Dear Microsoft

11 Nov 2004

An email sent to Microsoft, regarding an advertisement they placed on the Sydney Morning Herald website.

Updated: Microsoft responds, 12 November. ACCC makes contact, 16 November

Your advertisement on the Sydney Morning Herald website, inviting people to check their new computer in order to determine whether it is “genuine” or not, is poorly represented at best, and outright anti-competitive, ill-founded and deceptive at worst.

The advertisement (a Flash animation) begins with text stating “Buying a new PC?”, and then progresses to inform the user they should “Insist on secure and reliable software.” It then itemises an edge-to-edge hologram CD and Certificate of Authenticity as “must haves” for legitimate software. That extends beyond the protection of Microsoft Intellectual Property. That becomes protection of markets.

Under the guidelines established there, white-box computer systems sold without Windows on them (I dare not go so far as to propose that an open-source product be shipped instead, for that is utterly irrelevant to the thrust of my argument) are inherently illegitimate. This advertisement disseminates false information, with the ultimate effect of discouraging consumers from purchasing non-Microsoft products.

There ARE alternatives, which I do not feel the need to detail here, and Microsoft HAS actively discouraged people from pursuing the application of these, based on lies regarding the necessity of licensing Microsoft products. For the record, the term “PC” is not synonymous with “Microsoft Windows system”, and should not be considered such.

If this matter requires clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me via any method. A copy of this email has been posted on my personal website, and is publicly viewable to all. In the event that this advertisement is retracted or modified, I will add note to the posting of this message that the matter has been resolved, if Microsoft so desires it. The full address to this posting is http://www.joahua.com/blog/2004/11/11/dear-microsoft

Regards,

Joshua Street

This response came from Microsoft today:

Dear Joshua,

Thank you for your comments on the advertisements, however we
respectfully disagree with your assertions. The advertisements are
related to purchasing genuine Microsoft software.

Further we request that if you are posting communications on your web
site that Microsoft’s response is also posted.

Regards,

Colleen Baguley
License Compliance Manager

The advertisements are related to purchasing a PC, not to purchasing Microsoft products. Regardless as to the intended effect of this wording, to an uninformed reader, the outcome of this advertisement is a fear and distrust of non-Microsoft products. A response to Microsoft will be posted here at a later time, and a complaint with the ACCC shall be filed.

Message to the ACCC reads as follows:

Microsoft have produced an advertisement which I believe to be misleading, in the form of a Flash web ad displayed on the SMH website ( http://www.smh.com.au/ ). A complaint, sent to them on Thursday, November 11, is reproduced on my website at http://www.joahua.com/blog/2004/11/11/dear-microsoft – their response is also posted there, at their request.

My reasons for this are outlined in that posting. Essentially, they confuse, either deliberately or incidentally, the notion of “legitimate” software with “Microsoft” software. This disinformation leads consumers to perceive Microsoft offerings as the only legitmate option, when this is in fact not the case.

A copy of this message is also being sent to Microsoft piracy, and posted on the same web address given above. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries regarding this matter.

Microsoft was forwarded a copy of the same, with the full message reading as follows:

As requested, your response has been posted at the address previously provided. Additionally, the following complaint has been sent to the ACCC and posted to my website.

Microsoft have produced an advertisement which I believe to be misleading, in the form of a Flash web ad displayed on the SMH website ( http://www.smh.com.au/ ). A complaint, sent to them on Thursday, November 11, is reproduced on my website at http://www.joahua.com/blog/2004/11/11/dear-microsoft – their response is also posted there, at their request.

My reasons for this are outlined in that posting. Essentially, they confuse, either deliberately or incidentally, the notion of “legitimate” software with “Microsoft” software. This disinformation leads consumers to perceive Microsoft offerings as the only legitmate option, when this is in fact not the case.

A copy of this message is also being sent to Microsoft piracy, and posted on the same web address given above. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries regarding this matter.

