This satire was written for a rhetoric class, held in Mira Costa community college, in 2003. The satire was written during a period of unprecedented stability in the Windows operating system, due to actual competition from Linux and BSD operating systems. You have no idea how big a change this was. Microsoft was tooting its own horn about how "only" 65,000 defects were known in its Windows 2000 family, which was, at the time, a vast improvement over Windows NT 4.x and its predecessors.
Still, 65,000 defects isn't anything to brag about, and with the upcoming release of Windows 2003, you just knew that even more defects would be forthcoming. Today, we have Windows XP, which is simultaneously the ugliest Windows to ever be released, consuming even more valuable screen real-estate, the most patronizing UI ever designed, and perhaps only marginally more robust than Windows ME.
Today, we have anticipation for Windows Vista, and Microsoft is pulling no punches in pulling bait-n-switches for feature sets. Once again, they are deliberately withholding useful advancements in their OS to milk the market for more than its worth. Screenshots show it to be an even greater burden on the user, consuming still more valuable screen space than XP does, consuming still more valuable system resources like RAM and harddrive space, etc. However, anything that made it a compelling upgrade, such as its new shell environment, and relational database driven filesystem, are now being withheld for unknown reasons. Is it because they've collectively exceeded a certain threshhold for "defects?" Or is it for alterior motives?
Therefore, despite the age of this satire, word for word, it's still every bit as relavent today as it was back then. I hope you enjoy it; but, more importantly, I hope you learn something from it. Thank you for taking the time to read it!
The author retains full copyright to this work. All rights reserved.
George got out of his 1983 Dodge Aries K-series and slammed the door. He couldn't close the door normally, because otherwise the lock wouldn't work right. There were many nights when George couldn't get into his car, or worse, couldn't get out of his car, because he didn't close the door hard enough. But today, it seems, he closed the door too hard -- the windshield shattered.
Muttering under his breath about having to get that car fixed once and for all, he walked up to the door of his office complex, and swiped his key card in the machine. A red light and a beep were the only response. After swiping it three more times, each accompanied by a mutter, George finally gave up and called the central office via his cell phone. This reminded George about switching phone providers too, as apparently the signal strength wasn't good enough in this area for his current service provider.
Shortly afterwords, a gentleman started walking out of the stairwell. "Hey George!" exclaimed a young fellow wearing leather loafers, a brown suit and tie, and white shirt. "I see your key card isn't working again." The man opens the door for George. "Don't feel bad; everyone else here is up in arms about it too. People are afraid to go on lunch or break, thinking they won't be able to get back in. We've already called the company; should be here in about 20 minutes or so. You know, maybe we should have this outage more often? So, what's going on?"
"Bahh! I really must get my car fixed. First the power antenna dies, then the door handle starts breaking on me, now I accidentally shattered my window. But it doesn't stop there. Or start there, I should say -- my wife spilled a whole pot of coffee on my lap today, fresh from the machine. The bottom of the pot just fell right out, I tell ya! Did you know that if you heat glass in one spot, and keep it cool in another, it'll shatter in a nice, clean line? That's what happened at home, I think. We had this breeze come through and that must have cooled the top part of the glass just enough. I don't even want to get into what the dog did to the cat this morning, though. No doubt by this evening, the cat will get its revenge. There's nothing like spending quality time with your dog, cleaning cat vomit and hair balls from his fur." George shook his head.
"Oh, I can only imagine. Cats and dogs are like that, you know."
"Yeah, you sure got that right. Say, Larry, what's going on with our computers lately? They seem to be . . . different. You know, more reliable, more productive."
"I don't know. Something seems pretty fishy, though. This all started happening as soon as we changed management. You know, come to think of it, it happened right when our stocks started to pick up."
"Yeah, that's another major issue I have with this company. How can people afford to purchase our stocks if the prices keep going up? How are we supposed to get investors? This company's new management will be the death of it."
Larry and George start walking up the stairs to their office suite. Halfway up the stairs, one of the hand railings falls off the wall, making a ringing, echoing clatter so loud that they were sure it woke up the dead. Treading more lightly on the stairs, and closer to the center, they reached the landing. A quick turn to the right showed them to their office entrance, where the door knob was found to be missing. The placard on the door read, "Macrohard, Inc."
"That's odd, someone must be working on our alarm system; the knob was here a few minutes ago," Larry said, as he pulled the door open via the knob hole. After wiping his hands on his pants briefly, he noticed a smear of wet paint on his pants. "Doggone it!"
"You know Larry, computers these days are really starting to annoy the heck out of me. I'll show you." George beckoned Larry towards his cube.
There was a sign sitting on the floor just outside George's cubicle, which read, "CAUTION - WET FLOOR", and inside there was a bucket half filled with water. George thought nothing of it; the air conditioner had leaked in his cube for years. He kind of thought the drip, drip, drip was rather soothing.
