Gates, The True Messiah

It is official. Bill Gates III, hands-off talking head of Microsoft, has spoken the phrase that will save computerdom for all ages. Indeed, in an interview with the BBC, he has promised that next year's Longhorn version of the OS (already late as of this writing) will make malware, a, well, to use his words, "thing of the past" on Windows machines.

Because Microsoft now grudgingly admits that there has been a problem with security in its operating systems, it has decided that it is time to build security into the operating system. This is, for all who use such insecure and malware-plagued operating systems as MacOS X, LiNUX, and UNIX, a shock. We have reached a point at which the music will swell behind every declaration from Redmond. "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is more than just that tune from 2001 and Being There; now it the evocation of Gates' essence.

I envy you readers out there with Windows. You have a future none of us using other operating systems could ever dream of. Within 18 months or so, provided all goes well for deadlines, your computers will be the stuff of the Enterprise-D, complete with Majel Barret's voice, it may yet be. I am sure it will take someone like the Binar's—two programmers working together—to break Longhorn in any meaningful and devastating fashion, but such conditions only exist in Star Trek: The Next Generation, so have no fear.