Microsoft to Acquire LDS Church by Chuck Huber SALT LAKE CITY (AP)- In a surprise move that left competitors stunned, Microsoft has followed up its successful merger with the Roman Catholic Church by announcing a cash buyout of the Church of Jesus Christ -- Latter Day Saints. In recent weeks, high officials of the LDS Church (more commonly known as the Mormons) had been rumored to be in negotiations with both Novell and Lotus, but the Microsoft move came as a complete surprise to most industry/religious observers. With much of Microsoft's competition based in Utah, many current employees of WordPerfect and Novell commented (anonymously) that they would feel morally obliged to jump ship to Microsoft. Novell is countering by pointing to non-competitive clauses in senior personnel's contracts, and urging conversion to the Reorganized LDS Church, with whom Novell has entered into hasty negotiations. Microsoft spokespersons officially denied any intent to pirate Novell employees with this move, though they indicated that they were willing to sell Novell their Eastern Rite Catholic subsidiaries to avoid anti-trust action. According to the official press release, Microsoft CEO and Pontiff Bill Gates said, "We've been hoping to acquire the Mormons for a long time. They're a fast growing organization with a large, mobile and highly dedicated sales force which will work synergistically with our worldwide Catholic retail outlets. More importantly, we're acquiring the LDS "convert-the-dead" technology which we will incorporate into OLE 3.0 (scheduled to arrive in the next versions of Windows and Windows NT, currently codenamed "Rome" and "Jerusalem" respectively)." Gates went on to say, "This will expand our user base to generations of users who never before had the chance to purchase Microsoft products." Microsoft insiders who declined to be quoted predicted record profits from requiring deceased church members to purchase annual upgrades in order to maintain their eternal salvation. Chuck Huber Davidson Library University of California Santa Barbara huber@library.ucsb.edu