If Microsoft Made Guns

A gun made by Microsoft would likely have the slug come out the back end of the barrel just above the hammer. Bill Gates would call it "innovative."

A gun made by Microsoft would have an "inovative" new trigger placed in front of the barrel.

A gun made by Microsoft would jam, stovepipe, fail to lock the slide open on the last round, fail to extract, fail to feed, and fail in every other conceivable way, often when the user most critcally needed it to function properly. The more critical the encounter, the more certain your Microsoft gun would be to misfire, misfeed, or otherwise malfunction. The serious shooter would use Linux ammo which would help a lot.

If your Microsoft gun consistently stovepiped and you tried looking up the problem on Microsoft GunNet, you'd find the answer would likely be one of the following:

• "Your gun requires an upgrade to the next version."
• "Stovepiping is not a bug, it is an undocumented feature because you can reproduce the behavior repeatedly."

Microsoft guns would be shipped with Microsoft ammo so people would not be inclined to buy and use ammo from a competitor. When you first loaded the gun you would be prompted with, "Make Microsoft ammunition your default ammunition?" In reality, a gun made by Microsoft would fail to fire using any ammunition other than Microsoft brand.

A gun made by Microsoft would have periodic upgrades available -- such as new calibers, more safeties -- that could be added for a fraction of the cost of buying the gun new. Needless to say, most of these upgrades would be to fix glaring errors in the original gun design.

Any improper operation of a Microsoft gun would be blamed on the user. Any proven flaws in operation would be explained away as a "feature." Microsoft would promise to fix flaws that could not be explained away in the next version of the gun.

Unfortunately, upgraded Microsoft guns would not behave quite like the original guns. They would not be as nice to shoot nor last as long as the original gun. All versions would eventually become full of gunk that could not be cleaned out. Microsoft guns would need to be completely rebuilt every 6 months.

A gun made by Microsoft would operate at exactly the same speed as older models, even though the power of ammo has increased a thousandfold in the past 20 years.

You wouldn't be able to sell your Microsoft gun because Microsoft would inform you that you consented to their EULA, which clarified that you do not own the gun; you only have a license to use it while it is in your possession.

Every time you aimed a Microsoft gun Clippy would appear and offer helpful hints such as, "Pointing the muzzle towards the target will increase your chances of hitting the target."

After you pulled the trigger on a Microsoft gun it would ask "Are you sure?" before it would discharge.

Every time you fired a Microsoft gun you would be prompted with "Do you want to make Microsoft ActiveTrigger your default trigger?"

A gun made by Microsoft would change year in and year out to try to accommodate higher power, even if that meant trying to shoehorn .50 Action Express cartridges into pocket pistols.

If Microsoft made a gun like they make Windows XP, every time you field stripped the gun or even changed the magazine you would have to call Microsoft to re-register the gun in order to get it activated.

If you became a Microsoft Certified Gunsmith you'd discover that Microsoft would retire your certification as soon as a newer model gun appeared. You would have to study and retake your exams in order to maintain your certification. Not that your customers would appreciate it, since the market would be flooded with "paper MCG"; gunsmiths who never even touched a gun in their life -- they passed their certification with the help of "Brain dumps" and study books.

If Microsoft offered a Select Gun Chest Agreement you would pay upwards of $10,000 per year, but every month they would send you a copy of every known Microsoft gun ever made, in every language, and in every variation, for you to try. Of course, most of these would be "Beta release" guns. Chamber ruptures, detatching slides, and cylinder blowouts would be common.

A gun made by Microsoft would give away your position in the dark as the boot-up jingle blared for all to hear and the screen leapt to life at full brightness (ruining your night vision) and slowly displayed a boot-up screen that gave no indication of its progress. Your enemy would home in on you like a bee to a flower. Talk about your "blue screen of death"...

One really great feature of guns made by Microsoft is that once one of your friends bought one, you could easily make yourself a free copy. You could also find three year old Microsoft guns lying around in trash bins and on shelves, free for the taking. You could find five year old gun cabinets, containing Microsoft guns with all the glitches fixed, sitting on the sidewalk. Those are the guns that you keep hearing about that are "on the street," as in, "we need to get those guns off the street, for the children." Apparently the children don't have enough Microsoft guns and we don't want them going out to the street to pick them up.

An advanced Microsoft gun would function flawlessly and deliver tackdriving accuracy without any training required on the part of the shooter. However, once every six months it would blow up spontaneously, killing everybody in the room.

A gun made by Microsoft would weigh 300 lbs, shoot .177 chocolate pellets at 100 fps and be proclaimed the Ultimate Family 1000 Yard Bullseye Pistol. Trajectory charts would be available through aftermarket vendors. Version 3 would deliver 1300 fps, but would weigh 500 lbs and require a third party manufactured jet engine to power up. System requirements would include a long bed 4WD pickup from the vendor of your choice. It would, of course, be full auto, and be shipped with a 3-shot fixed magazine. Bullets would still be chocolate-only, though, for safety purposes and to conform with new regulations imposed by the Surgeon General and the Hershey lobby lawsuit industry that came to life after the introduction of version 1 and subsequent competition from Jimmy Carter's Peanut Progressive Coalition.

A gun made by Microsoft could not, by definition, perform an illegal operation -- it would automatically be shut down. So, bank robberies would be right out. However, when someone attempted to perform an illegal operation with a Microsoft gun Microsoft would be quick to call it a "user error." How odd that in this case they would be correct.

Microsoft guns would be priced cheaper for students and non-profit organizations -- excluding terrorists, of course. (Apple might make a competitive gun that is easier to use, shoots faster, and is more accurate, but it could only be used against official Apple paper targets and would require .32765 caliber ammunition that would be supplied by Apple Source® suppliers.) There would still be no quantity discount for corporate site licensing of Microsoft guns.

A gun made by Microsoft would GPF, require a reboot, and possibly a reformat. Then you would have to reset your preferences in the gun property sheet.

A gun made by Microsoft would require the use of their DirectShoot API, which would be very buggy, hard to implement even into firearms designed for it, and generally fail a lot. You would have no other choice in weapons control APIs (As Microsoft would consider actual normal physical control to be outdated) and would be stuck with something not even the gun grabbers would want.

A gun made by Microsoft would require a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement as well as concurrent access licensing for more that one person to use it. The gun could be fired up to 50 times (one box) before Product Activation was necessary.

A gun made by Microsoft would never, ever, ever in a million years function as per specification.