Netscape Navigator is no more, but fear not, as Windows XP is coming to save the world, with the most overblown press release I have ever read.

For Morse, there was that first telegram, which read, "What hath god wrought." Alexander Graham Bell famously used his new telephone to summon his assistant: "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." Perhaps e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson has largely been forgotten by history because his first e-mail consisted of the distinctly uninspiring message, "QWERTYUIOP."

While it might at first seem presumptuous to carve the names of an entire team of software developers onto history's list of communications-technology giants, the newest version of the Windows operating system seems indeed poised to ignite the next revolution in human communication when it launches Oct. 25.