Fuck Bill Gates, Fuck Microsoft & the horse they came in on

Fuck Bill Gates, Fuck Microsoft and the horse they came in on

Hereís an off the wall rant, with a rather disparate cast of characters, entities, and concepts:

King Bill Gates, Emperor of Internetica

The Wall Street Journal [1], broadsheet of the financial world and other subjects that carry advertising.

Timothy McVeigh, utter lowlife

Everybody who writes or composes or otherwise posts, publishes, or enters anything on the web and/or the net.

Jakob Nielson [2] prodigious writer and thinker re The Net and Web pages

Joseph McCarthy, drunken pinko chaser and eliminator of personal freedoms.

Who the hell ever thought that by posting a weblog, on the open net, no less, from here in the good old US of A, that a publicly held company would have the audacity to think it could edit, amend, add links and content, and have the right to put its own stamp over oneís own writing/thinking/opinions, and such???

Who the fuck does Bill Gates think he is? I donít want Microsoft editing or in anyway having any impact or redacting privileges on what I write. Or what you write, either.

Read this article [1] from the June 7th Wall Street Journal. The WSJ! This is a paper with a politically conservative, right-leaning slant, to say the least. But the suppression of freedom gets its goat, as that would, in the long run, also have a negative effect on capital markets. But enough of that. I donít particularly like the WSJ, but it is certainly good at what it does, and deserves the respect it seems to have. That the columnists and editorial page people are in the right wing camp doesnít make it bad; just not my way of thinking. And heck, I like their marketing and communications articles. Life isnít perfect.

This concept MS is putting forward, to embed so-called ìSmart Tagsî in written items appearing within the MS IE Web Browser, is horrendous. Do I want MS deciding what tags or references or links belong in what I write? HELL, NO!

Do I want some implication of commerce or congruity with sites or links or references to places that have the MS imprimatur in what I write? Fuck, NO!

Do I want Bill Gates and company adding their idea of ìproperly placed additional codeî to my work? NO FUCKING WAY!

Do you want what you might write being toyed with by the gang from Redmond?

I hope not, because if you do let them do this, you become their pawn. You cede the rights of ownership [of thought] and conceptual dissemination. Your intellectual property becomes a by-product of the greater MS output factory.

In short, your thought process is co-opted, and the writer is fucked.

Meet Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, and all those other people who have decided to become your co-authors. They apparently seek to anoint themselves and their way of thinking into everything you write. Totally, and without exception. Your words, their input overshadowing and inveigling its way into the document. Look up totalitarianism [3] at dictionary.com. Total bullshit, total Microsoft.

Welcome to the written word as controlled by Emperor Bill.

This is the kind of totalitarianism that inspires anger, hate, and insurrection. Some half-baked politically inclined angry soul will blow up a Redmond Campus building in much the same manner and style, with full self-rationale, as did this newly dead scumbag, Timothy McVeigh. And feel self righteous about it, no less.

Jakob Nielson [4]has been publishing interesting observations [5] about web design, with an intense message (campaign?) regarding the ease-of ñuse of pages and design, and the ability of the reader-visitor to use, or interact with the page.

That may be an oversimplification, or maybe even considered way too narrow. His major thesis can be narrowed down (or so it seems to me, anyway) to usability. Make it so they can use it. A good idea, I think. Engage the reader, involve the reader, and bring them into it. Allow and enable interaction as an organic process.

His take on the smart tags concept is not as filled with vitriol as is mine. I see it as an invasion of privacy, an attempt to co-opt and corrupt the writersí word.

He has a piece [2] this week that is a case of perfect timing. His point is that using .PDF files delivers less usability, and that HTML is a better presentation. Curiously, in my business life we have recently made a decision to publish certain documents exclusively in .PDF form, as it removes most abilities to rewrite, contaminate, or recast the content, the written word, the published statement.

Note: Bill Gates and company canít add their smart tags to your .PDF file on the net without violating the copyright of your version of the program from Adobe. They either have valid user permissions, or they donít.

I sure as hell am not giving those guys my permission to mess with what I write.

Now if they want to BUY what I write and use it as their own propaganda, and if I am of a mind to SELL it to them for such use, then so be it, all signs are go. But I am not writing for them, nor am I selling them my words. I decide when my words are for sale or for re-use.

This whole line of discussion makes me mourn the passing of that old chestnut, MultiMate. No, not a book about polygamy in Utah, MultiMate was the commercial product that grew out of the Wang Word Processing system used in early 80ís office automation and networks powered by either main frames or those microcomputers that were the predecessors to multi-group servers.

Why do I mourn the log-ago passing of MultiMate? Hereís why: if it were still around and being supported and developed, it would be an alternative to the Word part of Office 2000, which is the very program I use, day in and day out, for hours on end.

Another problem with Smart Tags is just how the tags themselves might work. Say I write about the Mosh Militia [6], and their initiative [7] to decriminalize marijuana.

Some automated Smart Tag procedure might automatically squiggly-line a bunch of links to Timothy McVeigh-type militia sites. Look up "militia" on Google [8] and there are nearly a quarter million hits.

Great, now I would run the risk of an automated linker associating me with those reactionaries.

So comes the research by some other party, and then the next thing we know, these Smart Tags are the basis for ìare you now or have you ever beenî type questions. Guilt by association. Joe McCarthy ruined many a career and wrought horror and tragedy into many lives with his crazed anti-commie witch hunt. The fact that he was a drunk and a fool does little to minimize or assuage the pain and suffering for which he and his minions acted as catalysts.

Just as the death of this jerk who blew up the office building in OKC may bring a sense of relief to some. To me, it let the guy off too easily, allowed him to embrace his fantasy that he was some sort of war hero soldier, and to die with a certain sense of pride and dignity.

He died too easily. This is not a discussion of the death penalty. This is my take on how they carried out the act today.

Back in 1986 I had to take my beloved dog Jasmine to the vet. It was time to end her life. Actually, to put her out of her misery. She was no longer the fun lvong, spirited dog sheíd been, and her kidneys were all but gone and the quality of her life was pretty miserable.

I got her from the experimental farm at NC State when I was a deejay back at the Rock of Raleigh, WRNC. This dog spent some great years with me. We moved from NC to Mass back to home in NY. For about six months the dog lived with me ñmostly in the car-- while I drove around the country and took an extended vacation of sorts.

When the end came, the vet gave her a shot. A few moments later she was gone. I was very sad. In fact, I met a friend for lunch that day, and I socked away about a quart of Sake at some Sushi place. It had no impact on me. I was stone cold sober, sad, and sorry to have lost my pet.

It was an easy death for Jasmine. The shot was just a mere one-second injection. In a matter of moments there was no more life left in Jasmine. Sad though I was, the vet assured me thereíd been no more humane way to do this. I took some minimal comfort in that.

The lowlife scumbag idiot jerk who bombed the building in OKC died much the same way as my old dog. He got an injection, and then he was gone.

Too much dignity for a mass murderer. Too kind and mindful of his thoughts and feelings. Too public and political a way to dole out what some consider justice.

Life in solitary, maybe with the screams of agony in a loop tape, playing endlessly in his cellÖthat might have been appropriate.

And nowÖlook: if this entry in the weblog got smart-tagged, thereíd be links to Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal, Jakob Nielson, Timothy McVeigh, Joe McCarthy, Google, and who knows what else.

Fortunately, this page is not for sale.