Microsoft today apologized to the city of New York for a guerilla ad campaign that included hundreds of butterfly decals plastered all over New York's midtown. Microsoft has agreed to stop the illegal ad campaign and help the city in clean up efforts. Ironically, Microsoft has never apologized to anyone for the Windows ME operating system which most experts say has caused more economic trouble than any guerilla ad campaign ever could.

"Let's face it, that operating system was a disaster," says system support technician, Carl Denton. "I can't tell you the countless hours I've spent rebuilding friends' and relatives' computers with anything but Windows ME. They beg me for anything, even Windows 95. I tell them, 'Your USB won't work' but they don't care. They just want everything to fit on the screen correctly, they want to be able to buy a piece of software that says 'Windows Compatible' and have it be true, and most of all they just want fewer Win32 errors while viewing porn on the internet. That can be very distracting, so I hear. But I don't blame them, I blame Microsoft."

Microsoft has never admitted any wrongdoing in releasing what was obviously an inferior product for what many say were legal diversionary tactics.

"If you aren't releasing something that looks completely different every two years then how can you be 'innovating',"

Sources say Microsoft's next "innovation" will be adapting this logo

points out US Press legal analyst Richard Meover. "And Microsoft was right in the middle of that anti-trust fight with the government where they were constantly arguing that they should be allowed to have a monopoly because they are driving innovations. That's a hard sell to make when most people are satisfied with Windows 98 SE and Office 97. So Microsoft made it a priority to release anything that looked new which resulted in an operating system with different control panel icons that crashes more and a word processor with an animated paper clip designed specifically to tell you when you are starting to type a business letter."

Microsoft has denied all along that they released products simply based on their battles with the Justice Department.

"That's ludicrous," says Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, who last month sent unsolicited spam to thousands of Microsoft customers telling them how much Microsoft is innovating it's customer support functions. "We take full responsibility for the graffiti and litter in New York due to our reckless ad campaign, but we have never released a product before it was ready for market and we have never tried to appear innovative when we weren't, although we've never not been innovating, so really the whole point is moot."

"The only thing moot about any of this is Windows ME," replied Denton as he returned to rebuilding his neighbor's computer. "When Joe next door asked me to rebuild his computer I asked him 'Where do you want to go today?' and he said, 'Mandrake Linux 9.0 RC3'. That's the kind of innovation Microsoft is driving."