It's an old joke. That's why it is in The Onion.
At 05:58 PM 1/3/01 EST, Ernst wrote:
>Check out
>
>http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents.html
>
>At $0.10 per binary digit, the royalty fee GIMPS would
>owe Microsoft for the last Mersenne prime is nearly
>$700000. Should we divide this equally amongst GIMPS
>participants, or bill people proportionally to their
>CPU-year contributions? I hope the fellow whose run
>actually discovered the prime hasn't spent all his
>EFF prize money yet...
>
>On the plus side, such royalty fees are legitimately tax
>deductible as business expenses. As usual, we can count
>on Bill Gates to look out for the little guy. Thanks,
>Bill!
>
>-Ernst
>
>
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>
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