The Requisite Microsquish Rant

In the very least, i feel i needed to catalog Microsquish the heinous actions. There are just so many, it's difficult to remember them all.

Political

Wed May 15 08:02:13 EDT 2002

1. Make sure you read the story of how Microsquish went after a Australian non-profit project called "PCs for Kids." They recycle old computers and donate them to kids who live in places like East Timor, who could never afford them. Essentially, PCs for Kids didn't pay for new licenses, so Microsquish sued them. At first, it may seem that Microsquish has a legitimate issue. But consider the following facts, that Microsquish was aware of when it started to threaten PCs for Kids:
   • The machines in question (Intel 386 and 486-based PCs) were donated to PCs for Kids precisely because no one who has any money wants machines 10-20 times slower than what they can buy.
   • PCs for Kids was installing old versions of Windoze (98 or even 3.11), which they could not even buy in Australia. They needed to use these old versions of Windoze because the machines were so old they won't run anything modern.
   • When the machines were originally purchased, a Windoze license was included in the purchase price.
   • Microsquish damn well knows that every person in the world who buys an Intel-based PC is forced to pay for a Windoze license whether they like it or not. After all, that's they're goal. Microsquish uses their monopoly to coerce PC manufacturers (under threat of price increases) into including Windoze on every PC they sell.

   So Micrsquish's claims that the charity didn't purchases license is bogus. Microquish simply extorts all of the money they possible can, squeezing anyone and everyone in their insatiable lust for money and power. Apparently, they don't even care that in this case, they are extorting money from some of the poorest people on the planet. What a bunch of heartless Bastards!

   Of course, they've since tried to make ammends and counter the significant backlash inthe media. But they didn't even do that properly. A company with any sense of moral decency would just have told the non-profit it could use older versions of the software all it wanted. But not Microsquish. They tried to donate a finite number of license for versions of Windoze that the charity couldn't really use.

   Oh, and this wasn'tthe first charity they attacked. When they started threatening "The Ark," a Kiwi charity with the same benefactors, it simply shut down, unable to fight the world richest multinational corporation.

   Wed May 15 08:02:13 EDT 2002

2. I'm not going to duplicate stuff that can be found in /.'s list of Microsquish news. Not all of it is heinous, but quite a lot is.

   Tue May 7 22:33:18 EDT 2002

3. Microsquish now requires schools that buy a Windoze site license to pay for PCs and Apple Macintoshes that are not running Windoze. Yes, i said Apple Macintoshes. You know, those computers made by Apple Computers, Inc., that come with their own, free operating system called "MacOS" (Which Microsquish copied).
   I should probably also mentioned that Microsquish doesn't even sell a version of Windows for the Macintosh computer. So what Microsquish is doing is like you went to the auto mechanic because you needed the oil changed in your car, and he or she asked how many cars you own, and then charged you for an oil change for all of them, even though the oil was only changed in one. Microsquish is being run by a bunch of crooks, and the only reason they can get away with this crap is because they have a monopoly.

   Tue May 7 22:40:25 EDT 2002

4. Microsquish claims that disentangling their web browser (Internet Explorer) and their multi-media player would "damage" Windoze. Funny, pretty much every other Operating system in popular use already works this way. Maybe they just need to copy Apple's software or ideas some more. You'd think they wouldn't have any reservations about doing so. I suppose they only take the features that strengthen their strangle-hold on the market.

Technical

1. Why did they write Internet Explorer such that it's completely incapable of accessing content at a web site that uses a self-signed SSL certificate? This is a pain for organizations that want to use SSL, but don't need to buy a certificate signed from a rerecognized authority. Netscape does it just fine, just popping up a warning. Maybe Microsquish just thinks that their users are stupider, and won't understand a warning message.
2. Security holes galore! My web server logs (on a UNIX machine) are full of this:

    [Thu Aug 23 18:50:39 2001] [error] [client 205.238.239.195] File does not exist: /var/httpd/htdocs/default.ida 

   Why? Because Microsoft configured their BUGGY web server ("Internet Information Server") to unnecessarily run with many Windoze disributions, and the Code Red (and variants) Worm has infected hundreds of thousands of those machines. 1/2 a year after the first evidence of the secutiry hole was reported, and over a month after the first incranation of the worm was detected, the worm continue to spread, wasting resources in the process. 116 attempts alone on 23 Aug 2001.

   If you want to have crappy, buggy insecure software rammed down your throat by a multi-national monopoly, whose primary goal is to takeover the market (not to offer good software and support), then by all means continue to buy or use Microsoft software and help them crush the dwindling minority of independepent companies and Free projects.

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