Has Bill Gates declared war on
the United States?
By selling the U.S. Navy its defective, obsolete Windows NT product, Microsoft has
done what Saddam Hussein and other despots have failed to do: sabotage a U.S. Navy
vessel and take it out of action.
Government Computer News (http://www.gcn.com)
reported last month that the U.S.S. Yorktown was retrofitted with Microsoft's Windows
NT product and used in a battlefield simulation test. Fortunately for all concerned,
this was not a live-fire exercise. During a simple navigational maneuver, a single
piece of erroneous data caused Windows NT to crash, taking out the ship's propulsion
system. The mighty warship had to be towed to port for two days of humiliating and
expensive repairs.
It didn't have to be this way. The U.S. Navy bought 400,000 licenses for IBM's reliable,
futuristic OS/2 Warp system a few years ago. What are they using them for -- the
wallpaper on some admiral's cabin??
I have sailed with the brave men and women of the U.S. Navy. I know the nerve-wracking
anxiety of listening to the clink of chains from a Russian "fishing trawler"
echo on the sonar of a nuclear-powered submarine. I know the thrill of diving in
excess of <CLASSIFIED> feet and surging under the waves in excess
of <CLASSIFIED> knots to escape the observers. I have
smelled the electric stench of the helium-oxygen mix used to mitigate decompression
disease ("the bends"), and I have listened to the carefully measured tones
of a naval security officer explaining his tireless search for any trace of danger.
But most of all, I have learned the secret of the U.S. Navy's 200-year tradition
of scientific and navigational excellence: "Every backup system has a backup
system." And now the U.S. Navy has turned its back on the key ingredients of
its success. Somebody has sold out -- not to Russians, or the Chinese, or to Iraq
-- but to a gang of American traitors.
If an arms merchant sold defective gunpowder to the military, would there be no
penalty? If tainted fuel was delivered and crippled a Navy ship, would there be
no outrage? Is there no court-martial for a band of swindlers selling a pack of
lies encoded in digital format? Must American ships be turned into floating crematoriums,
and the blood of a thousand U.S. sailors stain the hands of Mr. Gates, Mr. Ballmer,
and their accomplices in crime, before these scoundrels dance from the end of a
hangman's rope? Or maybe the gallows is too good for them.
I remember when Microsoft introduced its faulty Windows NT 4.0 product in the summer
of 1996. During the rollout in Seattle, a bomb threat ruined the gala event. Was
it mere coincidence that Mr. Gates was quickly hustled onto a U.S. Navy ship that
"happened" to be stationed nearby? What piece of high-ranking Navy brass
does Microsoft have in its hip pocket, anyway? And just what are these high-tech
grifters in Redmond running, some kind of Ollie-North-style shadow government, in
defiance of the U.S. Constitution? Maybe "Microsoft Uber Alles" is already
far more than merely an infantile fantasy of the sinister Microsoft manipulators.
What is the penalty for treason? Hang them all. Hang 'em high!
