Software mows your lawn for free

Software does,in fact, mow your lawn for free.

In an age of highly documented cases of “Digital Rights Management” and”Intellectual Property Rights” its interesting that none of these things actually exists.

Its one thing when your wife says “Honey the grass is getting tall” to go to Walmart and “buy” (did I say that?) a weedwacker or a lawn mower and do the dirty deed.

But then, if your lucky and (you’re in software?) there’s a truck going down the street with “Aguilar Landscaper” written on the side. YES!!! You’re new found friend doesn’t speak English very well but you are stunned and amazed at his offer 50 bucks…for the whole month.

Its like getting your lawn mowed for free. But its NOT free its just a “good deal” you think.

Now, let’s think about that.
We’ll agree a lot of laws were broken to mow your lawn.

So, we agree that to get your lawn mowed on the cheap by a group of 5 migrant laborers who have no rights to compensation under the labor laws of the United States and broke the law to be here in the first place, that some laws were definitely broken.

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Now, it just so happens that you are ALSO lets say Netscape (Firefox), and you HAVE to give your product away and make money off of ads and pay your programmers crap (HUH?) RETRACTION NOT PAY YOUR DEVELOPERS AT ALL to beat MS who spent millions and who’s IE team had 75 babies during the development of the IE browser (all of who can now afford college) and drive Volvo station wagons and own homes.

So, If I opened a factory tomorrow and gave 1 ton of steel away on the open market… I would be locked up by the US govt.

But MS uses anticompetitive tactics on the rest of the industry, and the rest of the industry decides to GIVE IN to the idea that software is effectively worth NOTHING by fighting fire with fire to OUT DUMP MS by putting as much free stuff on the market as possible.

The new pirates are the ones that insist that software is worth nothing. Piracy was a lot more cost effective.

MS Says Software “Doesn’t Exist”

So having made some points about Vista in the last day and also about IE7, there appears to be some common memes shared by the many commenters on both stories.

They amount to this:

1)

I like Firefox, Macs whatever so who cares?

Hmm, that’s interesting since if it were not for the massive legal battle between the US and EU govt and MS, neither Firefox nor Apple would exist today.

2)

Well, your wrong because MS will destroy the competition in their all powerfulness.

Yes, exactly. They did along time ago. For more on this call the CEOs of the Anti Virus companies which are suing MS right now over Vista.

3)

There’s nothing illegal about IE or any MS products!

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Oh boy!, yes, as long as there are no laws in this country about vertical distribution and market manipulation thats true. I’m so glad we got those antitrust laws off our chest!
So, it’s false. Here’s the story you never cared about.

And why MS insists that software in the form of IE…

A product which cost it millions to produce…doesn’t exist.

When Microsoft, flooded the market with “free” IE when Netscape was charging 10 bucks a pop for its product, it was the a classic anti-competitive move of a monopolist.

It is, IN FACT, ILLEGAL in the United States to dump 50 metric tons of steel or grade A beef on the marketplace FOR FREE.

Not illegal as in “We’ll sue you and we MIGHT win!”.

Illegal as in “the govt will take you to jail now.”

These laws were created during the industrial revolution. It was patently and obviously illegal after the anti-trust laws were passed explicitly to end this monopolistic practice.

But, many decades later, when a software company feels threatened, they can dump a “free” product that cost them millions to develop to effectively destroy the market for such a product and surely the competition…and then “own” the market that really “didnt matter to them so much”, hey thats cool!

Interestingly, that SAME company now wants to create a lockbox of software licensing multiple “products” which it insisted in the first place COULDN’T be separated.

There was a version of Internet Explorer for MAC, which didn’t require Windows, obviously. But somehow I downloaded IE7 (with the Vista Look and Feel) and installed it on Windows XP only to find that IE was a trojan stalking horse for WGA..Windows Genuine Advantage not IE Genuine Advantage.

So, does IE need Windows? or does Windows need IE? Considering I have used many OSs with neither IE or Windows installed and I have used Windows for years without ever using IE. Windows clearly doesnt need IE to function. And IE doesn’t need Windows to function.

What if I tried to install this on NT or Windows 2000 or Windows ME? Would it work? Well, if it did it would be nice of MS to make things backward compatible, but it would also make useless the argument that IE and any other tool is just a part of Windows we have to live with because it suits MS needs of putting companies out of business.

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MS reps lied under oath to many courts and judges and jurors to say that IE was not anti-competitive against Netscape because IE DOESN’T EXIST. Its just a feature of Windows that we CANT TAKE OUT.

