The Concatenation of Propoganda from Corporate America, or Why I Hate Hating Microsoft

—Title Link Image from "This Modern World," by Tom Tomorrow: http://www.thismodernworld.com.

After having read this long interview between EGM and Peter Moore, a representative of Microsoft for the X-Box 360, I began to think of snarky things to say about Microsoft. For example, who the fuck created the adjective "next generational" and why didn't I get to cast my vote for whether or not that word exists? I truly wish I could vote on things like that, for it'd, at least, give me the ability to say, "I voted 'No' on Proposition 'Heart as a Verb"—which could then be printed on a t-shirt that I would proudly wear.

    And I thought about how this interview is pretty much EGM trying to "take Microsoft to task," because that's what a lot of old-school gamers and computer nerds would want to see. Everybody—within the sphere of geekdom—wants to tear Microsoft to shreds and eat them alive, garnished with pure, unbridled spite. I've got beef with Microsoft, too, surely; to quote myself:

“Questionable obtainment of intellectual property, slightly underhanded and convuluted methods of avoiding classification of a monopoly, continual expansion of all-inclusive contracts with proprietary systems manufactors and distributors, vague and veiled marketting strategies which mislead and verge on fraud, unspoken agreements with solicitors and known spyware distributors to continue to allow private information to be bilked from the unknowing customers duped by said marketting . . . All of this, and none of it, whatsoever, presents any disagreement with the current capitalist, American society. Maybe the question is not about whether or not Bill Gates is entitled to his money, but whether or not anyone should be entitled to such vast amounts of money through unscruplous means. But, really, who wants to raise this question in an economic environment where it's alright to break American regulations and laws so long as you establish satellite factories and branchs in other countries in which you break those laws and then "sell" your own product back to yourself at cost so that you can, then, turn around and mark it up five hundred percent to the American public. Microsoft, Heinz, Exxon, Walmart, Sears, Nike, Adidas, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola . . . Perhaps it's just my hairbrained opinion, but maybe it's just taken a company as big and shady as Microsoft to gain so much power without explicitly breaking any rules to cast doubts into the American public's mind about the nature of its capitalistic economy, and that's what's so upsetting?”
—from "My Humble (Pah!) Opinion: Fuck Off, Andy Not-Rooney", December 29th, 2005

    I still stand by those opinions stated above; I have no reason to have changed my mind, since then, about things such as multinational conglomerates and shady corporate practices… Microsoft as a business is still evil. Big Business, two capital B's and all, is evil, period, in my mind. Cutting every possible corner and cheating the public isn't ethical or moral, or plain right, so sayeth I.
    I'd like to see Microsoft taken to task, as it were, but not by reading some hoity-toity magazine interview which is trying to do it only to sell their own product. Why is it that the educated population more commonly seems compelled to sit in their Towers—that may not necessarily be Ivory, but the metaphor stands—and raise their pinkies in disgust at the corrupt practices of American business and, maybe—just maybe—write something snarky, rarely witty, about it in their journal, in their magazine, in their Blog?
    How many times have I witnessed, first- or second-hand, someone intelligent and educated only use their knowledge to be derisive, to mock others, and go off to fulfill their base desires, live their selfish lives, and poke their noses out long enough to laugh at everyone else who doesn't know the truth, who is too occupied with surviving in a more difficult living condition, or was under-privileged, or poor? The divide in the American middle-class seems to be between those who are too stupid to know better, and those who know better but would rather just act stupid than be proactive—with a small percentage of people who don't fit into either categories.
    What's the point in taking potshots at Microsoft in magazines? I have a better idea: don't buy their shit. I don't like their products, I don't buy them. The X-Box is a faulty product? Their games are subpar? They're trying to sell us games at higher prices that are but a slight margin better? Don't support it. Boycott it, even. I don't like Microsoft Office, so I use OpenOffice.org, an open-source program…
    As an aside, what does it prove that something like OpenOffice.org is open source? I'm tired of hearing (or, more often, reading) that it's the superior method of developing software… That's simply not true; it's not a viable business model by any stretch of the imagination. What open source software typically proves is that the retail products out there are overpriced, that the software market is saturated with products that aren't that difficult to make, that a small community of bored programmers can do the same thing, for free, in their spare-time, and the market expects consumers to pay hundreds of dollars for something a corporation produced that does veritably the same thing as the free, open source equivalent.
    Word processing just isn't that robust of a thing. I write most everything in Notepad, for fuck's sake, and maybe run it through Corel WordPerfect—an OEM product I bought for thirty bucks—or OpenOffice.org if I feel ther emay be a prolific amount of spelling errors or somesuch. I don't need animated avatars telling me about suggested grammar corrections, I only need the suggestions. But, corporations want to justify the ludicrous price-tags they slap on their software boxes, so they throw in all this useless, shiny shit, and people pay for it because they're too lazy or don't know better, and they need something newer, for some inexplicable reason, than the last incarnation of point-and-click document making and chart production which still works fine and performs the same, basic functionality (Hint: this is called, by airy intellectuals, Manufactured Obsolescence).
    "Ooo, this version can make PDFs (or, alternatively, the useless Microsoft equivalent)!"
    "Ooo, this version can make colourful, three-dimensional scatter-plots and animated pie charts with shadows!"
    "Ooo, this version can make more silly noises when the slide changes, and has a host of dumb-looking, new clip-art!"
    When you stop and think about it, bells and whistles like this are worthless and don't justify the fact that you're shelling out a hundred and fifty dollars again for the exact same core features of word processing and desktop publishing. I wonder, occasionally, if new versions of Windows were made solely to sell new versions of Microsoft Word—look at Windows fucking ME, with its added feature, over 98SE, of memory leaking. Of course, corporations rape consumers! It's their nature. Of course, Big Business wants our money for little to nothing: it's why they exist.
    The products we pay for en masse are capable of being created and distributed with the most minimal of effort: bored programmers make better word processors, better operating systems, better software as a whole. Stop buying and using Microsoft products if you don't like this.
    The problem is that these bored programmers, these cynical nerds, they are more content to sit on the knowledge that they can do better things on their own, that the big businesses are butt-fucking America, and twiddle their thumbs within their cliques, on their private forums, on their self-ran IRC servers. And they have the nerve to sneer and laugh at everybody else, when they really are doing nothing better than the corporations because they are doing practically nothing. They horde their information and knowledge and masturbate amongst themselves, talking about how great they are…
    So they can smirk at interviews in EGM that "teach Microsoft a lesson"—EGM, a magazine which undoubtedly has sold plenty of advertising space to Microsoft.

