A while back, I found myself with some extra time to sit and write...
By extra time, I mean, time I can’t spend being productive on my shiny new laptop because it came with windows 8 as the factory default, as all machines did at the time.
So, what’s wrong with windows 8?
I actually have very few complaints. It looks good, it runs smoothly, and it’s surprisingly user friendly; surprising because I remember reading a tech editorial that said new users didn’t have many problems after being instructed on how to turn it off.
It seemed foolish to me because I remember the glory days of computing, and having to teach my mother, and a few other antique humans, how to turn the machine ON.
Despite the two steps forward one step back nature of learning new systems, overall, I’m pleased with it’s performance. However…
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI for short) is a nightmare from which I cannot wake.
UEFI exists to provide additional security in a world where a skilled hacker can take control of virtually everything in your life (or at least everything virtual) from your credit cards and bank accounts, to your phone, garage door, home security system, and social networks.
What it doesn’t exist to do is keep you from being able to access your own fucking computer system. And that’s the problem I’m facing today.
I’m a big fan of Ubuntu/Linux and the idea of open source information,
To which Bill Gates of Hell has been adamantly opposed since the dawn of computer time.
He expressed this opposition in his 1976 ‘open letter to hobbyists’ and now I’m going to bore you with the whole thing. Bear with me, I’m going places with this:
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
“To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from anyone who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.”
There are several points I’d like to address here, which speak to the foundation of capital gain, open source information versus proprietary intellectual property, what piracy really means, and the principal difference between theft and making a motherfucking copy.
First off, at the time of this letter's authoring, the computer software market was a hobby market. It was not responsible for every one of millions of bank transactions, stock market trades, the successful operation of power plants and electric grids, water and food delivery systems, and everything else that makes our complex technological world work.
It was a market for people with time (and money) to burn, in pursuit of FUN.
This was when I first entered into computing, at the tender age of seven, with no awareness of the big world outside. I got a computer, and I wanted to have fun. We didn’t even have the internet back then. My induction into software was at the flimsy hands of a five inch floppy disk. I suspect some of you readers have never even seen one in person. If you wanted a piece of code to do something fun you had two choices:
Buy it. Or,
Find another computer with the code you wanted, and make a copy.
This required effort, in the form of communication with other human beings, physically moving your body to the location of the software with a disk (or disks) sufficient to contain the desired data, digging it out of the drive at that location, and executing a console command to move the data.
Now any poor slob with opposable thumbs and one good eye has access to more data than he or she could ever possibly hope to consume if they lived to a hundred and fifty. And chances are they wouldn’t know what the hell to do with 99% of it, even if they could get their sweaty little monkey paws on it.
The Difference Between Theft and Making a Motherfucking Copy:
If I showed up at your house tonight while you were asleep, with a badass 3-d printer, made a complete copy of the car down to the cigarette butts in the ashtray, and drove away with it, would you even notice? Would you care?
Would you feel as if you had been robbed, or harmed in any way?
Of course not. Yet in modern times, copying software has been directly compared to stealing cars, in at least one anti-piracy PSA:
I don’t feel it’s necessary to elucidate this point any further.
“One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written.”
Actually no. Richard Stallman, the absolute fucking genius responsible for the GNU operating system, which serves as the heart of modern linux system, coded and developed the whole thing (with some help from his friends) entirely for free.
Why?
Because proprietary information rights were impeding his ability to do his job.
“In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software can be regarded as a consequence triggered by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as stated by Stallman's MIT fellow Brewster Kahle.
When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity." He clarified, years later[vague], that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes is a crime, not the issue of charging for the software. Stallman's texinfo is a GPL replacement, loosely based on Scribe ; the original version was finished in 1986.
In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use.” -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
If not for Stallman, we might not have any option besides windows and OSX. That is a world I shudder to think of living in.
For his great work, in his literally free time, Stallman has been given fourteen honorary doctorates, and I have no doubt he deserves every one. And how many honorary doctorates has Bill Gates of Hell received for being the slimiest time wastingest vermin to ever crawl out from under a snake’s nutsack?
Only eight! In your face…
Er…
Common sense?
Anyway, moving on…
Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?
Me, you capitalist fucking pig. As some of you might know, I grow food for people. Lots of it, in three different states now, and I give it all away. My only two requirements for installing and maintaining a garden are that you don’t sell the food, and you don’t pay me.
So how can I possibly afford to live? Easy.
The reputation this work has created affords me the opportunity to travel for free, to eat and drink for free, to sleep for free in any one of a dozen houses of friends and relative strangers. And even though Stallman has done well for himself, I would be happy to put him up for free and feed him, just to enjoy his brilliant company. Respect and reputation are worth more than money could ever be, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
But there’s really no comparison between growing food and hobby software. In 1973, nobody needed a computer to live. They didn’t depend on CPUs for their very survival as we do now, and so only a bloodsucking leech would demand that anyone pay to SHARE AND HAVE FUN.
So if you’re doing something you hate so much that without pay, you would stop doing it,
STOP DOING THAT!
There’s a term for people who do awful things solely for profit.
MERCENARIES.
It’s not a very friendly word, but the shoe fits.
A few days ago, amongst friends, around the fire, I was asked,
“If I could kill anyone, who would it be?”
I didn’t bat an eyelash. Bill Gates of Hell.
I got a response question too, “Why Bill Gates?”
And I had an answer ready:
Because time is the most valuable commodity any human being can possess; assuming one can even be said to possess time in the first place. But whether we get to keep it is to some degree at the behest of software companies.
As a high level user of technology, I am more prone to loss of time than most, and Bill Gates of Hell along with his cronies at microsoft (a synonym for limp dick if you hadn’t noticed) has wasted more of my time than any other individual or organization ever in my life.
I believe he may have taken more time from humanity than anybody else is history.
Response question number two, “What about the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation?”
Simple. An offshore tax haven, like a mobile version of the Cayman Islands. But I don’t need to explain that one, professional journalists are already on the case:
http://techrights.org/2012/03/05/evading-tax-with-loopholes/
It might not be immediately apparent that I am not the type to hold a grudge.
I’m really not. But as I embark on hour seven of MAKING MY OWN MOTHERFUCKING COMPUTER WHICH I PAID FOR AND OWN DO WHAT THE FUCK I TELL IT TO DO, I am reminded that if only a giant gaping fissure in the Earth would open up and swallow Bill Gates of Hell and his company, LimpDick™, I could peacefully go about my business of growing vegetables and delivering them to soup kitchens and suburbanites, who would otherwise have no access to nutritious food. I would drop my grudge.
But until then,
Fuck you Bill, I hope you die of syphilis and that your soul is devoured by worms and then shat out to be devoured again for all of eternity.
Note: the content of this blog contains opinions for humorous purposes, not intended to be taken seriously by anyone with a law degree.
Because the one thing Bill and I agree on is that loopholes are real swell.