BEST IDEA EVAR!!!!one!!

I have had the Single Best Idea in the History of the Internet™.

I am going to buy this car, slam it into this office, and twitter™ the tinyURL™ of the flickr™ album and YouTube™ videos to my FaceBook™ friends.

Thereby causing the Internet™ to go so meta™ that it collapses the universe™.

I will accept the Nobel Prize for Brilliance whenever you find time to hand that out.

Microsoft Promotes Terrorism

I re-installed Windows XP on a beige-box this morning.

This particular beige box had been sitting in a closet for at least a year. Then sitting on a pallet rack for at least six months (because I cleaned the closet). I didn’t know what might be living in this old thing, so I decided to do a format and install. There was a shiny MS Proof of License Certificate of Authority right there on the side, so it should’ve been no problem.

You can see where this is going, I’m sure…

After a 45 minute installation, this particular product key, in all its foil-stamped, holographic glory was “invalid”. Wouldn’t activate. Tried several times to no avail.

So I called Microsoft. Like a good, responsible, not-pirating-at-all citizen, I went through their friendly voice-activated messaging system, read off my 54-digit installation ID, clicked all the right buttons and was told that this is an invalid product key and I would need to contact the manufacturer…of the non-descript, unmarked PC with a clearly valid product key sticker. Then I got hung up on. No “Would you like to try again?”, no “Press zero to talk to a CSR.” Just *click*.

Awesome. Let’s try that again.

Call back, this time I don’t go through the prompts. I just wait. It’s an old tactic, but a good one that works with lots of phone systems. Wait or press zero.

Finally I get a person. The ol’ Microsoft special: low call quality, marginally english-speaking, not helpful at all. I give her all 54 digits of my installation ID again. And again. I click all the horribly obvious buttons (if I hadn’t clicked them I couldn’t have gotten to this phone number in the first place).

“I’m sorry, I cannot help you resolve this situation. You will have to talk to our Product Key department.”

This is, apparently, a totally different department than the Activation department (that makes sense) and she can’t transfer my call there (that makes sense, too). Awesome. I’ll call ‘em myself.

More voice-prompts, more repeating myself, more repeating this horribly long installation ID, more re-clicking the same buttons, re-entering the same numbers. But this time, the guy can help me. He gives me a new product key. Another 25-character alphanumeric string. In almost english.

You’d think that’d be it – new product key, a button that says “Change Product Key”, and I’m golden. Nope.

Now I get a new 54-digit installation ID string! What’s that mean!? Another phone call to the Activation Department!

Only this time, he can quickly and easily transfer me to the Activation department. Apparently Microsoft phones only work in one direction. That saves me time, though. In a way. I guess.

Back to the friendly, voice-activated Activation department. Where I have to enter this newer, better installation ID. Which finally works. And my installation is activated. And windows will quit bugging me…at least to activate it.

So, at the end, I have spent (precisely) one hour and 27 minutes on three phone calls with Microsoft to activate a product that I had a real, valid, certifiably authentic product key for. This required three 54-digit installation IDs to be repeated twice each, two 25-digit product keys to be repeated thrice each, and a 42-digit confirmation ID to be repeated twice.

Now, you’re still wondering how this relates to terrorism. Or you should be.

After I got off the phone, just out of curiosity, I Googled “windows XP product key”, and in .18 seconds I had multiple links providing unlimited-use Windows XP product keys. By Microsofts decisions and on-going actions, piracy is cheaper (free), easier (copy, paste), and faster (by a lot), than doing it the legal way.

And, according to Michael Mukasey piracy funds terrorism.

Therefore, ipso-fatso, Microsoft Promotes Terrorism.