OS V

X is right. My version numbers were pretty error-ridden. The following history is at least a little more accurate, and not so blindly patriotic:

America Beta was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Unity.It was open-source, and quickly ended up with regional version conflicts. Not surprisingly, it turned out to not be very perpetual afterall.

After that there was a 1.0 release, with an immediate 1.1 patch. This put the nation on a single standard, though many said the patch didn’t go far enough. Many users were locked out of the more important functions of the software, and your permissions were set at the factory. You either had the “Home” or “Professional” edition of the software, and most consumers were never allowed to upgrade. This version of the operating environment was also outwardly hostile to any indigenous program that was using resources the OS might want to draw upon. It had a nasty habit of repartitioning the hard-drive, often moving other programs onto bad sectors. This particular bug continued until version 3.6 or so.

In the 1860s we saw multiple competing releases. Each had it’s flaws, but eventually the more robust system prevailed. In the end people were happy to get back to a single standard again, which they heralded as the new and improved “3rd Edition” of America.

After a lot of hooplah, the public eventually figured out the system didn’t quite deliver on everything it promised, and some patches were going to be needed. There were version updates thereafter when the Jim Crow laws were repealed and again when various minority groups given suffrage. In addition to those needed upgrades, sometimes service packs were released when hackers compromised the security of the system and deleted or corrupted core resources. We hit 3.9 after Nixon resigned,but the promised major revision never occurred. 3.9.2 had no spam filter, and our inboxes were subjected to endless advertisements about cigars and blue dresses.

There was no 4.0. Instead, in 2000 after a major hardware crash, a rival operating system was installed: “American Vista” was an ironic title that implied you were now looking upon America from a distant vantage point. It had clearly been reverse-engineered, sort of a mix of our original software and a competing system designed in Germany in the 1930s. It had numerous unique bugs, many of which were passed off as “features”. It’s greatest commonality with the previous edition was the lack of spamfilter – but by this time the most common bulk scheme was from the actual manufacturer of the operating system, an outfit called WMD Inc. Most Americans reluctantly tolerated this version until the new user agreement included a clause pertaining to a monthly charge to use the system. That extra cost seemed to be the deciding factor.

That brings us to November 2008. We’ve just run a virus check, and are in the process of backing up the data in preparation of upgrading the software when the new version releases in January. Personally, I’m hoping this time we’ll get features that are genuinely features, including fewer security issues, a radical new graphical interface, and the option of setting certain parental controls to the “off” position. I also heard a rumor the software somehow reduces your carbon footprint, but I’m a little fuzzy on how that will work. I am very excited at the prospect that this version will be much more popular on the world market. For the past 8 years, the rest of the world had been more critical of our system software than we were, and there were numerous incompatibility issues. That may soon be a thing of the past.

Will the “America - OS V” be something completely new? Does the V stand for “5.0”, or “Victory?”
I’ll be happy with any meaning other than “Vista2”.