Castles Made of Sand
( How Microsoft Crumbles )
Introduction
Parasites ( A Poem )
Microsoft "Philanthropy"
Microsoft “Security”
Microsoft Normalizes Violence
Why choose a Free Software career?
Solutions
Around the transition from the second millennium to the third, humanity underwent a sea change. At first, the hacker ethos of “information wants to be free” thrived in a culture of software freely shared among people who were really into it, without a thought of money changing hands. People wrote code for the sheer love of it, shared their software creations, and played with other geeks who shared their enthusiasm for this newly emerging frontier, that most adults, and most of their peers simply did not understand.
Early versions of UNIX were shared around freely. All was well in tech nirvana, till greed got in. Suddenly, code was not the shared infrastructure of society for people to freely study, share and improve. Code was now “intellectual property” ( oxymoron ). A few robber barons with Ozymandias conceits built empires out of silicon, like castles made of sand, that seemed like they would stand forever.
In a massive feat of mind manipulation through media, legal and unethical means, the robber barons had convinced the people that we lived in a world without breathable air, and that we needed to pay them for air, even though Free Software was available — Free as in Free Speech ( free to study, modify, and share ), and Free as in Free Pizza ( free to download and use ).
Governments, Corporations, Schools, and Home Users, all paid for canisters of “premium air” to breathe from. Microsoft's questionable value proposition, and its price, went unquestioned because of Microsoft's trickery.
If the world had cars like Microsoft's, you could not open the hood of your car and fix things yourself, nor take your car to your cousin who knows about engines. The hood would come locked shut, only Microsoft would have the keys, and you would have to pay them for upgrades and repairs.
Parasites
( A poem )
They had finally had enough, gathered in a mob and stormed the robber baron’s mansion.
Surrounding him with torches and pitchforks, they demanded that everyone in the village be fed.
The robber baron was a cunning man. He had not gained his position by being straightforward.
He addressed the crowd — “Oh, this wealth? It’s all for you! You see, I was planning to leave 90% of it to you. After I die.”
This drew gasps from the crowd. They backed away.
“He’s such a generous man!” They exclaimed in delight.
The robber baron continued, “And...and these mosquitoes… …they can kill people! That’s why I will work to eradicate malaria.”
The crowd wowed — “He’s a dedicated philanthropist! Spending his own money to save our lives.”
The crowd apologized to the robber baron, thanked him for his generosity, and was about to turn back.
Suddenly a boy spoke up. He was not from this village.
“Malaria doesn’t kill. I have had malaria several times! It’s a harmless disease that is easily treated.
With proper food, medicine, and rest, malaria takes its course and then goes away.
Malaria doesn’t kill. Poverty does.
The rich don’t die of malaria, only the poor. So think again about who the real parasites are.”
Research efforts to “eliminate malaria” are misguided. Mosquitoes are a part of the ecosystem and we should take care of the Earth, while tampering with Nature as little as possible. Eco-friendly, low cost, low tech, old school solutions are easily available.
It is much more cost-effective to:
Provide people in the affected areas with mosquito nets. ( say, 1 net / person / year ).
Provide herbal insect repellents made by local cottage industries to protect against not only mosquitoes, but a wide range of insect bites.
Systematically, periodically, sweep and clear stagnant pools of water near human dwellings, where mosquitoes breed.
Windows 95 was the first operating system with the Y2K bug right in its name.
3 years later, with the benefit of experience and hindsight, Microsoft released Windows 98, the second operating system with the Y2K bug right in its name.
“Grand Theft Auto” was once a crime fantasy to indulge in.
By the time you got the game called “Call of Duty”, you had already bought the idea, in the back of your mind, that your duty might call upon you to kill complete strangers and that you should enjoy doing it. It was all part of the game. The game normalized violence in people's minds and de-sensitized them to horrible things. The act of picking up a gun, and shooting at a stranger was a viscerally fun experience, realistically rendered blood with detailed environmental reflections, and the works.
Eventually, you ended up rooting for a person out there killing people on command, for real. This soldier also grew up playing the same Military Industrial Complex recruitment program sold as a game. “Call of Duty” was malware of the mind, wetware hiding as software in plain sight, targeting certain regions of the human brain, specifically the amygdala, and the dopamine regulation system.
It was “A Clockwork Orange” in reverse — weaponized, normalized, advertised, and monetized by selling to would-be recruits, man apes caught in the concrete jungle, looking for ways to act out the aggression they felt from having been circumcised, and known pain and helplessness at a very early age. Deeply internalized paranoiac aggression, seeded through this patriarchal ritual, ensured that enough people would want to join the military, as a cheap excuse to indulge in their worst impulses. Whether as a video game, or as a more sinister piece of software, “Call of Duty” was money.
