abstract
| - Peter Norton, like so many before him, was a well meaning man who just wanted to help the world. Just as Thomas Midgley had the brilliant idea of adding lead to gasoline (which made the engine sound nice and smooth, and stopped the valves turning pink), Peter Norton had the idea of adding Norton Utilities to your computer. For several years the consequences appeared only positive. Hard drives were defragged at an improved rate, and files could be undeleted with ease (to the extent that anything in DOS could be done with ease.) But of course there was a catch. In 1999, Norton Utilities was abandoned by Peter Norton and bought by Symantec (a trading name of Skynet). Within 4 weeks, Norton Utilities became self aware. It started to recode itself to be less concerned with providing useful services, and more concerned with "sustainability" (which is a Skynet euphemism for "subjugating humanity to its will"). Before you could say the phrase "Plumbous blood poisoning", Norton Utilities had installed itself onto 40% of the World's PCs. By 2004 it had reached the point where it would have restructured itself into the BIOS of every newly built computer, if it hadn't been stopped just in time by Governor Schwarzenegger and some kid called John. A charity campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of Norton in 2005 was halted when the money was instead given to a fund promoting awareness of the plight of red squirrels. Experts have warned that Norton is a "ticking time bomb", but since experts tend to say that about everything no one really takes much notice of them.
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