Linux Zealot Tells a Story

Captain Kirk: "Star date 519536. We have just entered the Mandrake system. The system is inhabited by a hostile yet primitive race which still use a command line OS in their ships computers called Linux.

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Ensign: "Captain! Mandrake ship approaching with shields up!"

Captain Kirk: "Fools! how can they expect to beat the USS Enterprise? We have just upgraded our computer to Windows 3000! Hail them on all frequencies"

Spock: We cant do that captain, Microsoft hasnt released how our comm signals are structured. They wont be able to respond."

Ensign: "They are closing in Captain!"

Captain Kirk: "Go to red alert!"

Ensign: "We cant captain, Windows 3000 is saying that it cant find the device drivers for the red bulbs"

Captain Kirk: "Okay shields up then!"

Ensign: "They are charging their weapons captain!"

The mandrake ship flies past the USS enterprise and fires its phasars.

BOOM BOOM (CAMERA SHAKES - EVERYONE GOES FLYING)

Captain Kirk: "What happened?! I thought shields were up!"

Spock: "It seems the mandrakes exploited a buffer overflow vulnerbility in our Shield.exe program"

Captain Kirk: "Ok, charge up the phasers and photon torpedos!"

Ensign: "Right away captain!"

LIGHTS DIM WITH A LOW HUM

Captain Kirk: "Spock! Whats happening?"

Spock: "It seems that the phasar.exe and photontorpedo.exe applications have caused multiple memory leaks all over the ship."

BOOM BOOM..EVERYONE GOES FLYING AROUND AGAIN

Captain Kirk: "Okay Reboot the computer!"

Ensign: "I cant captain, ive got a blue screen!!"

Spock: "Thats illogical"

Captain Kirk: "Engineering! We have a problem, I need you to fix the Windows 3000 Kernel immediately!"

Engineering: "I can't do it capt'n, im giving her all ive got but I dare not try to fix the Kernel or Ill breach StarFleet Directive 32 of the licence agreement."

Spock: "Thats illogical too"

Ensign: "It wants me to press Enter to continue or Escape to exit. I dont know which one to do!! We're all going to die!!!"

Captain Kirk: "Pull yourself together ensign, Escape and Enter do the same thing on a blue screen."

Spock: "Thats even more illogical"

Captain Kirk: "FOR FUCK SAKE SPOCK!!! SHUT UP!!!"

Ensign: "Okay captain, the system is rebooting"

Captain Kirk: "At last! Now we can fight back!"

BOOM BOOM - THE USS ENTERPRISE IS HIT FOR THE THIRD TIME..SPARKS AND PEOPLE FLY

Captain Kirk: "Why's it taking so long???"

Ensign: "Sorry sir, Its gone into ScanDisk"

Spock: "Captain, we have casulties over here"

Captain Kirk: "Sick bay, report in!"

No answer

Captain Kirk: "Why arent they responding??"

Ensign: "Windows 3000 says we havent got a sick bay"

Captain Kirk: "Yes we have!!! I saw it being fitted myself!"

Ensign: "Well I just ran Find new Hardware and it didnt find anything"

Spock: "Its plug and play - it should have found it on start up"

Ensign: "Sir, are you sure theres a sick bay?"

Captain Kirk: "FFS Ive told you already - I saw it being put in!"

BOOM BOOM - THE USS ENTERPRISE IS HIT AGAIN TIME..THE LIGHTS FAIL

Spock: "Captain, may I suggest we open a Comm link with the Microsoft HomeWorld(.net) and download the latest software update"

Captain Kirk: "Do it ensign!"

Ensign: "It says the server is busy - try again later"

Captain Kirk: "Okay can we go into DOS mode?"

Spock: "Unfortunately not captain, DOS was phased out in the Windows 2005 edition".

Captain Kirk: "How can this be happening? Our Operating system is far superior to theirs!!!"

Spock: "Unfortunately captain, we seem to be the victims of advertising. While Windows 3000 does indeed look better with its GUI and point and click menus, its far too complex and prone to break down for use in critical systems. The mandrakes on the other hand, can fire by simply typing in "phasars" at the console"

LINUX ZEALOT SIGNING OUT

	Wow (none / 0) (#1)
	by iat on Tue Jan 22nd, 2002 at 10:06:57 AM PST

	Although I'm getting really tired of the Lunix vs Windows arguments on Adequacy, that was a remarkably coherent piece of writing from you, with a serious point to be made underneath the geekish "humour". Congratulations! If your writing continues to make such good progress, one day we may post one of your submissions to the front page without editing it first. Adequacy.org - love it or leave it.

	The problem is, though (none / 0) (#2)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jan 22nd, 2002 at 10:35:08 AM PST

	that this is basically a recycled old geek joke, except it's five times as long.

	heh (none / 0) (#3)
	by PotatoError on Tue Jan 22nd, 2002 at 10:53:57 AM PST

	yea I thought some geek somewhere had already mixed their obsession (star trek) with their pet-hate (windows) into a story. Even though your link is more of a "anti-windows" story I know what you mean - there are probably about a dozen similar (and better) star trek stories about linux vs windows out there on the internet. By the way I take no responsibility or credit for that story - it was Linux Zealot who wrote it. <<JUMP! POGO POGO POGO BOUNCE! POGO POGO POGO>>

	Hehehe (none / 0) (#4)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Jan 23rd, 2002 at 08:40:22 AM PST

	i liked that article, only thing is, didnt they phase out Dos in XP... i guess M$ must have decided that was a bad idea....( in the story ) and then did it again. heh. they never learn...

	huh?! (none / 0) (#5)
	by PotatoError on Wed Jan 23rd, 2002 at 12:14:09 PM PST

	theres no DOS in XP? no console at all? Are microsoft crazy??? <<JUMP! POGO POGO POGO BOUNCE! POGO POGO POGO>>

	Dos issue (none / 0) (#6)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 11:05:30 PM PST

	I would just like to point out that for the most part XP is like 2k, that also applies to the fact that they have "Windows DOS" but just to note any form of true DOS has been gone with anything but a 9x platform.