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News item: Microsoft sics the license dogs on Austin, Texas

My wife's elbow jabs me awake. "Honey, wake up. I hear a noise in the office." How is it that a woman who can't hear the distortion in the next-cheaper stereo speakers can hear the smallest sound in a house at night? I hear it, too, so I grab my severed Gibson B-45 guitar neck and start quietly downstairs.

Following the steady click-clack sound coming from my office, samurai guitar neck poised to strike, I confront the intruder. "Hey there, Pizza Boy, long time, no see." I can't believe my eyes. It's Toadie, right hand man to the Redmond Billionaire. I haven't seen him since the "Corel incident." "You know that breaking and entering is against the law?" I ask. Toadie looks at me with that cocky little Redmond smile of his. "Law? Yea, right, law. Gotcha, Chief. Absolutely."

"What the heck are you doing here?" I demand.

"Oh, just submitting a few talkbacks. Quick, I need a good name. I was going to use Tirebiter, but it's fallen off the 'A' list."

"I meant what are you doing in my house?"

"The Big Guy sent me," he replies. Figured you could help us out. He really took a shine to you last year."

I'm not impressed. "What does he think I'm going to do?"

"We've been having a little trouble with that paranoid delusional black helicopter chaser, Joe Barr. Do you know him?"

"I may have heard the name."

"Joe's been out there doing the wacky dance again. Says we leaned heavy on the city of Austin to shell out large for years to come."

"Joe tends to be right about these things," I say.

Toadie's eyes grow wide as pies. "I said he was paranoid and delusional. I didn't say he was wrong."

I put the guitar neck down. "So, what's this got to do with me."

"It's the Big Guy's new book," he answers, " 'How to Become a Billionaire in 5 easy steps."

"The one that starts with 'Get a software monopoly?'" I ask. " I don't see the connection."

"Come on, Pizza Boy," he fires back. "Use your head! The Big Guy's got a real PR problem if this thing gets any attention."

I can see that Toadie is growing impatient, so I shut for now and he continues on.

"SpinLikeATop and SweetTalkTheSimpleMindedMedia both think you're the guy to take the edge off chapter 5.

"Chapter 5?"

"Yeah." Toadie's smiling now. "Beat Municipal Mopes into submission with legal threats, then snarf oodles of tax money for years to come by demanding long-term contracts."

I shake my head. "I don't mean to seem negative here, but your problem's a whole lot bigger than a chapter in some book?"

"But it's the BIg Guy's book," Toadie corrects.

"Even so, Strong-arming cities and grabbing tax dollars..."

"Hey look, Pizza Boy, " he replies, "if we don't take it, they'll just waste it on things like police and schools. I don't know you're so upset about. You Free Software guys gave us the idea."

"Huh?"

Toadie smirks. "You guys always complain about the RedmondWare Tax when you buy a computer that already has our RedmondWare installed on it."

"Yeah, so? " What I wouldn't give for a brilliant comeback right now.

"Redmondware tax. Kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? We liked it so much we went after some real tax money. Sent letters out to six or seven hundred cities. " He laughed. "Got $130 grand out of Virginia Beach just by looking cross-eyed. Get this: they don't even use Office."

"I don't know. $130 grand doesn't sound like a big return for all that trouble?"

"What Trouble? They spent $80 grand figuring it out for us. We barely spent enough to buy latte all around."

I shake my head in disgust. "Well, you guys are pretty threatening. I saw the letter this Schrade lady sent to the City of Austin.

"Who?" Toadie asked, genuinely puzzled.

I Sigh. "ThreatenThemWithDeathByAThousandLawyers."

Toadie's face brightened right up. "Oh yeah, her. Sharp cookie."

"Yeah. Sharp." I reply. "I have the letter right here. Let's see, "Our goal..blah,blah,blah.. minimize any future legal and business risks associated with licensing'. Pretty scary stuff coming from a lawyer."

"Yeah," Toadie says dreamily, "Great stuff. Y'know, they're going to sign an Enterprise Agreement with us."

"Without taking competitive bids?" I ask, surprised.

Toadie's ready for that one. "No point. Nothing else will work for 'em. CIO said so himself."

"I guess they never heard of Largo, Florida using Linux for its systems," I reply.

"That's Florida, this is Texas. Completely different countries."

I'd forgotten about that.

"Don't feel too sorry for them, " Toadie continued. "These really aren't the sharpest spurs on the old boot, if you know what I mean. Their CIO actually said only 1% of the money goes for servers. I guess his servers don't do any useful work since that would mean buying extra software and seat licenses. All 200 and some-odd of them." Toadie let's out a big laugh.

I start to a little mental math. "Let's see 200 some-odd servers, 1% of the total bill, carry the one, fudge the security and -- Cheez. That's got to be a ten or 15 million dollar deal!"

Toadie beams. "Now you know why it's in the BIg Guy's book."

"Wait a minute," I reply, "Didn't most of your corporate customers raise Hell because Enterprise Agreements required them to have current versions of the software?"

"Hey, it's good to be up to date. Locking people in to future purchases gives us real motivation to innovate."

"C'mon, Toadie. Innovate? I just read Mike Wendland's piece on Windows XP in the the Detroit Free Press. He said the biggest innovations in XP are what you took out, what you broke and all the ways you make it an expensive pain in the butt to live with. I've got the last line taped to my wall:

Arrogance? Laziness? You be the judge. But when you're a monopoly, you can do anything you want.

"Don't be so naive," Toadie scolds. "You can't believe those commie-radical midwestern media types."

"It's the freakin' Detroit Free Press, not 2600.com or the New York Times," I stammer.

Toadie ignores me. ""You know, we're already putting the finishing touches on the next versions of Windows."

"After XP?"

"Yup. Got em all lined up. First up is Windows FU."

"FU?" I ask, "I haven't heard of that one. What new features does it have?"

Toadie laughs. "It keeps your license up to date. Our technicians are working real hard with the folks from RealMedia, Borland, AOL and Intuit. There's a small chance that some of that stuff might work."

"Great," I reply.

Toadie is really rolling now. "We've got the followup versions lined up, too. First comes Windows FUR, which introduces the Left-Handed surcharge to help us re-coup the cost of Left-Handed testing. Then, Windows FUITA adds a recreational surcharge so we can afford to keep our programmers happy even though FUITA is really just DOS 1.0 with a splash screen."

I hate his cackle.

"I don't see how I can make this look good," I reply, "If you get all their money and fubar their computers, they won't be able to run the city or pay for things like road construction and police."

"That's it!" Toadie is flat-out beaming now. "'Redmondware clears up your morning commute. No detours, no tickets.' That's great. The Big Guy was right, Pizza Boy, you're the best!"

With that, he turned and left. I went back to sleep.