Get a load of this.

I've been blogging on this borrowed laptop for a couple of months, after my own hard drive went to electron heaven. For the past few days, Microsoft has been giving me a nastygram on startup, offering an "update" from something called "genuine advantage." "You may be a victim of software counterfeiting," it tells me. I presume this really means, "You may be a perpetrator of software counterfeiting."

Now, I don't know if the operating software on this ten-year-old, fourth-hand laptop is properly registered or not, and I don't care. I certainly wasn't going to connect with their site and allow them to "upgrade" my friend's kindly-lent computer into an inert paperweight. This morning Microsoft apparently tired of waiting for me to do the right thing, so they "updated" my computer without my consent and every five minutes or so tried to shut down and re-boot it. I wondered whether, after I shut it down this morning, it would ever work again. And when I booted up a few minutes ago, I got this: (Click for embiggenment.)

I've never been one of those who denounced Bill Gates as the antichrist. Until now: Now I'd like to string him up by his scrawny neck.