Comment by ralferoo

7 hours ago

Hehe, this reminds me of 30 years ago when people used to stylise it as Micro$oft or creatively misspell it as Microshaft, etc. Even on the Amiga, there was the filesystem that could read PC format disks that was called MessyDos. It just seems like the next generation has discovered what an easy name it is to make puns from.

If you're German-speaking: "Klopilot" and "Vibrierkot" are some modern day personal favorites.

On a similar, nostalgic note, I recall boot screens for "Sinnlos 98" floating around, back when modifying the bootup logo was a thing.

I used M$ at work the other day by accident, I was like ooh wait this isn't turn of the century slashdot.

  • From my parent's home in Wyoming I stab at thee!

    https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/22/m

    • I find it interesting to go back in time so I read the accompanying article and came across this snippet:

      > despite the computing apocalypse that Windows XP's Product Activation features were supposed to ignite, I've never had the first problem with it

      At the time, I remember a lot of scare stories about how the Product Activation system in Windows XP would result in the death of user freedom. It didn’t effect me because I was using GNU/Linux (probably Mandrake or Mandriva Linux). When I later got a job in an office that ran Windows XP, I don’t remember XP causing any more headaches than any of its predecessors. If anything, it was even more stable than 2000 which itself was superior to 95, 98 or 98SE.

      I also fully agree with the last sentence:

      > I do think it's clear that the way we use our computers totally pisses off gigantic, wealthy companies of all stripes, and it was only a matter of time until they tried to do something about it.

      3 replies →

    • Lol, I was thinking about that comic just yesterday, what a coincidence. "As you have no doubt been monitoring my communications for quite some time!" read in the voice of the pharmacy owner from Family Guy.

  • there was an old humour piece on /. about how their name appeared so many times in their products that it took up a significant amount of space, so they were remaining themselves "moft" to save five bytes per instance. for some reason that stuck with me, I still find myself randomly thinking of them as moft every now and then.

MS-DOS itself is derived from QDOS, which stands for "Quick and Dirty Operating System".

Things only went downhill from there.

Last week on a comedy show (the daily show) they made a joke about bill gates "micro and soft" which was old in the 90s already, so I can confirm this is the case.

  • I think this was 100% justifiable use. If the founder of the company is going to be hanging out with pedophiles and sex traffickers, then micro and soft jokes are open season. All of his philanthropic adventures will never wipe his stain clean.

  • I've always said it was in bad taste for Bill Gates to name the company after his johnson.

Don't forget Windoze.

Orgs have had sensitive skin like this for a long time. Gamespy was a service for launching and playing multiplayer games with lobbies before Steam, and if you “accidentally” typed “GaySpy” (it was the early 2000s) it would autocorrect to “GameSpy” by the time it appeared in your messages.

I used to have a M$ email signature 30 years ago, and pay, nowaydays I mostly use Windows on my laptop, because I am not willing to pay Apple prices even though I can afford them, and even last year I was dealing with GNU/Linux installation issues on a Gigabyte BRIX.

Been in this industry since I graduated college, I have never stopped using Micro$oft or Microshaft. Also a fan of M$, Winblows…

Thank goodness their employees have time to crack down on people making fun of them on fucking Discord. That should definitely be the priority of a multi-trillion dollar software company, is making sure your users aren’t mocking you. We don’t need a taskbar that works reliably or anything.

My favorite nickname for MS-DOS is "Domestos" (pronounced /də ˈmɛs ˌtɒs/) which is a brand of bathroom cleanee from the UK.