    "Well," you say, assuming you are one of these sardonic fellows sitting in eager anticipation of the next big anti-MS Internet joke, "everybody else should just figure it out, too. They should educate themselves, and they should learn how to use Linux or FreeBSD, how to code their own hardware drivers and build open source software." How kind of you to be considerate of other's lives, to perhaps give someone the benefit of the doubt that maybe their life doesn't revolve around surfing the Internet and wallowing in geekdom… I am so glad people have assumed this attitude that everybody else should help out their fellow man, that the best thing to do is to give everyone else all the helping hands they can provide in a world where greedy corporate fucks and evil politicians are out to swindle everybody and their sister; it is certainly a blessing that we don't just yell, "Every man for himself! Fuck the women and children!"—as we dive headlong off the sinking ship, having stolen a lifesaver for one's own salvation. It is definitely awesome that this isn't how people are acting.
    Why do we feel the need, once we've attained knowledge on our own, to horde it, like dragons, snarling and blowing smoke out our nostrils when anybody comes venturing near our lair of impenetrable doom? If I could do it, anybody can… Right, right, haven't we heard that line before, again and again. It's not like some people grew up in the wrong time and place, or that the propoganda hasn't drowned many, that the commercialised television programming hasn't lured millions to sleep while their wallets are drained by credit card companies, brand-name prescription drug companies and cell phone companies. It's not like any of this should ever be our concern, because, well, we're fine. We're not still on the sinking ship, anymore. We got off it, 'cause we're so smart.
    How much hypocrisy is there, too? How many "Anti-MS" people are there who buy X-Boxes and X-Box games? "I know better, so it's alright for me to bend the rules." That way, you can end up right where you started, except with a smug feeling of superiority. Video games are entertaining, so I guess that's different. Microsoft is only evil so long as they aren't making cool things. Walmart is only evil when I don't want something cheaper. EGM isn't just another business venture taking our money for little return, for a flimsy product dripping with advertisements. Give me convenience, or give me death!
    And it's not like people are asses about their "superior" knowledge of things; oh, no, this is definitely not the case—people don't automatically look down their noses at people who haven't happened to dedicate their life to random information and obscure trivia. I am happy to know that when someone expresses an opinion that may be mislead or wrong that the response from many isn't to derail them so they feel like a giant idiot for not knowing something inconsequential to survival or their own lives. After all, this is a world where people are compassionate and caring, where we help all our fellow men, where we don't abandon hope for the education of mankind based on our slim perspectives and middling amount of life experience. Yes, the answer to ignorance is not biting sarcasm, thankfully.

I'm certainly above this. I haven't made these mistakes. I've never been mislead in my life. I don't get fooled into thinking a certain way to the advantage of Big Business. I'm guitless; my hands are clean; my soul is pure; I have been Saved! It's great that I can make these statements with absolute impunity, that I don't have to hold myself up to the standards I set for everybody else. I expect things of others that I'd never bother to do myself. I love Walmart. It's open twenty-four hours a day! Three dollar DVDs! Holy shit! Why am I not at Walmart right now? Why am I not playing my X-Box? I could be fragging "n00bs" in Halo 2 or someshit, yo. I could be chatting with my programming friends about how awesome I am for knowing how to use Linux and code. I don't know why I'm not at Walmart while on my laptop engaged in a circle jerk with all my nerd friends at this very moment, getting off to how great [Insert Obscure Programming Algorithm Here] is. I've been wasting all this time writing this…

[Adios]