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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gnuman who wrote (58860)	5/8/1999 8:16:00 AM
From: gnuman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Satire: Tonight On BillTV Under a deal announced Thursday, Microsoft Corp. will provide software to the set-top boxes in millions of American homes served by AT&T Corp.'s cable television. Here's a whimsical Top 10 list of Ways Microsoft Might Forever Change TV: 10. Your set will occasionally freeze. No problem! Just push the reset button and wait two minutes for it to boot up again. 9. Play Interactive Jeopardy from home; prizes paid out in Microsoft stock options. 8. All shows will get new names, as in "Microsoft(R) ER," "Microsoft(R) Felicity" and "Microsoft(R) Masterpiece Theater." 7. Every two months, you will be invited to upgrade your cable box software to fix bugs that the company never acknowledged in the first place. Calls to the help desk will cost only $3 per minute. 6. If the government wins its antitrust case against Microsoft, you will have to buy the components of your cable box from three different manufacturers and put it together at home. All of the companies, however, still will be owned by Bill Gates. 5. Using excess computing power in set-top box, you can simulate global weather patterns for your child's science fair project. 4. To change channels, first go to the File menu and pull down the list of options. Choose "Change channel." A dialogue box will appear to ask if you want to change channel by number, station call letters or via a random search function. Click on "by number" and a TV dial will appear on your screen and invite you to "turn" it, using the pointing device on your remote control. After "turning" the on-screen dial to your channel, a small hourglass will appear on the display for 25 seconds, then another dialogue box will ask you to confirm your selection. Or you can circumvent the process by typing in msnbc.tv l/cgi-bin 3. Manual for remote control only 400 pages long. 2. Television dies during last 10 seconds of the Super Bowl: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." 1. To turn off your television, first click the "Start" button. -- by the financial staff © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company