Microsoft gets the names of everyone who wants a different choice; I never did get my Christmas card from them.
Jan 16, 2002
Microsoft has flexed its legal muscle and forced a company to turn over all information about all subscribers to its site, including email and snailmail addresses.
WTF?!??
So the message I’m getting, as a consumer, is 1) always lie like a cheap rug to online companies, because even if they don’t misuse the information they may be forced to give it to someone who will; and 2) Microsoft believes that it is a nation-like entity, with the ability to bully information and cooperation out of smaller countri— uh, companies. This latest action does very little to inspire consumer confidence in online commerce.
So, everyone join me in my action. Go to the Lindows site. Sign up for their email list, using an email address that you won’t mind deleting later when you start receiving spam from Microsoft’s sycophants (but will still be able to access the email because, hey, it’s a company and a product that offer alternatives to being Yet Another Bitch of the Redmond Menace.) When asked for your address, no matter where you live, list your state as “not Washington state”.
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It's not even an interesting shade of mauve. False advertising!
Dec 24, 2001
So. Let’s talk for just a minute about Windows XP. It didn’t save the galaxy. It seems not to be vital to the survival of the rebellion. It didn’t even get any satellite coverage from NASA.
Windows XP won’t guarantee you a long and healthy life. It won’t get you out of debt. It won’t cure world hunger. It won’t suddenly make that delightful person, over whom you’ve been fantasising for the past several years, realise that you are the most scruptious morsel on the planet — which would lead to them doing all kinds of things for you, or more to the point to you. Hell, it won’t necessarily even make you more productive (which is the reason to use computers and the software which runs upon them).
With all that hot air coming out of Redmond, you’d think northwestern Washington state would have had warmer weather these past few weeks.
Keywords: | technology | marketing |
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Abuse is such a flexible word...sadly enough.
Nov 26, 2001
All these Internet porn laws really make my teeth itch. In broad principle, they’re rather nice: do something to make the Internet a less child-unfriendly place. But how do you define “child-unfriendly”? What is porn, and what is not? Who gets to decide? And when did groups like the Southern Baptist Convention get the right to decide how other people’s children will be raised?
It seems to me that this really is a two sided problem, though. On one side, yes, the folks who send all the porn-smut through the email should be tracked down and more harshly penalised (like, oh, I don’t know, banned from using any Internet-connected computer for a minimum of five years is a start). And yes, the folks who use the teaser-images on porn sites should be forced to follow similar signage laws as real-world sex shows and shops, with like penalties for breaking the law. However, these outraged parents have to take responsibility for teaching their children how to build a value system. Sooner or later, children leave home. Some of them REALLY leave (i.e., moving from a town of 26,500 to a metro area of 1.4 million). If parents don’t equip their children to make their own judgements, stand up for their principles, and adhere to their own moral code, then parents haven’t done as well as they could. It seems to me that parents have a near-prime opportunity when their child views Internet porn. The kids are surrounded by a stable, supportive atmosphere. They are warm and dry. They have food to eat. They know that the people in their home love them (or they should…but that’s another rant). They’re not trying to eke out a living on the streets, spending each night hungry and cold. They’re not being physically attacked every day (again…another rant). They haven’t done anything that will get them thrown in jail. They haven?t even, technically, done anything that anyone else will ever know about. It’s a relatively consequence-free zone, so the children can concentrate on the lessons that the parents teach them.
Think about it: when would you rather discuss drugs with your child, around the dinnertable one day or one evening at the local police station? When would you rather discuss sex, in in your living room after school or in the hospital or police station after your child has been raped? If parents keep abnegating their rights, other people will raise their children. (To the troglodyte sitting at the screen while their children dismember the family dog “in fun”: That’s you, screwhead.)
Related entry: Isn’t Child Abuse Illegal?
Keywords: | teaching | society | legal | laws | family |
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Compassionate corporations...yeah. Right. Pull the other one.
Nov 26, 2001
So Microsoft has proposed a way to repay the damages that it owes in the antitrust lawsuit brought against it by a collection of U.S. states. Let us donate computers and software to hundreds of low-income schools, they say. The money and time spent will be a punitive resource for our (great big huge) company, and the little people will benefit directly.
Let me translate it another way: Aw, please don’t throw me in that riverbed!
Never mind, for the moment, that this doesn’t address the causes of the antitrust suit. Set aside, just for kicks, the arguments that the money spent will not equal the damages set by the U.S. courts. What Microsoft is really getting is the mindshare of a new generation. Maybe they’ve figured that for whatever reasons, they can’t advance further in their FUD campaigns among middle and upper-class computer users because of a) market saturation and 2) too many people aware of what they’re doing. So off they go, hitting the one social strata that is at once the most rabidly protected and the most disregarded: kids. They know that human beings are creatures of habit. They know that, to most people, the computer is just a tool (which is all it should be…but that’s another essay entirely). They know that part of building brand loyalty is establishing habit and relying on complacency. Where better to start building patterns of loyalty than in the cradle?
You think it can’t happen? How do you think Philip Morris became one of the top-selling brands of cigarettes in the U.S.? Joe Camel. People don’t see computers or software as being damaging to children or adults, so parents won’t rise up and smite Microsoft (or any other tech company) for their behavior. And by hitting the lower classes, the Redmond Menace can look all compassionate and caring, make the middle class feel good about themselves, AND start the brainwashing.
Yiig?!??!?
Related entry: Isn’t Child Abuse Illegal (pt. 2)
Keywords: | marketing | legal | family | consumer whore |
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If people won't play with their toys, they can't go in the sandbox.
Oct 26, 2001
So, MSN (which I have often simply avoided) has begun shutting out non-MSN browsers entirely. They claim that third-party browsers don’t have the standards support to correctly render the site, so they block them. However…running their site’s pages through the W3C validator gets the message “I’m sorry, this page does not validate”. This action coincides with the launch of the company’s latest operating system for business and home users, Windows XP — one of the more anticlimactic launches in the history of the Redmond Menace.
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I don't know which is worse: that he seems to have no plan, or that he might have one...
Oct 14, 2001
He lived on a Texas estate without a care in the world. Sure he drank and insulted people, but then he won the highest office in the land even though the people didn’t vote for him. And then the Republican came and started throwing food into minefields in central Asia.
I guess that’s Dubya’s idea of kinder, gentler hazing.
Keywords: | ignominy | Curious George Bush |
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