**** PRESS RELEASE ****
 
 Microsoft Corporation today announced plans to buy the Philadelphia
 Mint from the United States government.  Final details of the
 transaction were hammered out in an all night bargaining session
 which included President Bill Clinton representing the US, and four
 unnamed chorus girls. An obviously fatigued and smiling
 Clinton emerged from the meeting and stated that he saw no
 chance that there would be opposition from anyone within the
 government.  In an effort to appease regulators, Microsoft
 gave a copy of Windows NT and a box of paper clips to Novell.
 
 Microsoft said it intends to print money in direct competition with
 the US Government. Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, declared, "The
 Government has no vision and we intend to eventually take over all
 operations." The official announcement was made by Microsoft
 spokesman, Brad Silverberg, who showed reporters an alpha version of
 the currency Microsoft will release next year.  The currency, called
 simply "Money" (patent pending) bears a striking resemblance to US
 currency . When questioned about this, Silverberg stated that the US
 Government had obviously copied the design.  Silverberg alleged that
 this was constantly happening to Microsoft, citing Apple's theft of
 the Windows look and feel, and Stac's pilfering of on-the-fly disk
 compression as only two examples.
 
 Gates said the acquisition was made in order to move closer to his
 grand vision of "Money always at my fingertips." Gates further stated
 that the move to 32 bit operating systems would make it difficult "for
 the lemms, uh, I mean, users to continue throwing money at Microsoft
 in ever increasing amounts."  "This (acquisition) will make it
 unnecessary for our customers to continue to struggle with the
 challenge of actually buying and installing software," continued
 Gates.
 
 Response within the industry and government was immediate.  All major
 ISV's appeared at the press conference and announced support for
 Money. Steve Gibson called the acquisition "the most earth shattering
 event in the history of the world, without question."  Brian
 Livingston said this was the most exciting news "since cousin Pee Wee
 got his own television show." Ed Bott declared that PC Computing would
 dedicate its next twelve issues to the new Money and said we would
 "all be using it soon." Jim Seymour stated that "the miraculous Money
 is now the standard for currency in the United States."  Hillary
 Clinton was not available for comment.

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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