Jul 19

Question from Dan

What’s the last dream you remember having?

Well, I dream practically every night, and I remember most dreams for at least a few hours, but most of them are pretty mundane. Last night’s was mostly concerned with a party my parents were having and trying to make some decent coffee for two of the guests, sara, and myself. I assume you’d like to hear about something more interesting.

The last amusing dream I had started with a UFO crash in Florida, which had happened some time in the past. I was part of a loosely associated gang of hackers and political ranters with an interest in such things, and we eventually discovered that an alien in human form had survived the crash and made his way north.

After much convoluted plot and some espionage action, we discovered that the alien had reported back to his planet, and a full-scale invasion had been planned. However, rather than take on the might of the USA directly, the aliens had opted to infiltrate and take over the record companies and the Recording Industry Association of America.

Their plan was sinister and brilliant: they would persuade the US government that the 70%+ of citizens swapping files on the Internet were dangerous copyright terrorists, and get them all locked up in jails—at tremendous profit to the private security firms running the jails, which they also controlled.

Once that was done, the full-scale invasion would proceed—because the landing ships would easily slip by the nation’s missile defenses, and by then there wouldn’t be enough citizens free to defend the nation on the ground.

On discovering this plot, we did our best to bring it to the world’s attention by engineering media events. Eventually we managed to goad the RIAA into taking off the mask and bringing in the dropships early to colonize the Earth with their evil alien spawn.

Oct 26

Ray Ozzie, one of the founders of Lotus, has been sighted standing obediently behind Bill Gates at the Windows XP media events. Obviously the fact that Microsoft paid Groove (Ray’s new startup) $51m is the reason.

Equally obvious is the fact that Groove will suffer the same fate as most of the other companies that have decided to let Microsoft invest in them. Expect to see Groove technology bundled into Windows and .NET, and a worthless husk spat out. If you don’t believe me, ask the people at LH or VIVO (say). The same would have happened to Real if they hadn’t been secretly working on RealPlayer G2 and keeping it out of the scope of their agreement with Microsoft.

It’s all business as usual for Microsoft; but somehow, it’s bothering me. It’s not enough for Gates to win; he has to humiliate his enemies. He couldn’t beat Lotus, so he needs Ray Ozzie up there on stage, dancing obediently like a little marionette.

Deconstructing the show, the message is clear: “We are unspeakably rich. We own you. We can buy your loyalty any time and make you dance for us. Submit now.”

The message to users of Windows XP is much the same. The new software license enforcement mechanism will attempt to force home users to buy a separate copy for every computer they use, and make them sign up with Microsoft Passport and hand over their personal data.

In not-unrelated news, the new judge assigned to the anti-trust trial by George W Bush turns out to have sold all her stock in Microsoft’s competitors right in the middle of a tech slump. Perhaps for some reason she doesn’t think they’ll go up? Attorney General John Ashcroft personally collected $10,000 from Microsoft, and over $1m to the Republican Party.

Dance, puppets, dance.