Yesterday, I bought a new notebook computer and today I am ecstatic -- because I took the damned thing back for a full refund! The totalitarian impulse of Microsoft is hideous, vile and unrelenting. Yesterday, I was grousing with the clerk in the software department about the MS's outrageous bundling, forced obsolescence and obscene pricing and the clerk offered to make me a copy of his StarOffice Suite for free. He also observed that sales of Office XP were not doing well. Reportedly MS Office accounts for somewhere between 30% and 40% of MS revenues. The least we can do is boycott this tyranny. We are rapidly moving towards the scenario described in RMS' [Richard Stallman, originator of the Gnu free software movement] short-story Right to Read. But RMS was an optimist. The real world is moving both more quickly and much more aggressively. Here is a quote from the Microsoft Surveilance System: Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
