Cuisinenet:
_________________________
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 Java virus development project to do a feasibility study on a food-related Windows program. Not sure what it would do. Low priority. |
