Hidden Features
Returning the cards may not've done you or me much good (as we quickly learned when we sought (oxymoron warning!!!) "customer support." But the cards, it now turns out, did Microsoft a LOT of good. To wit: We leave evaluation of the latest iteration of Windows to ZDNet, C-net, et al. But spies deep, deep within the bowels of the octopus that ate Seattle have revealed to us the existence of a super-secret sub-sub-sub-basement under one of those lovely buildings dotting the Redmond "campus." So secret is this space that only Bill, a handful of his immediate inferiors, and a half dozen indentured Microserfs who actually work there know of its existence. In several large machines in that basement, dear frequent Windows buyers, resides all the info you and I carefully entered on those product cards. Note to the Reader: Persons suffering from moderate-to-severe paranoia may wish to skip the following paragraphs. Through its vast interconnections with the Internet, Microsoft has spent years cross-referencing the millions of names of those dutiful Windows customers with any expressions of anti-Microsoft sentiment anywhere, anytime on the World Wide Web, Usenet, wherever. In other words, Microsoft has been out scouring the Internet, looking for YOU and ME. When a match is found, that is, when it turns out a registered Windows purchaser, after enduring daily multiple crashes for six months, has finally been moved to voice a negative sentiment on the Internet, Microsoft flags that name in their own records. If said purchaser then is so foolhardy as to go out and yet again send more money to Redmond by buying the lastest version of Windows, Microsoft is able to withhold various portions of the operating system from the person. Oh, to be sure, the version the person buys will run, and the person, being so used to system-wide deficiencies, will probably never notice anything is lacking. But. We have now learned that there are actually 27 Windows users in the world who have NEVER PUBLICLY COMPLAINED about the operating system. Microsoft of course knows who they are. And those 27 people--and ONLY those 27 people, after buying the new Windows, receive a UPS visit mere days later and find themselve in possession of yet another CD-ROM, containing all sorts of features not in the shrink-wrap box they just shelled out hundreds of dollars for. Other millions of purchasers, cross-referenced and flagged in that sub-sub-sub-basement, never find out about what they're missing. You'd think that anyone who, after all these years, has NEVER publicly complained about Windows, would be either sub-moronic or totally amoral, or both. Yet one of those 27 persons was so appalled by the unfairness of this corporate behavior, that he/she contacted us, and even sent the CD-ROM to us for our perusal. On the following pages, you will see a list of features and programs in the new Windows which you, being the whiny, no-good, S.O.B. that Microsoft thinks you are, are never going to get on your computer. Herewith, then, the Hidden Icons of the latest Windows: Hidden Icons in the latest Version of Windows >>
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