"Carnivals, at their heart, are pretty depressing events: the garbage food, the toothless workers, the crappy prizes you actually can win, the disregard for health & safety, the dirt. . .[link|http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-05-26-001-26-OP-MS-0008|http://linuxtoday.co...001-26-OP-MS-0008]
Cover it all up with a bright coat of paint, garish murals, loud music, pretty flashing lights, big beautiful stuffed animals, your significant other, plenty of darkness and maybe a hip flask and it starts to look like Elysium.
This is Microsoft. Take a mountain of appallingly bad software, and cover it with euphemisms like "Software Update Service, Visualization, Longhorn, Enterprise Class Applications, Enterprise Security Management", and poof, you're at the carnival.