Briefing #J00001

Short History Of The Conflict

Then came Unix, and Unix was good. However, followers of Unix soon found themselves feared and loathed by women and felt they could best exercise (I use this term loosely) their creativity in cloistered rooms in academia. These men, and an occasional woman formed a cult that grew in intensity and maturity over the years.

They used their keyboards as prayer altars, and they prayed on them daily for hours upon end. Praying to Unix is a long and repetive task, so, much like the monks of yore, they abbreviated all of their manuscripts into terse clusters of consonants with an occasional vowel thrown in to maintain legibility. They adopted sodas and candy bars as their holy bread and wine and developed highly complex mechanisms for checking their larders remotely, eventually even turning this into a form of worship called "finger"-ing.

And Unix prospered and spread throughout the institutes of learning. There were some, though, whose hands were not quite so nimble, whose minds were not so suited to thinking in consonants, and who resented the tribute Unix demanded from them--hours of prayer upon the keyboard. And Unix was far from forgiving about typos. They felt there must be a more just entity that could rule their lives in harmony and without the fear of mistyping at the altar. This segment of the Unix community met for intensive meetings in a secluded PARC, only surfacing for occasional snacks. Their snacks were generally much healthier than those of the Unix-ites, and they strongly preferred apples to any other form of sustenance. These worshippers, through a long and arduous excommunication from the Unix church, eventually formed their own religion and called themselves the Apple-ites. These new protestant users were, for a time, very popular and enjoyed a healthy heyday free from most forms of persecution.

At about the same time, as Unix-ites were busy bickering among themselves and beginning to split into distinct denominations, as well as Orthodox and Not-So-Orthodox (X-Window) faiths, a young heretic named--well, let's just call him William--began to preach the gospel of Windows. Windows were good, windows were nice, windows helped you do more today than you could yesterday. William's message had great popular appeal, and still does today, much like Oral Roberts or Benny Hinn. These evangelists learned their tricks from William--form a big corporation, generate a little faith, and receive a lot of money for it. William's ministry is called Microsoft, and is the most powerful church of all today.

The Microsoft Minsitry has not subsumed all, however. Instead of the Catholic Jesuits of the previous centuries, today's modern religious shock-troops are the Visual Basic programmers. While these programmers are large in number, they are generally small and weak alone, and have little depth to their faith. They are fanatical about their faith, however, and most would rather die than corrupt it. They have little influence on the members of other faiths, though, generally because of their limited spirituality and focus on less-than-paradisical business concerns.

There is another group of Microsoft followers, those who would probably be agnostic if given the choice (access to cyberspace doesn't come without a price). Repelled by the ascetic faith of the Orthodox Unix-ites, and too quick thinking for the Apple-ites, these followers generally have greater technical depth than average Microsoft devotees. They tend to disparage and laud Microsoft in subsequent breaths, for Microsoft has given them the ability to do what they want--mostly, even though it's only on one hardware platform and not scalable. These followers are waiting for something, they know not what. Perhaps Java will lead the way for these poor, wandering souls.

Orthodox Unix-ites are generally the most technical minded of all religious followers today, but their bizarre rituals and sacrifices at the 101-key altar, in addition to their intolerance, have estranged the common man. Not-So-Orthodox Unix-ites seem to be largely normal on the surface, and tend to be more tolerant of other faiths. However, there does seem to be something chilling in their stares as they chatter on about their newest prophet, Linux.

The conservative group of Apple-ites still remains today and they tend to be the least technical minded of the collected faiths. In this, they have something in common with most Visual Basic programmers, but in a generally more wholesome, rounded way. They are extremely devoted to their faith. Although they are men and women of good character and consience, these aspects extract a certain toll--they do seem to think and react a little slowly. This is generally not a problem for them, since their operating system is tuned to compliment this characteristic.

And so, this is the environment in which the battle continues today. These religions are constantly at odds, perhaps assisting one another one week, and back-biting the next. The old ways of warfare have evolved into sophisticated techniques, encompassing everything from planned architectural incompatibility and cyberlogical attacks by viruses to terrorism, extortion, and marketing. These are dangerous times, my friends.

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