Let's set the wayback to the year 1973, shall we?

I was 18, a kid really. And I had arrived at this strange institution called Rice University. I played in the band, I was interested in journalism, I was full of myself and insufferable.

My first editor at the newspaper, The Rice Thresher, was a short, hyperactive genius named Steve Jackson. (The picture is 30 years old, but that's how I remember him.)

Steve had a habit of pacing back-and-forth in the small office we used back then, and firing Xacto knives unexpectedly at the door. He missed me several times, for which I am eternally grateful.

After graduation, Steve came within a course or so of being minted as a lawyer by the University of Texas Law School, before deciding that the passion he'd had at Rice should be where he made his living. (This lesson helped validate my own career choice of journalism.)

Steve's passion, as you may have guessed by now, was gaming. Back in the 1970s games were designed with tiny slips of cardboard, punched out of larger sheets. Steve's innovation, which came out in 1977, was a game that cut production costs nearly in half. It was called Ogre and one of the two players had just one piece.

If Steve could find one of those old game boxes and ship one to Bill Gates right now, I'm certain Gigadollar Bill would get the reference. Because right now, that's the game Gates is playing in real life. And he's the Ogre.

For proof, check out this long David Berlind feature on Massachusetts, and its decision to exclude Microsoft's XML file formats from future state purchasing contracts.

This was the meat of the story for me:

"The Massachusetts Enterprise Technical Reference Model (MA ETRM) proceedings are where some of Microsoft's biggest competitors (IBM, Sun, HP, Novell, and Adobe) gathered to make sure that Microsoft was checkmated with a devastating weapon that they themselves have been unable unleash on the American chessboard: Democracy. "

The lead to David's story was filled with Star Wars imagery, Evil Empire vs. Rebel Alliance, that sort of thing.

But I'm Bill Gates' age (Steve is a few years older). We're old enough to remember Microsoft as a start-up. (Berlind might say we remember Anakin as a kid, even before he was discovered by Obi Wan.) Now Gates is so powerful the entire industry must gang-up to defeat him.

And this is just one battle. The war is ongoing. Microsoft vs. The World is the dominant computing story of our time, at least insofar as enterprise customers are concerned.

The point is that, in Steve's original game, there are ways for the Ogre to win.

Bill just needs to brush up on them.