who would be ripe for Linux assimilation. Two, countless PHBs who received LOVE-LETTERS will now think twice about Microsoft Outlook, and might even consider migrating to that Linux thing they read about in a trade rag while sitting on the can. Can you say "Linux World Domination?"

Everybody broke into raucous laughter after Fattecat finished his spiel. "There are conspiracy theories, and then there are lunatic paranoid rants," one audience member shouted. "The only reason Senator Fattecat was elected last season was because of sizable campaign contributions from Microsoft. Now that's your conspiracy."

One discussant, a curiously shaped creature wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo, said:

What a minute, folks. This could be the beginning of an anti-Linux conspiracy. Right now hundreds of Anonymous Cowards are cheering the fact that only Windows boobs are victims of ILOVEYOU. I realize Outlook is so insecure that using it is like posting a sign outside your door saying, "DOOR UNLOCKED -- ROB ME!". However, Linux isn't immune. If I had a dollar for every pine buffer overflow uncovered, I could buy a truckload of fresh herring.

I expect the next mass email virus to spread will be cross-platform. If the recipient is a Windows/Outlook luser, they'll get hit. If the recipient is a Linux/pine user, they'll find themselves staring at a self-executing bash script that's has just allocated 1 petabyte of memory and crashed the system (or worse). If the recipient is a BeOS user... well, I'm sure there's security flaws is that, too.

Either that or the next mass email virus will only damage Linux systems. I can just see Bill Gates assigning some junior programmer that very task. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Another attendee speculated:

We're all overlooking the biggest evil conspirator of all: the US government. These virii were probably spread by them to justify more Net regulation. Email taxes... Net access license tests... NSA monitoring programs embedded in every copy of Windows ("For Your Protection")... death penalty for encryption use... it's all possible. Big Brother is out to get us!

The speaker's use of "virii" prompted the spelling and grammar freaks to enter into a frenzy, acting as if they were posting to Slashdot instead of speaking at a serious convention. After that died down, somebody joked:

If there's a government conspiracy, then we won't live to tell anyone about it. Think about it: we're sitting at the largest congregation of conspiracy theorists ever. If you were an NSA agent, wouldn't you be tempted to "accidentally" detonate a portable bomb nearby and wipe everyone out? Heck, they probably arranged this whole convention, those spooky bastards!

The roundtable discussion soon ended so everyone could attend the keynote speech at 11 o'clock entitled: "Elian Gonzalez Isn't Really An Illegal Alien -- He's An Illegal Space Alien."

Responses To Proposed Microsoft Breakup

Feature written by James Baughn on May 3, 2000

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The DOJ stunned the world last week when it announced intentions to break Microsoft into two Baby Bills. When the news broke, Linux users were jumping up and down, but Wall Street tycoons were jumping out of windows. Now that the dust has settled, Humorix interviewed several people to find out their reaction to the proposed breakup...

Michael Cowpland (CEO of Corel): I can't believe I'm going to say this: In this rare case, what's bad for Microsoft is bad for the country. All the pundits predict that if Microsoft is broken up, the Apps division will immediately port Office to Linux. Hello, is that a good thing? No! They'll find a way to monopolize the Linux productivity software market, which is the only thing saving Corel from bankruptcy right now. I suspect that a breakup is exactly what Bill Gates has been secrely hoping for, since it will provide him the opportunity to vanquish his last remaining competitors!

Bill Gates (Chief Bloatware Architect): How the hell did you get into my mansion? I spent three million dollars on barbed wire fences, guard dogs, crocodile-filled moats, automatic machine guns, and highly-trained body guards to keep you Linux freaks off my property!

[Editor's Note: We pretended to be DOJ agents led by Janet Reno raiding the mansion to liberate the Windows source code to its rightful parents, Apple and Xerox. The butler didn't believe our story, so we ended up crawling through an open window.]

Aw, crap, my ActivePoisonGas program has bluescreened again. You should be choking with deadly gasses right now while I eject to safety in Nevada. Stupid piece-of-crap Windows 2000... er, um, you didn't hear me say that. I don't have time for this. I have a meeting in ten minutes with the President of Heipistan about our plan to relocate all Microsoft offices to his country -- which, incidentally, doesn't have any anti-trust laws but does serve the death penalty for copyright violations.

Linus Torvalds: If Microsoft uses the breakup as an opportunity to port Office, and its infernal Dancing Paper Clip, to my Linux operating system, heads will fly! I'll track down that idiot who created Clippit and sic a killer penguin on him!

Anonymous Coward: What I'd like to see is a prohibition on Microsoft incorporating multi-megabyte Easter Eggs and other stupid bloatware into Windows and Office. A typical computer with pre-installed Microsoft shoveware probably only has about 3 megabytes of hard drive space free because of flight simulators, pinball games, and multimedia credits Easter Eggs that nobody wants. I predict that if Microsoft is ever forced to remove these things, the typical user will actually be able to purchase competing software now that they have some free space to put it on. Of course, stock in hard drive companies might plummet...

BSD Daemon: Breaking up Microsoft isn't enough. What the court needs to do is start breaking kneecaps.

Joe Schmoe on the Street: We need a three-way breakup: Operating Systems, Applications, and Marketing/Legal/Leeches. The Microsoft Marketing division is the single most important part of Microsoft; without it, the other two Baby-Bills will collapse under their own bloat. The court, of course, would have to prohibit Microsoft Marketing from merging with Ziff-Davis, as such a marriage would produce an evil far greater than the old Microsoft (If you think John Taschek or Jesse Berst are on the Microsoft payroll now, just wait until they really are!).

Local Technology Pundit: If you feel that Windows or your applications hang too often or cause page faults that require you to reboot, be very scared. Microsoft divisions all have access to each other and try to build a stable product. How bad will it get when they are different companies that will not have access to each other's code? My biggest fear is that it will get very ugly indeed, with the stability of our programs at stake.

[Editor's Note: As Dave Barry says, we are not making this up. These words actually appeared recently in the dead-tree edition of the local newspaper. Who needs to write fake news when you have your own Jesse Berst wannabe right in your own town?]

Typical Dothead: If Microsoft's monopoly is destroyed, what will we have left to bash and poke fun at? My whole life revolves around Linux, and Slashdot, and flaming Bill Gates. Does this mean I'm going to have to get a life in the offline world? That'll never happen. I suppose I'll have to pick on AOL, but that's just not as much fun.