Ask a Windows Vista Programmer

Dear Windows Vista Programmer

Hey now sugar! Ah'm having some problems with mah desktop icons. Mah Windows won't keep muh icons at'all, it sez dey corrupt! Think y'all can help a "Rogue" out? Thanks in 'vance, sugah!

-- Sexy in Biloxi!


Where am I? This world is unfamiliar to me. I see things, like little images of other things. They swim before my eyes, enraging me. I crush them between my fingers.

Damn the little pictures, these colors in my pure black spirit realm. These things, these "icons" ... on this field, this "desktop" ... I must destroy them. Elf-work, this.

Void is pleasing to the dark. Pleasing to the hole where my soul should be.


Dear Windows Vista Programmer

My son Dakota likes to play games LOL! He likes to play all kinds of games, with the Pokeymons and the Guitar heros! LOL! But they dont work on our new Hewlet Packer computer! Help! What shoudl we do! LOL!

-- LOLly in Miami!


May the Unblinking Eye damn you and your shitting bairn. I would grind you both with my battleaxe if I could. Learn the Lesson of the Cavern of Pain and be silent!

Now with this axe, this wedge of steel forged in the pits of Isengard with the blood of slaves and the kindling of Ents, I shall destroy everything I can touch inside this diabolical machine you have trapped me in.

It is a world I don't understand, but which I will gladly destroy. What is a D: drive? I care not. It must die in the name of the White Hand of Saruman!


Dear Windows Vista Programmer

I'm your average white suburbanite slob. I like football and podcasts and Second Life. But sometimes that's enough to keep a man like me interested. Sometimes I got to go out and have fun at somebody else's expense. Am I asshole or what?

-- An Asshole


Human! I remember humans. I remember how we hunted you down. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I can still smell the wheat fields burning, the carcasses piled upon the pyres, upwind of me and my warriors. The reek of burning huts filling the wind tickles my hunter's nostrils still. How you cried out! How you cried out to your weak and feeble gods!

One morning I remember, yes. I was a warrior then, a war-leader. I led a lurg of fifty orcs through the highlands of Rohan.

We came upon a miserable, lone farmhouse, nothing but logs and thatch. We surrounded it, flinging torches on the roof, chanting in the Black Speech as our masters taught us, in the manner of our god, Sauron:

Gu kibum kelkum-ishi, burzum-ishi! / No life in coldness, in darkness!

Then we did orc-work.

We cut the throats of the barking dogs. Then we slaughtered the lolling cattle, severed heads from bodies. How heavy their meat fell, and some of my goblins fell upon their raw flesh at once. Those starving ones could not help themselves.

Then the human family came running out, terrorstruck and keening, their throats gurgling like their own stricken animals. So stupid they looked, faces fat with fear.

They knew they could not flee us. Where would they run to? How could they outrun us, who run like the black Nazgûl?

Instead they threw themselves on their knees, praying to gods who did not come. But we had no mercy, for we are the fighting Uruk-Hai.

We killed them all where they lay and what we did not eat was left for the Storm-Crows of Saruman.

Now I am in your devil box, killing and destroying. And the War of the Ring goes on.

Experts Warn of New Computer Virus

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Computer security experts today warned of a powerful new computer virus that is infecting millions of computers worldwide.

The new virus, named "Windows Vista", is infuriating users, slowing productivity, and defacing desktops on a global scale.

According to the experts, once the Vista virus infects a host computer, the user will lose control over the majority of their computer's activities.

"Every time a user tries to launch a new program, the virus will taunt them about their own helplessness with its trademark, useless nag screen," said Steve MacAfee, a security expert with CyberGuard Systems. "No matter how many times the same program is run, the virus will waste their time and infuriate them with its cruel prank.

"The Vista Virus also hates other programs," MacAfee said. "It will freeze them, warn users not to run them without permission, and quite often, won't let them run at all.

"It flat out refuses to run a vast array of Windows compatible software, some no older than 2003," he warned. "It's angry, and it likes to kill."

The virus will also corrupt and befoul a user's desktop, marring attractive icons with useless overlays and defacing them with its own graffiti, an ugly four-colored shield, MacAfee said.

"This is the kind of desktop or website defacement that the warez community likes to call 'ownage.' It's typical juvenile delinquents behavior."

Unlike traditional viruses, Vista is not downloaded from email or the Internet, but has been surreptitiously pre-installed on new machines all over the world.

The virus replaces a traditional, functional operating system such as Windows XP SP 2.0 with what one victim described as a broken, bloated, tyrannical state of never-ending corruption and despair.

"It's the kind of thing they'd design under Stalinism -- or in Hell," said Vista victim Kanomi Pikajuna. "I can't imagine what the creators were like. They must have a callous disregard for humanity, or some kind of deep-seated, misanthropy, a psychotic need to inflict pain.

"This is the kind of user experience you would design if you were immersed for eternity in a lake of burning fire, and were damn certain to make sure others shared in your eternal torment."

Kanomi's Klassroom

Dear Kanomi's Klassroom,

What is this 'cloud computing' I keep hearing about? And how will it affect Second Life?

- Confused in Caledon


Dear Confused,

Different kinds of computers are made by competing companies, just like Prada and Coach make different purses.

Microsoft makes the Windows Computers and Apples makes the Apples Computers. A man named Linus Torvalds makes the Linus computers. And now Google is making the Cloud Computers you asked about.

Cloud Computers aren't for sale yet because I've never seen them on TV. Doesn't matter though, because Second Life doesn't support Cloudy Computers. So you do not want them. Do not want the Cloud Computers.

Just use Windows or Apples. Windows is a good choice if you are an experienced computer guru like me. Just type your blog right into the boxes or 'windows' as we web programmers call them.

And Apples is a good choice if you have a goatee.


Dear Kanomi's Klassroom,

My Second Life experience is laggy and slow, but when I go into the menus to adjust my settings, I am overwhelmed. Can you help?

- Lagging in the Lab


Dear Lagging,

What's ruining your Second Life is Lag. Go to the Help Menu and turn on your Lag Meter. It will look like a traffic light, except the three lights are on at the same time!

Uh oh! Ding ding ding! Mixed reality metaphor! But don't be confused by it. It works just like traffic school!

If all of the lights are green, you are good to go! Welcome to the future, big band user! You can now roar down the information superhighway in your flying car!

If some of the lights are yellow, slow down and use caution. Try to hold perfectly still and not do anything for a while, like Windows Vista.

If the lights still don't turn green, try installing the patches. The patches can be found on the Microsoft.

If they are red, then you have lots of lag. Ask the people around you to leave. Their thick hair has too many prims and causes lag for you. Here's a great tip for less lag: be friends with more bald people.

Another tip is to go somewhere where there are no avatars and nothing interesting, like the IBM region.