Any response Microsoft may have to this shall be posted on my website, as has occurred previously. I shall contact you if or when further correspondence with the ACCC occurs, and the matter shall continue to be detailed on the website.

Update, 16^th November: Today, I received a phone call from the ACCC (to voicemail), which requested I call them back on a 1300 number which I did not note at the time (I was out, and negotiating phone systems on a mobile, especially of government agencies, can get expensive). I hope that attempts shall be made to contact me via email; failing that, I’ll follow it up with a phone call in a few days.

Propaganda follow-up

10 Nov 2004

I’m excited. The sign I’d prepared (A4 x 6) was stuck up outside the office today, was seen by most people passing through level 2 (it’s a fairly high-traffic area), and resulted in me personally installing Firefox on a computer of someone who’d never heard of it before. The signage consisted of an

enormous-ish logo (PDF, 274.1KB), and a smaller sheet which read:

Firefox 1.0

http://getfirefox.com/

Rediscover the web!

…in moderately enormous letters.

So, rest assured, more people than this one guy saw it. The only reason he asked what it was is because we were installing a wireless VPN client on his PC, and was wondering what the sign outside was for. I whipped out my USB flash drive, and Firefox was installed in under two minutes. Bang.

Next time someone comes up complaining about their WLAN password or whatever it is not working, I’m considering saying that it’s because their client software is insecure, and they should install another browser. Of course, the next step would be to actually fix whatever their problem was, but still… muwahahaha!

Oh, the wonders of frontline tech assistance!

As an aside, I’m impressed by the penetration of Firefox in this environment already. Admittedly, it’s something of a CSE and generic Engineering degree breeding ground, but still… other faculties are fairly well represented, too, and people still seem to have a Firefox icon on their desktop. Whether they use it is another issue altogether, of course, but the install-base exists, at least!

Firefox 1.0

10 Nov 2004

Firefox 1.0, the standalone web browser taking the world by storm, has been released today amidst much anticipation from the Internet community at large. This standards-compliant, secure and cross-platform browser has, even before its final version 1 release, received more than eight million downloads globally.

If you haven’t already made the switch, visit http://getfirefox.com/ and rediscover the web today!

I’ve got a moderately large poster (sized somewhere between A3 and A2) printed out, and plan on propaganda-ing my part of UNSW tomorrow morning… if you’ve got nothing better to do with your time tomorrow, engage in some propaganda-ing of your own!

Something scary.

09 Nov 2004

I’m the number 1 match for “HSC stimulus” (with or without quotation marks) on Google at this point in time. After that, there’s Dale’s post in which a picture of a burning stimulus booklet is displayed. What’s scary, is that I’m ranked higher than the Board of Studies website, and CSU’s HSC Online website for the un-quotation-mark-encapsulated search term!

Fortunately, the search query “HSC stimulus booklet” (sans quotes) returns normal matches on the first page, with my complaint about the difficulty of photocopying the stupid thing coming up on page two (of 34, but hey).

PageRank weightings obviously can’t always be a good thing, if this kind of irrelevant content can be dragged up because of it! (I assume that’s what it was, anyway…)

PCMCIA network cards

08 Nov 2004

Don’t suppose anyone has one lying around that they want to sell, or knows where to get them cheaply? Wired ethernet or wireless 802.11b (or c,d,e,f,g,…x,y,z — whatever’s in flavour this month), I’m pretty indifferent. My Xircom ethernet card has gone walkies (I have absolutely NO idea where it is… that isn’t something I’d have packed, either), and I want connectivity on my laptop.

The USB drive has gone some way to alleviating the pain, but still, it’s not as good as direct access to my network, especially in terms of live editing of remote sites… not that I’d ever do such a thing! Best practice be damned. ;-)

Yes… if anyone has one they want to lend/sell (even if it’s only 10Mbit, that’s fine), then get in touch via the contact form, or just email me.