Everyone, I woke up this morning and made a major decision: to suspend my campaign for President of the United States of America for election year 2008, to endorse Barack Obama, and to focus my attention on a new and pressing campaign: against Big Brother Bill Gates. (But, if you wish, you may still VOTE FOR ME on November 4.)After many long conversations with some pretty cool people at Acer (and one guy yesterday who- I'm sorry, peeps, but I could not understand him with that accent- in the process of transferring me to the "main office," cut me off), and two trips for Scutabaga to the clinic in Texas, it has become glaringly apparent that the malfunctioning laptop with which I am unable to connect to the wireless service on campus where I work and soon will be enrolled again in school is not the fault of Acer, but entirely of Microsoft. I used to be able to get service at the prep station. Then, one night at 3AM, during a routine updating, the lights on my computer flashed on where it sat on the table, waking me from sleep in the bedroom. Something had happened to a wireless driver, and since then, I have not been able to get a wireless connection with the university.
During one call to Acer, I was referred to the Microsoft website to put Scutabaga through a 7-step program to make Vista compatible with wireless networks I could not access, but I found that the last file in step 2 was not present in my software. When I chatted this to the Microsoft employee with whom I was dealing, I was told that he couldn't help me, to return to Acer; they were the culprit. (People, does that make sense to you, that the maker of the software would refer me to the maker of the hardware for a problem with the software they made? Do these people think we are all stoopid?)
The hardware is working; the wireless card is working. Windows Vista is a piece of crap which I have not heard one person say he or she likes. It is full of holes, and Bill Gates does not care. He will fill you all with visions of his philanthropical ways, out there in the world attempting to thwart evil diseases in Africa, for instance, but in the meantime, his software empire has us all crushed under his not-so-microSoft thumb.
Do not be fooled by this man! He monopolizes the PC industry with savage and underhanded tricks. Wow, that sounds pretty serious, doesn't it? Well, I am serious. You want specifics? I have to take a shower and go to work now, but don't you worry: I am on this and will keep plugging away.
The only way I can see that Bill Gates can redeem himself in my eyes is to provide me with a scholarship to return to school in January as an underrepresented (female) student in the sciences, in a program which I intend to use to become educated so that I can make some kind of a difference out there restoring lands that have been ravaged by the extractive industries. Now, how's that for doing some good? Bill, are you listening? It'll hardly cost you a dime, compared with all the cash you've racked up over the years with us as your technologically captive high-paying audience. I think we can strike a sweet deal that will benefit this world and the American people. Whattaya think?
2 comments:
I like Vista (a lot), and it totally makes sense that hardware manufacturers are responsible for writing drivers for their hardware that works with the operating system that will run upon their hardware platform.
MS writes one operating system, and creates an Application Programming Interface (API) which acts as the interface for an abstraction. Windows says "Hey monitor. Show the following shiny bits." This information gets sent to the driver for the particular monitor/screen on your particular PC (which is written by the monitor manufacturer, not MS). The driver understands generic DISPLAY THIS messages from the microsoft OS and converts them to hardware specific messages that "MAKE IT SO" to quote Captain Picard. In the case of driver problems, the hardware manufacturer loves to point to MS & MS can often only shrug their shoulders with a thick offshored accent and direct you back to the hardware manufacturer.
I don't want you to think Margot was the Microsoft shill who left the last message. It was actually me, but Margot was preauthenticated on my machine. I blame Microsoft!
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