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Your CPU Will Explode
Crowdpleazr1 writes "In case any of you were still opening up email from people you don't know, the Weekly World News is reporting that you could now be killed by a malicious email virus that will alter the molecular structure of your CPU, making it explode!! Of course, as a person who understands these newfangled computer things, even I can not imagine what evils those hacker people can come up with. I think I'm going to go hide in my Y2K compound now. "
Fortunately I was runing Windows in VMware so it only virtually blew up, but had it been runing natively... scary.
On the atari jaguar, there was a certain series of instructions that when executed repeatedly would cause the chip to overheat. While it wouldn't explode per say, it could pop out of it's socket.
-- Virtual Windows Project
Microsoft confessed responsibility today for the epidemic of exploding CPUs, which they attribute to a bug in their new "Hardware Upgrade Wizard." CEO Steve Ballmer explained in an interview today on MSNBC:
"Microsoft has recently been severely criticized for 'bloatware,' or large, resource-intensive programs which require modern, high-performance systems to achieve adequate performance. But we at Microsoft are devoted to bringing our customers new, innovative technologies, to take users 'where they want to go today.' And since the hardware exists today, giving us the opportunity to work out our new visions for twenty-first century computing, we feel it is our obligation to use it to the maximum degree possible."
"However, we're fully aware that this trend toward greater functionality, and hence toward greater complexity and size of the code, might leave our customers with 'legacy systems' in the lurch, so to speak. So we have spent over three hundred million dollars in a secret project to develop our unique and patented 'Hardware Upgrade Wizard'. With this exciting new technology, we can remotely rewrite the traces in the silicon substrate of you CPU chip while it is running!. The 'Hardware Upgrade Wizard' is capable of engraving components in-situ right upon the silicon chip of your own old, obsolete CPU, with a feature size of less that 0.07 microns. Thus, even on the relatively small chip in a 386 CPU, we can fit the entire circuitry of an up-to-date Pentium III chip; and since the trace size is so small, that new re-engraved chip, with over eight million components, actually runs cooler and with a smaller current consumption than it did, pre-re-engraving, when it was a 386 with a mere 360,000 components. Thus any putative problem arising from the yeast-like growth of our code base becomes, simply, 'no problem.'"
"And we decided, rather than releasing this new application for download from our website, instead, in the playful spirit of April Fools, we would surprise all our faithful customers by remotely upgrading their old, slow PCs without their knowledge, so that the next time they turned them on, the lucky users would discover that they now enjoyed, absolutely for free, the sizzling performance of a new, state-of-the-art system!
The method we used to remotely install the 'Hardware Upgrade Wizard' was a variation on the standard "Melissa" email trojan-horse, using the exclusive 'Virus Propagation Wizard' built in to every copy of our popular, best-of-breed Outlook email client software. Our engineers started sending out our little surprise gift on Sunday, March 26, 2000."
"To our dismay, reports started filtering in over the next few days about a small, unforeseen bug in the 'Hardware Upgrade Wizard,' somehow un-caught in our extensive beta testing program, where the energy released in the course of the in-situ re-engraving, rather than being released slowly and being drawn off and dissipated by the heat sink, instead is released all at once over a period approximately equal to time it takes photons to cross the width of the chip, in a fashion similar to a Q-switched laser, resulting in a violently exothermic burst of hard radiation."
"All of us here at Microsoft are deeply sorry about the property damage and loss of life caused by this unforseeable software 'glitch.' However, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear. We at Microsoft explicity deny any legal liability for any unfortunate side-effects of the 'Hardware Upgrade Wizard.' Anyone who was affected by this software malfunction clearly must have clicked through the license agreement for Microsoft Outlook. You will see, in section 114A, paragraph 32, line 178, of the license agreement for Microsoft Outlook, a clear disavowal of any responsibility 'for damages or injuries arising from the use of the Software.' Thus we are clearly exculpated from liability for any resultant damages."
"In other words: You bought it, now you eat it! Suckers."
Recklessly courting a libel suit, I remain,
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I heard some guy's beowolf system was attacked by this virus...leveled an entire city block.