After moving the mouse a bit to release the screen blanker, Larry stooped to look what was rendered on the screen. He'd seen this kind of thing before, and he knew it would be a problem in the future. "See, watch this. When I move the mouse, it actually keeps up with me. Not only that, but the computer didn't crash when the screen blanker went away. To add insult to injury, watch what happens when I click the button here." George double-clicked the Macrohard Paragraph icon.
"Yeah, George, that's pretty bad. As soon as you clicked, the display updated instantly, and gave you useful feedback. All this on a machine with only three gigabytes of RAM too. You'd better call IS about this."
"But, it was IS that put this new version of Macrohard Doors on my machine! And this," George points to the Paragraph window. "How can I get any work done if I can actually SEE what it is I'm working on? Where are my fifteen layers of toolbars? I'm willing to bet you, Larry, that if this thing even HAD toolbars, each button would only be this big too!" George pinched his fingers about a quarter of an inch apart. "The programmers in the operating system and applications departments just don't know how to write software anymore."
You think that's bad, check out my computer. On Friday, I launched the test software on the data we'd collected the prior week, once I found the data again, and it actually ran to completion on Monday! Can you believe that?! Software isn't supposed to be that reliable!" Larry slaps his sides in exasperation, only to get his hand wet with more paint. "You know, Brenda's computer in tech support got infested with a virus last Tuesday."
"Really?! How bad was it?"
"This is the bad part." Larry takes an ominous sip from his near-empty coffee mug. "She was able to keep working with absolutely no harm done. The virus never had a chance to run on her system, what with this . . . this new `thing' of an operating system we have now. Apparently, her computer is set up to be tightly secure out of the box."
Larry continues, "I say `keep working' with some trepidation, too; she hasn't had nearly as many technical support calls about our products as she used to get. To help pass the time, she's either been playing Solitaire, or on the phone screaming at her kids."
"BAHH!! That's hogwash! Everyone knows that computers are supposed to be wildly promiscuous with viruses! And everyone knows that reboots are a perfectly normal and natural thing for a computer to go through every now and again! How can they inflict this crap on the public?"
"Yeah, that's what Brenda and I thought, too. She'd said she won't come back until the problem is solved."
Across the hall, a new worker stood up in the cube and bellowed for silence. Everyone else in the complex echoed the sentiment, then repeated the sentiment to the new worker, which resulted in verbal warfare as to who should shut up first, and who was making the loudest contribution. Larry and George watched, bewildered, "What's his problem?!" yelled George.
Larry screams back, "Aww, that's the new guy who got hired two weeks ago! He hasn't been broken in yet!"
After Larry notices his mug is empty, George and Larry proceeded to the kitchen area, where someone was fixing one of the coffee machines, and was noticably quieter. Larry noticed the power cord for the coffee machine was dangling in the same sink bay as he was washing his coffee mug in.
"You know, Larry, I got a good feature idea for the Macrohard Studio Bedroom 2004 yesterday. I wanted to run some of my ideas by you today." George plunked in three quarters to the vending machine, pushed the button for his selection, and waited as the machine proceeded to push his desired selection out far enough to dangle, but not drop, into the hopper. "BAHH!!!!" George muttered something under his breath about having to call operations management again about his 75 cents.
"Sure thing," Larry said, as they walked out of the kitchen back to their cube. The repairman started shrieking and convulsing, loudly and violently, as plumes of smoke and blue and yellow sparks started flying. George and Larry just kept walking. "You know, George, you'd think he'd learn by now . . ."
As they approached Larry's cube, Larry spoke up. "About those ideas, I hope one of them relates to the menu structure. I think we have too many useful features in them. We need to cut back; you know, make them more obfuscated, to make some room on the screen for more tool-"
Just then, mid-sentence, the lights in the office complex started flickering on and off in random patterns, the fire and burglar alarm claxons start sounding their obnoxious warnings, and the springler system engages, drenching everyone and everything quite thoroughly. Computers that were on exploded with bright flashes of yellow and rising mushroom clouds of blue-grey smoke. After Larry's machine decided to pop like a popcorn kernal, George could only sit and stare at the bedlam that had been unleashed in the office complex. People were screaming, some even crying, at the great loss of data and equipment. The loudest BANG! came from the kitchen area, as the coffee machine repairman sailed across the cubes like a paper airplane, screaming for dear life. An electrical fire was now roaring in the kitchen, quite thoroughly entrenched, only made worse by the sprinkler's rainfall.
The loudspeaker, normally very quiet, came to life. "Attention all personnel! Please remain calm! Our building complex' environmental computer system has encountered a software failure. Repair crews will attend to the machine shortly. The ETA for repair is," and with that, the loudspeaker shorted out in a bright stream of sparks that were quickly extinguished by the sprinklers.
"Ahhhh!" exclaimed George with a smile on his face. "At last! Some NORMALCY in life!! It's about time at least ONE computer crashed in this place today!" Larry nodded in stern agreement, as he tried to wash off the paint on his pants in the impromptu shower.