MicroSoft Food for Windows
Michael Hirsch
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.pcgeos
Subject: SOFTWARE WARS
Sender: ne...@spk.hp.com
I received this through e-mail (original author unknown) and I thought everyone
would enjoy the humor...and decry the underlying truth in it...
Monday, 10 AM -- Chicago, Illinois -- Start-up software developer
Cuisine International announced CUISINENET, the first working program to
seamlessly integrate word and food processing. Called a breakthrough for
small restaurants and snack bars, Cuisine Chairman Mark Meigs confidently
predicted sales of thousands of copies with shipments soon to begin.
Monday, 4 PM -- New York -- Cuisine International shares closed sharply
higher on announcement of new CUISINENET product.
Tuesday, 9 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman William H.
Gates, III announced that Microsoft Food for Windows would soon enter
beta testing. Gates described the product as the first of a projected
family of products to include Food for Windows, designed for small
commercial dining establishments; Personal Food for Windows, designed for home
kitchens; Portable Food for Windows, designed for lunchboxes; and, of course,
at the high end, Food for Windows NC (Nouvelle Cuisine) designed for large
institutional dining rooms. Asked by a reporter about
CUISINENET, Gates said that he had never heard of the product, but was not
surprised by it, because the software business is highly competitive, and
Microsoft has to compete on the merits with many strong competitors, as the
FTC had recently concluded.
Tuesday, 3 PM -- Chicago, Illinois -- An angry Mark Meigs showed
reporters a copy of the nondisclosure agreement signed by Bill Gates, under
which Cuisine International had informed Microsoft a year earlier about plans
for CUISINENET. Meigs said that in hindsight, he should never have signed the
agreement, as the only thing he learned from Microsoft was that Gates was
considering making changing to Windows.
Wednesday, 9 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
announced that Microsoft would soon publish specifications for the
Windows Open Kitchen Architecture (WOKA), a series of design specifications to
permit manufacturers of toasters, ranges, and other kitchen appliances to
integrate their products into the forthcoming Microsoft Food for Windows line.
Asked about reports of a nondisclosure agreement with Cuisine International
for a similar product, Gates said that the other product was really at most a
niche product, and would probably have less functionality than the
food-related features that Microsoft would be building into the new
Unsaturated FAT File System which would be part of DOS 7.0. Gates said that
he doubted there would be much interest in a dead-end solution that would not
be able to keep up to date with advances in WOKA. Gates added that over
11,000 manufacturers of kitchen appliances were already having serious
discussions with Microsoft about WOKA, and that he expected almost all
important eaters of food to standardize on the WOKA environment.
Wednesday, 10 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman Bill
Gates announced that he would be giving the keynote speech at the American
Bakers annual convention on "Nutrition at Your Fingertips." Gates played down
speculation that he would use the Bakers convention to introduce Microsoft
Food for Windows, saying only that alpha testing was proceeding ahead of
schedule, and the product would be shipped when it was ready.
Wednesday, 11 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Corporation
announced that its Chairman, William H. Gates, III, had made a donation of
over $250 of personal funds to the Cordon Bleu to begin an endowment fund
for the Bill Gates Professorship of Advanced Cookery. The famous French
cooking school confirmed that it had agreed to be a beta site for the
much discussed Food for Windows application sweet.
Thursday, 9 AM -- New York -- PCWeek Magazine reported in a copyrighted story
that it had obtained a copy of correspondence from Microsoft to Cuisine
International, demanding that the small developer of kitchen software cease
using the Cuisine name, as it infringes on the trademark for Microsoft Food
for Windows NC. Microsoft added that Chairman Mark Meigs would also have to
change his own name as Mark infringed a copyright on the Windows Edit menu,
Meigs infringed the trademark on Meigs Field in Microsoft Flight Simulator,
and Chairman infringed the trademark on Bill Gates's title which he had
acquired with personal funds from Mao's estate. Also, Microsoft advised that
while the company did not actually have to move out of Chicago, use of the
name on press releases infringed a trademark on Windows 4.0
Thursday, 4 PM -- New York -- Cuisine International stock closed at
0-bid, 1/16-asked.
Friday, 9 AM -- ? -- An anonymous spokesman for an unnamed Midwestern software
developer announced the discontinuation of operations. Undescribed legal
problems were cited as the reason. Others speculated that a failure to
appreciate the competitive nature of the software business may have led to the
company's sudden collapse.
Monday, 9 AM -- Microsoft Internal Mail
From: billg
To: mikem
Re: Food Program
Please see if you can reassign one of the 3,000 engineers from the
OS/2 virus development project to do a feasibility study on a food-related
program. Not sure what it would do. Low priority.
--
Michael D. Hirsch mhi...@cs.princeton.edu
Computer Science Department Voice: (609) 258-1751
Princeton NJ, 08544 FAX: (609) 258-1771
--
Michael D. Hirsch mhi...@cs.princeton.edu
Computer Science Department Voice: (609) 258-1751
Princeton NJ, 08544 FAX: (609) 258-1771
Ron Asbestos Dippold
>I don't know why this didn't appear here, yet, so I am posting it.
Thanks, that was priceless. I'm sure the guys at Go and Stacker (to
name just two) will appreciate it...
--
The major concrete achievement of the women's movement in the 1970s was the
Dutch treat. -- Nora Ephron