August 6, 2001

The monopoly we deserve?
Microsoft...where to begin? I sure am getting tired of this. How about, "Anyone who regularly uses Microsoft software or services is part of the problem." Go ahead, call me names. Accuse me of spewing hyperbolic nonsense. Tell me how wonderful MS Office is, how many advanced professional features are built into Word, what a great browser IE is, or how self-defeating it would be for Apple to try to go it alone. I...don't...care! It has more than gotten to the point where having anything to do with the company or its products is like letting the mob run your state lottery because they can do it so well (and we're all so lazy and irresponsible, we'll just look the other way, thank you). I really don't think there's any moral or ethical escape hatch -- you gotta chuck the apps, Jack -- and what's more, things are about to get a whole lot worse.

If things go the way some observers think they might, within a year or two Microsoft could not only control most online financial activity but also the very technology your computer uses to connect to the Internet. That's right. A thoroughly unrepentant Microsoft is poised to "own" the Internet, in the sense that the company plans to have a piece of every future online action you take. Freedom will be a quaint artifact of the past. You won't even be able to control your own HTML -- something that is sadly already the case, did you know that? Windows users are already downloading and installing, often without their knowledge, advertising technology that adds links to Web pages viewed in guess which company's Web browser, hmmm?

Good Lord, Apple could become as irrelevant as the PC punks already think it is. I moaned & groaned to a significant source about why there wasn't a louder howl being raised about this selling of "rights" to keywords and mucking up one's Web pages with unwanted hyperlinks. His response:

"People go to movies and eat popcorn while young women are dismembered in Cinemascope. So why should they get excited about something that they don't understand and doesn't mean anything to them? Sigh..."

Too awful to believe
The problem, as I see it, is that the bad guys -- and they are very, very bad -- are about to undertake something so unfair, so all-encompassing, so monstrous, that getting sufficient numbers of people to understand what is actually taking place will be almost impossible. Since the corporate state has achieved the status of an established religion for most of us, arousal of the masses ain't gonna happen. This would be like convincing you that your mother is about to drown you and your siblings in the bathtub. (Sorry about that, but see?)

No, what we have here is a HUMONGOUS horror, the kind of thing that usually provokes a "shut up, you're making me think too hard!" sort of response -- if it provokes anything at all. There are any number of similar madnesses abroad in the land, problems so deeply entrenched as to constitute the "reality" of our times, to wit:

1. The notion that human beings can exist outside of the natural world and that no one can be held accountable for the destruction of the planet.

2. The medical/industrial complex-inspired conviction that cancer is a) mysterious, b) "treatable" and c) all but inevitable.

3. The pervasive poisoning of agriculture in the name of profit.

4. The belief in the supremacy of science.

5. The belief that national leaders are chosen through a universally fair and democratic process.

6. The idea that you actually can win $2,000 from that scratch-off Lotto card you just paid a buck for...

And so on and so on. I wonder where this is leading, anyway?

Beats the hell outa me
No matter how ghastly the consequences of domination by false beliefs, it does seem to me that worrying about each of our own individual situations ought to come first. There is plenty of precedent for this approach in various tried-and-true esoteric disciplines and morsels of enlightened thought from people we all should pay more attention to. Not that I can claim any enlightened behavior on my own part, I hasten to say, but at least I don't use Microsoft software. More on that in a minute.

Of course, merely identifying stupid villains like Microsoft is only half of the game. Where are the good guys, in other words? Well, guess what? You're IT (or them)! You!!! ALL of you. All of US. Anyone who liberates him- or herself from a false belief and adds to the measure of goodness and harmony in the cosmos is a certified good guy. This way of looking at things is also the only way to make any sort of progress at all, because otherwise the perception that the problem is too great to solve will only engender paranoia, depression, and a self-fullfilling prophecy of doom.

We have to know what's going on, though, so here are a couple of places to start:

Dan Gillmor's latest column at SiliconValley.com entitled "Government Should Block XP Release." This one reviews everything that's evil about the new Windows operating system. A must-read!

Robert Cringely's new column at PBS: "The Death of TCP/IP." Another source described it thusly:

"Basically, he says that Microsoft is purposely building security holes into XP as an effort to sabotage the internet. When the whole thing becomes a mess, they step in with a TCP/IP 'replacement' that is 'secure' and of course you buy it from Microsoft and it has hooks into their OS and .NET services - so you pay for it. As Cringely puts it, 'Microsoft then owns the net.'"

Steve Gibson's informative Gibson Research Corporation site: here you will find, among other things, a lengthy analysis of why Windows XP will be the "tool of choice" for 13-year-old hackers. (Cringely's column also stresses this theme.)

Just say no
Many people already have or at least know that they should. Here are a few relevant comments about the latest Microsoft moves and the state of things in general emailed to me this past week:

"I don't want to have my paranoia flaring up here, but this is SCARY."

"Why, you ask, are people not screaming and protesting about things...?? I can tell you why I haven't been concerned. You see, for -years- my Mac network at home has enjoyed one rigidly imposed philosophy: MFE. Yes, you guessed it, 'Microsoft Free Environment.' Even the IE that was installed with Mac OS X has been ditched and I haven't downloaded the updates. I get by quite nicely on AppleWorks, Mail, OmniWeb, etc."

"I often wonder why the general public accepts the behavior of this company. If I stole a slice of pizza 3 times, on separate occasions, I could be sent to jail for life. Microsoft acts in a felonious way on a daily basis and they get away with it. They've nearly stolen an entire industry and they get away with it. The security problems in their software costs the world billions in wasted time every year, and we put up with it."

And so on. As you can see, not everyone is asleep or making excuses. I can only suggest taking whatever steps are necessary to become Microsoft-free as soon as possible. Microsoft is about to bring the hammer down, you know. Windows users will soon find themselves hemmed in and bedeviled as never before -- everyone will have to pay and pay, then pay again. There will be no end to it. Even Mac users used to "free" Microsoft apps may soon find it necessary to pay for certain things, one way or the other, if the scuttlebutt is correct.

That's what the Trash is for
None of this will save the Internet, but we have to start somewhere. Think of it as slow-motion liberation, one Borg at a time. Go ahead, delete those M$ apps from your new Mac. You know you want to. Can you think of a better way to fight back? And while you're at it, try turning off the TV, growing your own food, taking control of your own body, listening to your intuition, and voting early and often (always with a smile).

I don't know. It all seems so hard, sometimes. I wish there was some way to lure Microsoft over a cliff like our ancestors did with prehistoric mastodons. I wish power wasn't measured by accumulated wealth. I wish human beings spent more time contemplating than conquering. I wish I'd won more than $2.00 on that Arizona Lottery card.

What a world!

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr admits to having a copy of Internet Explorer for Web design test purposes, but never uses it otherwise.

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