I am Joe Blog’s Left Ventricle

Turned 30 today.

The feelings are mixed, as you might well imagine. On the one hand, the 20’s are over. A decade concluded; an era ended. On the other hand, I can only look back with fondness, and without regret, at the times gone by. On the third hand, the second hand that twitches agitatedly, relentlessly into the future, I feel nothing but content with the base I’ve built up and excitement and interest for what that future holds.

I have beer with me, to mark the occasion, but it’s too early for the beer to be talking. I’m doing the talking, and I’m saying thankyou.

Here’s to the well wishers who somehow remembered today (I know some of you fuckers have cron jobs or it’s programmed into your phone, that’s cheating).

Here’s to the friends of birthdays past; most of you are still my friends and most of you are still in touch. When next we meet, let’s get pissed and fall over. Roll on the irresponsible 30’s! hahaha
Here’s to the lovers that I’ve been with. It was hot, it was sweet, it was wild, it was cool, it was great, it was over and I’ll love you forever. Relationships change, lives change, people change. Love, loyalty and honour do not.

Here’s to the doubters. I know you’re still out there. You thought I could never get anything going. Well, more than one business venture I helped start ended up breaking even, and nothing ever ended in a total loss. Software I wrote still makes things happen in far away places. And some near to hand I got out with a CV that looked okay and I got a “real job” or two to learn what I could. I’ve got a car, I pay bills and rent, I’ve got an investment and I’ve never been fired. I’ve had some scowls from managers but more usually bewildered joy. I made it to 30. You keep on doubting - I’ll keep on ignoring it and achieving whatever you think is impossible.

Here’s to Melanie. I love you

Here’s to the future. Here’s to real challenges.

Here’s to everybody who will die of starvation this year.

Here’s to everyone who will die because they can’t get clean water.

Here’s to everyone who will be shot or hacked up or beaten to death in a war that will get both sides nothing.

Here’s to every adult and child who’s died of cholera since 1879, rabies since 1882, tetanus since 1890, typhoid fever since 1896, diptheria since 1921, whooping cough since 1926, tuberculosis since 1927, yellow fever since 1932, typhus since 1937, the flu since 1945, polio since 1952, measles since 1963, mumps since 1967, or rubella since 1970.

Here’s to the three million kids who will die of malaria this year, for the want of an $8 bednet or $5 in drugs.

Last but not least, here’s to the billions who will starve at the end of the century because we’ve de-terraformed our planet to a sixty-degree desert wasteland.

Here’s to you. I haven’t forgotten, and I’m still coming, no matter how late.

WTF?

Windows is the only choice for your desktop operating system. This isn’t because Linux is worse in any measurement you could bring to bear - in almost every way, in fact, it’s better. But there are three big pieces of software that Microsoft have made sure you need - and doubly made sure you can’t get from Linux.

1. DirectX

This is what ultimately kills Linux in the home. Almost every major computer game that comes out these days requires DirectX, and you can’t get DirectX for Linux. There is something close in Cedega, but its not an exact match and there are inevitable consequences to using it.

Microsoft wrote DirectX as a platform for games developers to use, to make writing games for Windows a little easier. It does indeed achieve that, but it also means everybody gets the same bugs, and that a game written for windows (now using DirectX) would require serious effort to get working on any other operating system.

A smart move for Microsoft.

2. .NET

Dot Net is the Biggest, Baddest, Strongest chain Microsoft is using today to hold businesses to Windows. Pretty much any piece of software written for .NET runs on windows and only windows. There is an open source emulator of sorts called Mono, but I’ve heard terrible things about it - it’s nowhere near close enough.

And guess what… the number of applications for businesses that are built for .NET is growing every day, as is the number of programmers who code in it and companies who are having their in-house software developed with it.

.NET was written as microsoft’s response to a cominbation of Java, PHP, and Perl. These three programming languages were taking over the world. PHP is a serious competitor to Microsoft’s dreadful Active Server Pages platform, while Java was becomming *the* standard for writing business applications. Why was this bad news for Microsoft? Java can run on *any* operating system. The same program should work the same on Linux or over the web as it did for Windows, breaking up, to a degree Microsoft’s monopoly from its old Windows API’s.

As these things go, .NET isn’t too bad. It’s certainly an improvement on old Microsoft Visual C++ and its way better than Active Server Pages, but it’s not much better than Java, Perl, or PHP. It is, however, being pushed, and pushed, and pushed by Microsoft as The Future.

In my place of work, .NET looks set to successfully prevent us from making the switch to Linux on hundreds of desktop machines over the next three years. Another smart move by Microsoft.

3. Microsoft Exchange

It takes a lot of effort on my part to write even the words “Microsoft Exchange” without screaming and kicking things. It’s a *Terrible* product, and always has been. It’s unstable, resource hungry… don’t let me get started.

The point is, there’s vastly better Email Servers out there. Fucking sendmail does 90% of what 90% of businesses use Exchange for, and it’s been around since before I was a BMX Bandit. It also does it completely stably, sigh.

But the problem is, Exchange has a shared calendar thing that lets you book appointments with your collegues, and the open source world has yet to produce something similar that integrates into an email client.

Not so much a smart move by Microsoft, as a dumb one by the open source community. This is one area where all the solutions are still proprietary. Yes I’m watching Thunderbird’s various half-assed calendar projects with a mix of excitement and frustration.

So fucking what?

There’s no question this is smart business on Microsoft’s part. This is *Exactly* what they should be doing, from a capitalist, corporate perspective. They have almost a monopoly on the desktop operating system market, and they’re taking steps to perpetuate that monopoly.

But is this in the interests of the consumer? Of the business? Of the government departments?

These products are part of a deliberate strategy to limit your choices to one: Microsoft Windows. This is the very definition of Anti Competitive behavior. It is a deliberate strategy to stave off the competition, not by having better products, but by leveraging their existing market dominance to self-perpetuate the monopoly.

There are laws against this in a lot of countries, and MS has had some trouble with those laws in the past. They will probably continue to have trouble with those laws, because flouting them is the only way they can indefinitely prolong their monopoly.

No I do not have a punch line for you today. This has been a statement of fact sort of blog post.