Text 18686, 111 rader
Skriven 2007-06-12 14:44:10 av Don Hills (1:379/45)
  Kommentar till text 18683 av Rich Gauszka (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: Microsoft now wishes your kitchen to phone home
===========================================================
From: black.hole.4.spam@gmail.com (Don Hills)

In article <466dcf12$1@w3.nls.net>, "Rich Gauszka"
<gauszka@dontspamhotmail.com> wrote:
>
>http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=492
>
>The "Kitchen Client" software will extend the Windows operating system and
>integrate with current and future Windows Live services, according to
>sources close to the company. It sounds, from what I can tell, more like an
>add-on layer than a whole new version of Windows.

Monday, 10 AM -- Chicago, Illinois -- Start-up software developer Cuisine
International announced CUISINENET, the first working program to seamlessly
integrate word and food processing.  Called a breakthrough for small
restaurants and snack bars, Cuisine Chairman Mark Meigs confidently predicted
sales of thousands of copies with shipments soon to begin.

Monday, 4 PM -- New York -- Cuisine International shares closed sharply higher
on announcement of new CUISINENET product.

Tuesday, 9 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates,
III announced that Microsoft Food for Windows would soon enter beta testing. 
Gates described the product as the first of a projected family of products to
include Food for Windows, designed for small commercial dining establishments;
Personal Food for Windows, designed for home kitchens; Portable Food for
Windows, designed for lunchboxes; and, of course, at the high end, Food for
Windows NC (Nouvelle Cuisine) designed for large institutional dining rooms. 
Asked by a reporter about CUISINENET, Gates said that he had never heard of the
product, but was not surprised by it, because the software business is highly
competitive, and Microsoft has to compete on the merits with many strong
competitors, as the FTC had recently concluded.

Tuesday, 3 PM -- Chicago, Illinois --  An angry Mark Meigs showed reporters a
copy of the nondisclosure agreement signed by Bill Gates, under which Cuisine
International had informed Microsoft a year earlier about plans for CUISINENET.
 Meigs said that in hindsight, he should never have signed the agreement, as
the only thing he learned from Microsoft was that Gates was considering making
changing to Windows.

Wednesday, 9 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
announced that Microsoft would soon publish specifications for the Windows Open
Kitchen Architecture (WOKA), a series of design specifications to permit
manufacturers of toasters, ranges, and other kitchen appliances to integrate
their products into the forthcoming Microsoft Food for Windows line.
 Asked about reports of a nondisclosure agreement with Cuisine International
 for a similar product, Gates said that the other product was really at most a
 niche product, and would probably have less functionality than the
 food-related features that Microsoft would be building into the new
 Unsaturated FAT File System which would be part of DOS 7.0.  Gates said that
 he doubted there would be much interest in a dead-end solution that would not
 be able to keep up to date with advances in WOKA.  Gates added that over
 11,000 manufacturers of kitchen appliances were already having serious
 discussions with Microsoft about WOKA, and that he expected almost all
 important eaters of food to standardize on the WOKA environment.

Wednesday, 10 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
announced that he would be giving the keynote speech at the American Bakers
annual convention on "Nutrition at Your Fingertips."  Gates played down
speculation that he would use the Bakers convention to introduce Microsoft Food
for Windows, saying only that alpha testing was proceeding ahead of schedule,
and the product would be shipped when it was ready.

Wednesday, 11 AM -- Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft Corporation announced that
its Chairman, William H. Gates, III, had made a donation of over $250 of
personal funds to the Cordon Bleu to begin an endowment fund for the Bill Gates
Professorship of Advanced Cookery.  The famous French cooking school confirmed
that it had agreed to be a beta site for the much discussed Food for Windows
application sweet.

Thursday, 9 AM -- New York -- PCWeek Magazine reported in a copyrighted story
that it had obtained a copy of correspondence from Microsoft to Cuisine
International, demanding that the small developer of kitchen software cease
using the Cuisine name, as it infringes on the trademark for Microsoft Food for
Windows NC.  Microsoft added that Chairman Mark Meigs would also have to change
his own name as Mark infringed a copyright on the Windows Edit menu, Meigs
infringed the trademark on Meigs Field in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and
Chairman infringed the trademark on Bill Gates's title which he had acquired
with personal funds from Mao's estate.  Also, Microsoft advised that while the
company did not actually have to move out of Chicago, use of the name on press
releases infringed a trademark on Windows 4.0

Thursday, 4 PM -- New York -- Cuisine International stock closed at 0-bid,
1/16-asked.

Friday, 9 AM -- ? -- An anonymous spokesman for an unnamed Midwestern software
developer announced the discontinuation of operations.  Undescribed legal
problems were cited as the reason.  Others speculated that a failure to
appreciate the competitive nature of the software business may have led to the
company's sudden collapse.

Monday, 9 AM -- Microsoft Internal Mail
 From:  billg
 To:  mikem
 Re:  Food Program
Please see if you can reassign one of the 3,000 engineers from the OS/2 virus
development project to do a feasibility study on a food-related program.  Not
sure what it would do.  Low priority.

--------------------------------------
Anomymous, from 1993.


--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager,
 preparing you for the wonders of OS/2!"
    -- Advertisement on the box for Microsoft Windows 2.11 for 286

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