Microsoft Bankrupted by Foolish E-mail Giveaway Microsoft declared bankruptcy this week after giving away over one hundred trillion dollars for no good reason whatsoever. As part of a vague promotional/beta testing program, anyone who received an unofficial-sounding e-mail describing the giveaway could earn money simply by passing it on. Millions of e-mail users received several hundred dollars each in the dramatic and pointless transaction, and some reported earning as much as three hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing more than forwarding a message. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Microsoft founder Bill Gates at a press conference Monday. "I mean, why wouldn't we pay out huge sums of money to an unlimited number of people in order to beta test a useless, nonexistent e-mail tracking program, despite the large number of techno-geeks willing to pay us for doing our beta testing?" Gates added, "Regardless of this catastrophic meltdown of our entire corporation, we would like to thank everyone who enthusiastically passed on our e-mail tracker despite its ominous Big-Brother undertones." "We're really lucky," commented AOL president Steve Case. "If Microsoft had succeeded in perfecting its e-mail tracking program, Internet Explorer would have been unbeatable. After all, having a large, monopolistic, universally resented corporate giant keeping complete records of one's personal correspondence is exactly what every computer user wants." In related news, Neiman-Marcus apologized for overcharging for cookie recipes, an epidemic of people being pricked by AIDS-infected needles in movie theaters continues to go completely unreported, people are dying left and right from pay phone buttons poisoned with ridiculously expensive drugs, Middle Eastern women are no longer oppressed thanks to a petition, and a little boy died of the imaginary disease Ostriopliosis because you were too callous to forward his e-mail message. Posted on Sun 31 Oct 09:47:08 1999 PST Written by Kenny Byerly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.segfault.org -- Mark Derricutt Now Playing: Par Lind Project - Live in America - Disc 1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Offtopic List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
