<nettime> FW: Gates Suffers General Protection Fault

[Bruce Sterling <bruces@well.com>]

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From: "futurefeedforward" <fff@futurefeedforward.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2001 18:40:08 -0700
To: <bruces@well.com>
Subject: Gates Suffers General Protection Fault



August 3, 2101

Gates Suffers General Protection Fault

REDMOND--A recently leaked internal company memorandum has confirmed that
Microsoft Chairman Emeritus Bill Gates' collapse last Thursday was related
to his participation in testing of the company's beta-stage development of
an operating system for the human genome.  Marked CONFIDENTIAL and addressed
to members of Microsoft's Board of Directors, the memorandum admitted
frankly that Gates' mysterious condition was "a result of Chairman Gates'
direct participation in the development of W[indows for the] G[enome]," and
sought to reassure Board members that the incident "does not represent a
threat either to the established launch schedule or to the integrity of
Bill's leadership."

    Witnesses to Gates' collapse during last week's annual shareholders'
meeting describe a lucid, vital Gates speaking to the assembled crowd for
nearly an hour before beginning to show signs of trouble.  "He was really on
a roll," recalls one shareholder present at the meeting.  "He was going on
about physics being an open-source OS for the universe and being the number
one threat to Microsoft when, all of the sudden, he stopped talking
mid-sentence.  He just froze.  Then somebody up on the stage tapped him on
the shoulder and he seemed to come out of it for a couple minutes until he
just fell over, stiff as a board, muttering something over and over."

    Other witnesses, including insiders at the Pacific Technology
Executives' Medical Center where Gates received initial treatment, confirm
that he has fallen into a fugue state characterized by "deep, universal
muscle rigidity" and "compulsive glossolalia."  "He was blue!" exclaims one
hospital insider.  "I mean really blue.  Not just hypoxic, but this really
weird, deep blue.  I've never seen anything else like it.  And he just kept
repeating the same thing over and over again, something about a general
protection fault in gene 23Xw something.  The whole thing gave me the
creeps."

    Gates' collapse and the leaked response memo appear to confirm rumors
that Microsoft's ultra-secret 'Bangkok' project aims to extend the company's
franchise into the realm of gene therapy and genetic trait manipulation.
"For a long time Gates has been talking about the need for a way to
standardize and coordinate gene manipulation functions across phenotypes,"
notes industry analyst Juliet Joliet.  "Bangkok almost certainly involves
the development of a Windows-brand platform for standardizing and
controlling the interface between manipulation products and the underlying
genetic hardware."

    Describing Gates' condition as "significant but trivial," the internal
memo provides hints about the company's plans for Windows for the Genome,
including mention of government review of terms in developer agreements
qualifying disclosure of the product's "TPI" or "Trait Programming
Interface:" "We have reason to believe that confidential FTC approval is at
a sensitive stage," notes the memo.  "We cannot stress enough the need for
the Board to present a confident, united response to the Chairman's
incapacitation."

    Information concerning Gates' prognosis has been scarce since his
transfer to his private Mercer Island medical facility, but sources close to
the Board hope for a rapid and full recovery.  Discussing treatment measures
planned by the company's engineers, the confidential internal memo notes
that "absent a more elegant solution, the reported afunctionality can be
resolved by reformatting the Chairman and doing a clean reinstall of the
product."

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