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It's Funny 'Cause It's True (12/20/00)
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By now you've surely heard about Bill Gates's personal plea to the Federal Communications Commission, and many of you are wondering why we haven't introduced that ready-made plot point to AtAT until now. Well, here's the thing, see... whereas some stories write themselves, others are so "done" that there's nothing more to add. For those of you who missed it, CNET (and about a gazillion other sources) reports that Big Bill actually called up the chairman of the FCC personally to "urge a close examination of America Online's dominance in instant messaging." This isn't just a rumor; this was actually confirmed by a Microsoft rep. Bill Gates has personally asked a government agency to intervene and investigate potential monopoly abuses by one of its competitors.
See what we mean? What could we possibly add to that?
We suppose we could explain the joke, by reminding viewers that Bill's company is currently appealing a "guilty" verdict in the antitrust trial of the century. We could further elaborate by detailing the numerous instances in which Microsoft accused competitors like Sun of personally lobbying the government to file suit because they were all afraid of a little healthy competition. We could even point out the absurdity of the world's richest man (well, maybe not since the MSFT stock plunge, but still) begging the government for what basically amounts to long-term financial support. But to do that would mar the simple perfection of the whole thing.
So, no. Instead we'll just leave the story as is: a glittering, multifaceted jewel full of flawless internal reflections like an early Akhmatova poem (only funnier). This one will keep us smiling for a good, long time-- and by then, maybe Bill will call Apple to complain about Mac OS X stealing the Windows interface.
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SceneLink (2755)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/20/00 episode: December 20, 2000: Rumor has it that the upcoming "Mercury" PowerBook G4 shrugs off the chains of ATI graphics and instead packs an nVIDIA GeForce2 Go. Meanwhile, Apple's web site has been experiencing some worrisome outages; is the migration to Mac OS X Server to blame? And we'd like to say something about Bill Gates's phone call to the FCC, but it's already perfect on its own...
Other scenes from that episode: 2753: New Year, New Graphics (12/20/00) Well, here we are, less than three weeks away from the next scheduled Stevenote, which officially puts us into the "home stretch" as far as the leaks and rumors go. Expect to see a lot of conflicting and suspicious info flying around the 'net concerning whatever Steve may or may not have up his big, baggy sleeves... 2754: Connection Refused (12/20/00) Uh-oh, is it possible that Mac OS X's robust and modern substructure isn't quite as ready for prime time as Apple would like us to think? We have absolutely zero proof to support such a stance, but seeing as it's the holidays and everyone's already stressed out to the max, we figured we'd join in by casting vague doubts over the architecture's viability as a server platform on par with Solaris or (cough) Windows 2000...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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