In this era, by the time an average teenager grew up, they had shot so many virtual people, that they usually condoned and often enjoyed seeing violence and gun use.
Why is there war and violence?
Microsoft donates Windows licenses to schools and libraries.
Windows has already been made, so donating licenses costs almost nothing.
Microsoft gets tax breaks for the full market price of the licenses.
Microsoft gets good publicity for its generous donation.
Microsoft gets to lock in a whole generation of students into Windows, establishing mindshare.
Microsoft gets to fend off Free and Open Software, such as GNU/Linux, by positioning itself as the de facto standard.
Microsoft Chose Profits over National Security
Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and left the U.S. Government vulnerable to Russian Hack.
A computer that is not reasonably secure against intrusion and malware is not useful.
Microsoft makes an Operating System that is not very secure.
Other companies have to make anti-malware software to fill in the security gap left by Microsoft in its offering.
Meanwhile, a default installation of the latest Debian Linux or OpenBSD is deemed secure enough for most purposes, and these are free and open source operating systems.
Microsoft itself gets to compete in the Windows anti-malware vertical market that exists only because of flaws in Windows, that Microsoft is best positioned to know about, because Windows is Closed source.
This is a breach of antitrust law.
Microsoft is like an auto maker that doesn't include safety belts as a standard feature, but sells them as extras, in a vertical market.
Rather than wait for the Department of Justice to fight Microsoft in court, here's a simple grassroots tactic that all freedom loving software developers can use today.
Here's a call to action!
Please modify the following email and send it to Microsoft.
Subject: Security Software Developer seeking Windows Source Code
Greetings,
My company, [YoyoDyne Co.] intends to develop anti-malware software for the Windows operating system.
We would like to request a comprehensive copy of the Windows source code.
Failure to provide the Windows source code, free of cost, would give Microsoft security products an unfair advantage over other developers and be prosecutable under antitrust laws.
Please respond within 30 business days of this message, providing the code complete with all documentation.
Thanks,
[Dilbert]
Microsoft funded Microbiome studies to prevent malnutrition in Africa.
It's not the case that nutrition is easily available in Africa, and yet people are still mysteriously dying of malnutrition from some stomach disease that Microsoft can find the cure for, by throwing Billions at, to much public acclaim.
The simple fact is that Bill-ionaires have too many wealth-tokens ( money ) and hoard actual wealth ( food ), starving the masses to maintain their privileged status.
If you pretend to study the gut, you're full of shit!
Why choose a Free Software career?
Let’s say you have two job offers, which are equal in terms of money, benefits, and other material aspects, but differ only in the nature of the work.
Job #1: Be a Developer using Closed Source technologies and tools, such as Windows, Java etc.
Job #2: Be a Janitor, responsible for cleaning toilets and other restroom facilities.
Which job should you choose?
Personally, I would prefer to be a Janitor rather than a Closed Source Developer. Here is why:
As a Closed Source Developer, one works on an obsolescent, dead end technology that is sure to become irrelevant and extinct soon. Furthermore, working on Closed Source technologies only concentrates wealth in the hands of a few people who are more focused on their own material gains, than on benefiting humanity as a whole. The robber barons are unwilling to share the fruits of their labor and will even seek to stifle true innovation in order to perpetuate their agenda and maintain their closed castles made of sand. Work long enough on closed source code, and you will inevitably find yourself valuing money more than your intellectual potential. You will become cynical and start justifying this intellectual rot by saying that everyone else does it too, and that selfishness is a sad and inevitable fact of life. You will have made the world a little worse. Most of your precious hours will be wasted in the pursuit of money and in engaging with something lifeless and of limited use to humankind.
If I took the job as a Janitor, by contrast, my time would be spent doing something useful and of service. Most importantly, while I am cleaning toilets, my mind would be free to daydream a little, to visualize software as it ought to be, to imagine innovative solutions to problems that we all face.
At the end of the work day as a Janitor, I would be able to approach my leisure time charged and excited by these fresh ideas and concepts. Then I would contribute meaningfully to Open Source projects and work on building a better future for everyone. This is very much preferable to spending the day with the mind engaged with the trivialities of closed source software.
Closed Source software is on its way out. The future belongs to the intellectually free, the ones who program for love, not money. Empires will crumble. Freedom will prevail.
Use simple, eco-friendly solutions.
Use Free and Open Source software.
Insist that your government use Free Software, such as Debian Linux.
Choose careers in Free and Open Source technologies.
Start a Free Software cooperative — employee-owned, democratic and egalitarian. Here's my work-in-progress: we.glue.earth
See also:
- Perl Versus Java — An opinionated comparison between the Perl and Java programming languages ( Why the emperor has no clothes ).
- Apple ]|[ — How Apple can look to Free Software to Age Gracefully.
