The Altair™ Peripherals™

Jim 'Leno' Allchin, head liar at Microsoft, has come out and claimed OS X is just a peripheral to the iPod. Which of course is true, but he cleverly sidestepped the more important fact that Windows is in fact just a peripheral to the Altair™.

Here's the true story™.

Bill Gates™ and Steve Ballmer™ were wanking their way through a non-existent curriculum™ at Harvard™ reading PLAYBOY™, playing poker, and drinking beer. They did this because they are innately so unattractive™ to the opposite sex they had no feasible alternatives.

One day Bill comes back to the lair with a mechanics magazine he'd stolen from the local supermarket. In it is an article about a funny looking computer - the Altair. Bill immediately drops out of Harvard.

[He'd just been waiting for an excuse anyway. Once he and Steve had this game: instead of actually trying to learn something, the duo avoided classes and drank beer, played poker, read PLAYBOY™ and choked their turkeys double-time. Then at the end of the term they took their exams and without cheating mind you (because that would be beneath them) they managed to eke out a passing grade. Ed.]

So Bill Gates' departure from Harvard was both inevitable and no great loss.

Bill got his butt down to Albuquerque™ where the Altair™ company was located and ensconced himself above the most notorious whorehouse™ in the sleaziest area of town. This became the world headquarters™ of 'MicroSoft Corporation'™.

Bill had no lack of funds: his father, also a Bill Gates™, was obnoxiously wealthy™ and his mother was a member of the Church of Scientology™, the United Way™, Holiday Magic™, and a baritone™ in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir™. They spotted little weasel™ Bill all the cash™ he needed, including money to buy an itsy-bitsy Porsche™ so he could drive down to the local booze mart™ and get the latest PLAYBOY™.

When IBM™ decided to come out with their own version of the universal CP/M machine, they used Bill's MBASIC™. The MBASIC™ was only activated if the PC user opted to not boot into PC-DOS. It was a way of telling the user 'sucker'™ and encourage people to use the real operating system instead, as MBASIC™ on its own was wobbly, incomplete, and nearly totally useless™ - much like Windows™ is today.

When IBM decided to preempt the PC field with their Micro-Channel Architecture™ and a new operating system known as 'OS/2', Bill decided to play along, but what he really wanted was to see MBASIC™ make a comeback. So although he gave IBM the help they said they wanted with OS/2 (and thereby screwed it up so bad it was unusable™ until Microsoft departed from the OS/2 scene) what he really did was work on the GUI™ version of MBASIC™.

As anyone in the know knows, Bill has gone on forever about having a universal intermediate language that all compilers will understand. This language, says Bill, should be based on MBASIC™.

Even the most esoteric processor gymnastics can be reduced, says Bill, to simple MBASIC™ commands such as:

10 PRINT 'WHAT IS YOUR NAME?'
20 INPUT $NAME
30 PRINT 'HELLO, '+$NAME+'! THAT'S A VERY PRETTY NAME!'
40 GOTO 10

When David Cutler came crosstown to Redmond, Bill immediately besieged the renowned developer about re-implementing MBASIC™ at the core of 32-bit protected mode Windows. Dave's reply has of course gone to history.

'NO $##$%^&^ WAY YOU TWIT.'

But the effort continued. Bill next bought up a Borland employee to create a totally new de novo innovation™ known as C#™. Now while most people believe C#™ is actually a rip-off™ of Java, it is in fact the core technology behind MBASIC™ and no more.

Passport™, Hailstorm™, Trustworthy Computing™, Palladium™, Whidbey™, Avalon™, Indigo™, Windows™, Windows 2003 Server™, and Longhorn: they're all based on MBASIC™ - they're all Altair™ Peripherals™.

Which in itself is scary enough, but the full truth is even murkier - read on.

Building Nine™

No one never brought into the inner circle™ at Microsoft™ knows about Building Nine™. Ask anyone who's worked there for years™ and they will tell you there is no such thing™. Absolutely not™. As far as they or most of the Universe™ know, Building Nine™ simply does not exist™.

But it does.

In Building Nine, the most secret of all secret buildings on the Microsoft campus, sits the spider at the centre of the web. It is a grid of Apple OS X™ Server dual G5 Power Macs running at 14 exahertz and with MBASIC™ in a virtual machine. And it is this virtual machine that powers the Windows 2003 Server™ boxes around campus. Also, the 16,000 iPod™ users™ there can hook up™ to special power outlets on the outside of the building to recharge their batteries (works better when it's not raining).

The Microsoft network in Redmond has often been the victim of countless and horrendous hacker attacks™, and in each case the attack has not been successful until the criminals were able to crash the MBASIC™ virtual machine running at the hub of it all. In each case this final objective proved to be the least challenging, but that's not the point.

The point is the entire world - yea the entire Universe™ - is dependent on Bill Gates' buggy and unacceptable MBASIC™.

So when you hear Jim Allchin talk about the insignificance of Unix and OS X, remember what he's trying to hide.
 

¹Microsoft™ recommend MBASIC™ for business™.
²'MBASIC' stands for 'Microsoft Bring Altair Software Into Computing'.