Bill Gates is irrelevant.

[damaged justice <frogfarm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings, all. Since I wasn't able to attend last week's meeting, here's
my MS/DOJ rant. (Mike -- apologies for burdening you with this again in
this forum, but our discussion (as all good ones do) got me to refine my
rant a bit further.)

[This rant is mostly a collection is paragraphs that don't really flow well
together -- it's not meant to, since I'm not a paid columnist.]

The antitrust advocates are asking the biggest thug for protection, the one
who claims a legal monopoly on the use of violence. This is the same thug
that is currently trying to pass a law which would (among other things) make
it illegal to decompile or reverse-engineer software. This is destroying the
village in order to save it.
 
Bill Gates brings a lot of shit on himself because although he doesn't lie,
neither does he tell the truth. He should stop waffling, grow a pair, and
tell the government: "I've got two words for you: Fuck and You. We're
shipping Win98 when we're ready if we have to escort it to the stores with
armed guards to protect it from you thugs. If people don't want Windows,
they shouldn't buy it."
 
I am a Linux user. Yet every day I am attacked by my fellow Linux users
because I defend the absolute right to write, buy, sell, and/or give away
programs without any help or hindrance from the State. They are what I call
"OS bigots". Like so many (but not all) Macintosh and Amiga users, they are
convinced their system is the best and anyone who uses anything else is
ignorant or evil. I don't give a damn what hardware or software anyone uses
as long as it makes them happy. If Windows is good enough for a consumer,
they'll use it. If it's not, they'll investigate alternatives, and they will
find many; even if we ignore non-PC hardware (a disingenuous approach, at
best), we find many non-Microsoft operating systems, both commercial and
otherwise. TCP/IP beat X.25, open systems beat closed ones, free markets
beat statism. Standards win over proprietary systems every time in the long
run. Those who believe otherwise ignore both the entire human history, and
the history of open source software. And for the most part, until now, we've
been free to meet whatever demands people had. I don't want to see free
software flourish at the expense of commercial, nor vice versa.
 
There is no monopoly. Bill Gates has no power over anyone that they do not
give him themselves out of their own apathy or ignorance. Nobody ever put a
gun to my head and forced me to use Microsoft products. People need to quit
sniveling and learn how to think. The only way someone can "force" you to do
something is if they have a literal or figurative gun backing them up, and
Uncle Sam claims the legal monopoly on that.
 
You can't have a monopoly without government intervention, unless you resort
to violence. That's already illegal, and rightly so. For example, the United
States Post Office has a monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail,
because there are laws making it illegal for anyone else to do it. By way of
comparison, back in the days of the coal miner strikes, union owners sent in
men with guns and clubs to beat and kill striking workers. You can always
fight back against men with guns...unless they have the law on their side.
USPS does.
 
A contract entered into voluntarily by all parties does not constitute a gun
to the head. Nobody forced OEM's to sign contracts with Microsoft, and it's
not my fault that they're either spineless or lacking in vision. There are
plenty of companies out there who sell PC's with Linux (VA Research, for
one), or with no OS at all. And you can always put one together from parts,
or pay someone to do it for you. It ain't rocket science.
 
The informed consumer will think before they spend their money. Many people
do not. I don't want to see the choices of the informed limited in the name
of the uninformed -- and I don't want the gun of the law involved unless
there has been force or fraud. There are plenty of cases that could be made
against Microsoft in the fraud department, the most glaring being that they
claim IE4 "supports HTML 4.0", when a quick chat with any HTML expert will
reveal this claim to be either ignorance or a lie. If it's a lie, they could
be sued for fraud. But they have NEVER forced anyone to buy their products.
 
People do things all the time, sometimes thinking first, sometimes not, most
of the time without consciously thinking but using their unconscious
prejudices and assumptions to rationalize their decision. Not a problem. The
only thing that matters is that they not piss in the punchbowl. As long as
someone doesn't hit something with their car, I don't care how drunk they
are. As long as someone's OS/hardware uses the standards (ASCII, TCP/IP,
whatever), they'll be able to communicate with other platforms.
 
"Antitrust" legislation is fundamentally immoral because it violates our
inalienable right to buy, sell, or give things away -- the right to engage
in trade with consenting adults. It is just as immoral for men with guns to
prohibit us from buying, selling and giving away computer software as it is
for them to prohibit us from buying, selling and giving away sex, drugs, or
anything else.
 
So the entire net can call me a Microsoft shill, stooge, or puppet. No
matter how many people say it, it won't be true. I believe Microsoft
products are designed for idiots, lacking in power and flexibility, and less
stable than the alternatives. Therefore, I choose not to use them. (And BTW,
this is one of the things that annoys me most about Usenet: If someone does
not agree with you, they either call you a troll or accuse you of being on
"the side of the enemy." Oh, yeah. Microsoft is just paying me TONS of money
to rant and rave that they have a right to sell whatever they want, no
matter how much it sucks.)
 
I believe IE is a better browser than Netscape. But my preferred browser is
neither of these two: It's Lynx. The sheeple just can't comprehend that
there are more choices out there besides Tweedles Dee and Dum. I don't even
remember how many different browsers there are out there.
 
I also know lots of relatively poor people, like myself, who use Linux
because it's free and open, AND because it gets better "mileage" out of
"old" computers than the alternatives. We can do things on a 386 with Linux
that other people "need" a Pentium for, because they're running a bloated
hog of an operating system. And not all these people are tech wizards; the
list includes single mothers going to college who just want to use the
machine as a tool and not worry about HOW the job is done. If all someone
wants is Internet access, a modem and a dumb terminal (being THROWN AWAY by
colleges every day) will suffice. Just because something is old (or new)
does not automatically make it good (or bad).
 
Finally, Intel has done more to hold back progress in the PC industry than
Microsoft ever dreamed of. And they're still at it with this I2O crap -- just
when there's hope we can leave behind all this legacy crap we never should
have been saddled with in the first place, they close the architecture? This
reminds me of that recent "Microsoft tests nuclear bomb" joke making the
rounds..."And anyone running some OS written by a bunch of longhairs on the
Internet is going to get what they deserve!" My point being that first IBM
was the bad guy until little MS came out of nowhere...and Netscape was the
bad guy until IE came out...and the whores in public office are falling all
over themselves either in misguided attempts to "help", or gleefully rubbing
their hands together over what a big, fat, juicy target they're gonna carve
up. Just wait 'til it's *your* head on the chopping block, mate. MS is just
the scapegoat du jour...and they have no power over you that you do not
freely give them. And I would not support any government intervention
against Intel, either, unless it were demonstrably proven that they were
engaging in force or fraud...and contracts are not force, no matter how
many chicken-weasel lawyers try to twist language and reality.

-Ian Rowan
 frogfarm@yakko.cs.wmich.edu

PS: I didn't write that "Microsoft tests nuclear bomb" joke.

But oh god, how I wish I had.

Whoever wrote it has my undying admiration.
 
--
I let go of the law, and people become honest /  I let go of economics, and
people become prosperous / I let go of religion, and people become serene /
I let go of all desire for the common good,  and the good becomes common as
grass.    .oOo.    [Tao Te Ching, Chapter 57, Stephen Mitchell translation]