The Microsoft Comedy Channel

And now for something completely different—not!” tittered the Tabby, as the Microsofties queued up, once again, a golden oldie video at the Microsoft Management Summit in San Diego. Its not Spamalot, but the video, which was presented during Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglias keynote, still has some Monty-Python-caliber Brit wit.

Titled “We Feel Your Pain,” or “We FYP,” the clip, created by a Microsoft U.K. biz unit, is a classic: When Microsoft users are hit by a software glitch, they hit the We FYP button, which transmits an electronic jolt to the guilty Microsoft programmer. In one scene, a particularly culpable help desk person is ejected from the office and lands across the street in a pond.

“Maybe this is why the Microsofties are dragging their heels on Vista,” cackled the Kitty.

The yuks continued when the Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) team did their presentation. The crew came onstage in hooded robes in a funeral procession to mourn the passing of the SMS moniker. The next major release of SMS will be called—drumroll, please—System Center Configuration Manager. If you can believe it, there was a raging debate within Microsoft about the name change for more than a year. A lot of the developers on the team go back to the early days of SMS, which had the far-catchier code name of Hermes before its release. The die-hards claim that much like the late Rodney Dangerfield, the product got no respect for years, but by dint of hard work, SMS became a respected product name.

Suddenly, the KattPhones new ring tone, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” alerted the Kitty to a call from a crony attending EMC World in a storage galaxy, far, far away in Hopkinton, Mass. The caller said that during the Q&A with EMC kingpin Joe Tucci, someone from the international press asked the storage boss when users could expect to see a terabyte of storage on their desktop. “I could take all of you for a walk right now [behind closed doors on the EMC campus] to show you home and desktop storage products weve built. These are prototypes, so obviously were thinking about the consumer market,” said Tucci. But, explained Joltin Joe, the quandary is how to market it, saying that EMC is a B2B company and would eventually need to seek a partner to deal with the consumer channel. “One way we wont do it is by ourselves. Its very likely we go into it with other consumer companies using our technology and using our software and theyll pay us a fee, kind of like Intel Inside. Thats more likely,” Tucci told the crowd.

Bidding the caller adieu, Spencer soon found himself at a bar called Stingaree, chatting with a fellow techie about former CA CEO Sanjay Kumar pleading guilty in his upcoming accounting fraud trial. The pal said Kumar is rumored to be selling his one-third share of the New York Islanders hockey team to his former mentor, Charles Wang, presumably to raise legal funds. “I guess he figures hell be spending enough time on ice,” cackled the Kitty.

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