Just like Media Player.

Windows had existed for years without a browser. And Browsers didn’t need Windows, clearly. Someone goofed and spent alot of money snowing the rest of us and the justice dept.

MS is punishing its admittedly dim fans of low-tech to defend itself from the mere accusation of being a monopolist. Vertical distribution has been illegal for a long time. Don’t you wonder why McAfee and Semantec are suing MS right now over Vista?

MS wants its user base to pay for what it perceives is “unfairness” by the govt with higher prices and stifling “security” tools which will put the blame on someone else once they turn these things off.

Clever, stupid and predictable.

IE7 May Be Illegal

IE7 does something no other piece of software has ever done in the history of computers.

It forces the user to verify the authenticity of a completely separate piece of software, the Operating System before it will install itself.

Now, this may seem logical from an anti piracy standpoint as a monopolist. But ask yourself, if you would agree to validate every piece of MS software when you installed it against every other piece of software you own including the OS.

Given the global legal punishment that was meted out on MS for insisting that IE “could not be separated from the OS” in its drive to kill off competition, this is quite a randy, flirtatious thumb to the courts of the world.

Im not sure it is even possible to prosecute against, nor defend oneself from dependencies among software licenses which make MS again very shrewd and also very stupid at the same time.

Add DRM to the picture and you see where MS is headed, use their tools to do anything and you will be quite the licensee indeed.

As the Vista license clearly states, you buy a license you dont own anything. I guess this is our future.

Its really a great indication of the direction of the industry when new products are really just stalking horses for more legal entanglement.

17 Reasons Noone Will Buy Vista

Windows Vista will possibly be the most under appreciated Microsoft product since…well Microsoft BOB

Here’s why.

• Windows XP works…and there’s nothing that’s going to break it since Intel doesn’t control the CPU market anymore and device driver writers would probably be just as happy to create drivers for XP rather than rewrite all their drivers for Vista
• Vista is all visual. Unlike XP which actually stabilized Microsoft’s consumer offerings which were suffering ever since Win 3.1. XP is basically stable in all versions and is fast on all recent hardware.
• Vista will be unstable. In addition to creating havoc for device makers and causing subtle incompatibility problems (as every release of Windows ever has). Users will have no patience for a product inferior to XP even if Vista catches up later.
• Vista is very, very expensive. Vista is the most expensive, and least necessary OS upgrade in Microsoft’s history.
• Vista can’t be downloaded. Microsoft’s outdated distribution/licensing scheme is about as hip as floppy disk protection. The fact that you cannot download Vista instead of buying a CD is really pathetic. Corporations may get the right to do this but not us.
• Windows Genuine DIS-advantage. MS is now not only requiring WGA validation for Windows but for other products. MS is showing that they really know how to piss people off for no overall gain to their company. Significantly fewer people will want to pirate windows. People generally like to copy something THEY LIKE.
• Security Monitoring. To the average user MS is saying, hey I guess you’ll stop complaining about MS security since we nagged you so much with our tools that you shut them off…so now we aren’t liable! MS is making sure that their security tools are in the face of the user at all times and encouraging the user to shut them off. Been using windows for 12 years. Still never had a virus myself. Whatever.
• 64 bit computing is a joke. Not only will no end user care but even most companies which require a lot of CPU horsepower to run their businesses care about 64 bit. Its just another even techie number thrown at the market for the sake of doing it.
• Vista will be slower than XP. nuff said.
• Vista doesn’t look very good. MS Has always done a hack job of copying Apple. But this time to my eyes it looks like a worse derivative than usual.
• MS Office is dead. nuff said (I typed this on Word 97 and pasted it in.)
• Windows Live, the worst marketing vehicle since .NET will embarrass Microsoft in the industry. MS will fail at taking its business online when it meets the competition. Open Doc formats will rule. MS cant survive based on ad revenue or subscriptions.
• Linux, nuff said.
• China, nuff said.
• Google, nuff said.
• The browser as a platform (mozilla) nuff said.
• Online file storage, nuff said.

Nuff said. There you have it. Vista cant win, wont be purchased in large numbers and will spell the end of MS dominance in operating systems. Actually, by making XP stable and raising prices, they built their own coffin with a nice green field wallpaper.

As much as MS did for the industry early on by crushing its competitors so we could all use junk, MS is going to have to sell a lot of XBoxes and Zunes to make up for Vista when its all over. I hope they aren’t waiting for Google to buy them.