'Bill Sux' Etched on Pentium Chip
Netlore Archive: Emailed image purporting to show a Pentium chip with the words 'Bill Sux' etched into its surface
Description: Emailed image
Circulating since: July 1998
Status: Fake
Email example contributed by C. Cummings, July 1998:
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Subject: FW: High tech graffiti? API - Time Magazine reports an interesting case of high-tech graffiti. It seems that a couple of Intel engineers working on the design of a recent version of the Pentium microprocessor included a message that describes their feelings about Bill Gates, president of Microsoft, a good corporate pal of Intel's. When a portion of the Pentium chip is examined under a powerful scanning electron microscope, the phrase "bill sux" is clearly visible, etched into the surface of the chip. The "flaw" in the chip was only discovered by accident well after the chip was released into the market, too late for Intel to prevent the chip from being used in the manufacture of tens of thousands of PCs. Intel says that both engineers responsible were former employees of Motorola, makers of the chips that are the heart of the Apple Macintosh. Both engineers have since been fired by Intel. 
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Comments: I don't think so. Time magazine (which never published such a story in the first place) doesn't think so. Intel doesn't think so.
Wired News seems to think it might be true - but apparently they'll believe anything they read on the Internet.
As for "API," well... no such wire service exists. The story's a hoax.
It is, however, a gem of computer industry folklore and taps into some major themes: well-known rivalries between high-tech companies, flaws in microprocessor chips discovered too late, and Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates' role as the industry whipping boy.
But isn't the photo real, you ask? Sorry, no. It appears to be a Photoshopped version of an image used in the cover art of a book called Dynamic Asset Pricing Theory, published in 1996.
