The XP Conspiracy

Yet another reason to switch to Vista?

We're all familiar with conspiracy theories about subtle messages in rock music or the Bible. But who would have guessed that these sneakyisms could be hiding under the noses of hundreds of millions of PC users for the last half-decade?

The folks here at the FCN Lab grew suspicious after a tragic but non-lethal spill of lemon juice on the non-glare coating of my not-so-new IBM Thinkpad T42. While carefully wiping it off with the back of my sleeve, I noticed an odd shape in the clouds of the classic Bliss wallpaper that has become a trademark for XP. Without removing any more lemon juice, I rushed my wounded computer to the FCN Lab. After several hours of testing, we managed to pull out the hidden image.

That's right, folks: There is a hidden image in the clouds of the windows XP desktop! What it means exactly is anyone's guess, but we think it's safe to say that Bill Gates has some explaining to do (if he didn't already after evidence of sweatshop cubicle conditions surfaced on the BSOD).

Further testing revealed other images hidden on other popular XP desktops. We would have done them all, but someone found us and kicked us out of the Science building with a warning. We have attached our limited but significant findings below for your objective analysis (click the thumbnails). The questions are many: how did these pictures get here? What do they mean? How could they appear on so many desktops without anyone noticing - until now?

We here at FCN will be lying awake at night cuddling our teddy bears for the rest of the week.

Windows Vista

You would have to be blind, deaf or totally uninvolved in the daily operations of the technology world to not notice the emergence of Window’s new operating system (OS), Vista. Like a Boeing crash-landing, the new OS has torn across the tech world, tearing out telephone polls (Adobe), chopping off control towers (NVidia drivers) and polluting the airport with broken parts (viruses).

Vista is Ron Burgundy and Ugly Betty all tied together. It’s Barry Bonds and Floyd Landis off the juice. It’s Bode Miller on beer. It’s great, but it’s impaired.

Before the operating system was released, thousands of virus manufacturers were toying with beta versions, creating diseases for systems that would run it. Like so many infested ants, they crawled around spreading their cantankerous concoctions. In August of 2005, one Aussie hacker even published five “sample viruses” (not for resale) that supposedly could defeat the new OS (although I think we can safely doubt the veracity of this claim, given that it was reported by the “Mac Observer.”) Even while it was known under the euphemism “Longhorn,” the operating system took flak for being too weak against the lesser species we call hackers.

Fanfare and plane crashes aside, Vista has now made its entrance (Cue: Bridal Chorus). The shoppers, like so many Black Friday cattle, are obediently waiting in line for their chance at the diseased product. Not a pretty picture.

Bill Gates seems to have met his match with this one. Open source Operating Systems like Linux’s Ubuntu or BSD are gaining market share and Mac remains a formidable, if dark, opponent. Maybe that’s why he’s planning on doing philanthropic work full time.

What does “Vista” mean anyway? It sounds like some Mexifornian excuse for creativity. The dictionary says it’s a “distant view or prospect, especially one seen through an opening.” But not many people will be looking in the “distance” as they stare at a computer screen 18”-28” from their faces.

I know, why all the sudden grouch? I should have recovered from the Patriots loss by now, right?

Here’s my problem. My Internet pride and joy, the tool with which answer your emails, write these post and even do the occasional homework paper will never be able to run Vista. My computer has lost capabilities over time and is now little more than a workhorse. Sadly, Steve is completely cut out of the Vista fun. Completely.

Give me a minute while I pick Steve’s ego off the ground.

Steve runs XP alright (it’s a little blurry), but if any change should be made it’s a downgrade (to Windows 3.1, according to the diagnostics software) not an upgrade. I’ll only be able to enjoy the beauty of Vista vicariously, through the high end computing equipment of the other FCN writers or the guy at the soup kitchen on Pine Street.

Sure makes the sour grapes more understandable, doesn’t it?

Dear Microsoft...

The folks over here at FCN are big fans of your program, Microsoft Word. After our classes, we type our notes right away on Microsoft Word. There are five reasons for this:

1. Necessity. If we don’t type our notes right away, all our brilliant ideas would lost to the scribbles of time. After all, it has been proven that FCN notes become illegible after 2 hours. Alternate policies have been proposed, such as writing neatly, but we have found that just typing the work on your word processor immediately after classes is much simpler than retaking first grade penmanship.

2. Design. We love the layout of the program. Its makes Adobe Creative Suite look like a child’s toy. Of course, we don’t actually use anything but the spellcheck and save- we just like looking like we know how to use a complex program.

3. Toolbars. Even Adrian Lamo would be stumped by the mess of button-filled tabs that coat the top and side bars of your program. The complexity of Microsoft Word puts other bloggers who use notepad in awe of our PC skills, and for this we are sincerely grateful.

4. Fonts. Who could complain about cool names like “Trebunchet”, “Poor Richard” and “Karkatrina”?

5. Paper Clip Dude. We are greatly saddened by his rejection at the Microsoft conference and are still big fans of the eyebrows. We want to let him know that there are people out there who love and appreciate him.

The purpose of this letter is not only to compliment your good work, but to let you know of a flaw in the programming. We wanted to bring to your attention that FCN is not automatically in the spellcheck, and must be added manually. This serious problem is easily forgiven by magnanimous bloggers such as ourselves, but we do expect that these errors be fixed promptly.

With much love to Clippy,

The FCN Bloggers

P.S. We suggest that the "Microsoft Word 2007" name should be changed to "Microsoft Word FCN", along with an update to add FCN to the spellcheck.