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My sources tell me that a secret survey carried out by the Wampeter Group for Microsoft to assess the mass-psychological reaction to using "Windows 9" showed that a significant percentage of key decision makers ... people who could make the choice to move hundreds of thousands of machines in networks to the next version of Windows ... were World War II baby-boomers now in high executive positions.
These decision-makers negative pre-cognitive reaction to "nine" was based on their memories of how significant Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, "Cat's Cradle" was in their adolescence, and the fact that, in the novel, "Ice9" [^] was the substance ... a polymorph of water solid at room temperatures ... that threatened mankind with extinction, and the the planet with frozen oceans.
In addition the wide-variety of other cultural expressions that spun-off of Vonnegut's book over the following decades [^] all reinforced the contemporary meme of "something-followed-by-nine" as dangerous, toxic, even threatening apocalypse.
Microsoft, like all other corporations these days ... aware of such classic marketing horrors as the flop of the GM "Nova" car in Spanish speaking countries ... "nova" in Spanish means "no go," conducts surreptitious research and surveillance, including testing subliminal insertions of content into television, and radio broadcasts: all of this, of course, sub-contracted out to multiply-nested layers of independent sub-contractors on a need-to-know in order to create plausible deniability.
Of course, this is all further proof that this is the "best of all possible worlds."
« I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief » Immanuel Kant
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I thought it was because 7 ate 9...
*ducks*
CPallini wrote: You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him.
:Smile:
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Nine ducks? That must have taken a lot of pancakes and hoisin sauce. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I don't know whether any of the higher ups at uSoft are Lennon Fans [^] but I had a feeling that the obsession with the number 9 might have had something to do with it.
Quote: Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer's testing voice saying, 'This is EMI test series number nine'. I just cut up whatever he said and I'd number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn't realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying, 'number nine'; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that's all it was.
John Lennon
Rolling Stone, 1970
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.0 Beta
Have you ever just looked at someone and knew the wheel was turning but the hamster was dead?
Trying to understand the behavior of some people is like trying to smell the color 9.
I'm not crazy, my reality is just different than yours!
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If this is true, I bet they will skip "Windows 13" as well. 
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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They've already done that with Visual Studio - the successor to Visual Studio 2013 (which is v12.0) will be Visual Studio 14.0.
Anna ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Tech Blog | Visual Lint
"Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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BillWoodruff wrote: significant percentage of key decision makers
Sounds like a granfalloon was involved. 
Will Rogers never met me.
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Granfalloon - Thanks for reminding me of this concept. 
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See the cat? See the cradle?
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Two theories:
1) To avoid "Wine" as the nickname
2) To allow for a Windows 9 to be shoehorned in instead of a "Windows 8.2"
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I think the research is flawed, the vast majority of decision making executives are male of a certain age and 9 is the number of months to bring forth a new potential executive. All males have negative reactions to 9, alright most males!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I cant wait for Windows 95 to come around. Based on the current release cycle of every 2 years it should be out in 2184. Give or take depending on how many version numbers they skip.
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At what point will we have an integer overflow (taking into consideration the eventual progression of bitness in processors) and go back to calling it Windows 1 again?
My plan is to live forever ... so far so good
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DJ van Wyk wrote: At what point will we have an integer overflow ..
It'll be a long time. And if their past history is anything to go by, it'll be Windows -2147483648 
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Already happened. I've lost count of the number of websites that think I'm using IE 1.
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Perhaps Microsoft, in their wisdom, has switched to using base 9, in which case Windows 10 is actually Windows 9 in denary?
Be careful when using the calculator app though, or when viewing how much RAM you've got installed
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Actually it's because they can't count.
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I think it's because they already know it'll be a crappy release, and they want to stick to the pattern:
XP - good
Vista - Bad
7 - Good
8 - Bad
9 - Should be good, but it'll be skipped
10 - Bad
This isn't a signature
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I just wish they released 8.1 as 9, rather than skipping the number 
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.NET has overloaded . operator. (. is equal +)
that way
8.1 = 9
That is why Next Windows is 10
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There is no any secrets - MS just used positive reaction when people see "round" numbers - 10, 100, 1000... Plus "big increase" in numbers helps to convince people that there was "big change" in system.
Personally I don't believe there was something "rewritten from scratch" - MS has no brains to do that. Most probably it's Win-8 with "new hat" - new UI above old ugly Windows.
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Windows nine wouldn't work too well in German speaking countries
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I had thought about the German meaning "no" when I heard it.
I remember when Windows NT first came out (and did not work very well), the community said that NT meant, "Not Today". I think Microsoft would like to avoid those type of connotations again. Sure, they fixed up NT as they moved forward, but the "Not Today" moniker held on for a long time.
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