CKNW Editorial
for April 4, 2000

The big news is about Microsoft. According to Janet Reno, the American Attorney-general and her legal beagles, the world is now once more safe for consumers. Like most people who constantly cheer for the under dogs (the exception in my case being Tiger Woods) I cheer this result even though I know that there may be years ahead for this case as it winds its way through the Byzantine legal catacombs they call the American legal system. But I would argue that Bill Gates ought to be hung, drawn and quartered by consumers for much better reasons than those given by Judge Jackson.

Permit me to digress. Suppose your car, from time to time, simply seized up and stopped and that no matter how many times you took it back to the dealer it continued to do that. And suppose every person’s car did the same. Suppose when you set your microwave you could never be certain that it would stay at that temperature but that the numbers on the gauges might just randomly change whenever they felt like it. Suppose that just when the steak was about done your frying pan accused you of performing an illegal act and just quit until you warmed it up all over again. Supposing you have just taken the forty or fifty pictures of your lifetime and just in the nick of time as the sun goes down on your final evening at Grand Canyon – then suddenly the power fails not only depriving you of that final shot but eradicating forever your work of the last hour. And what would you do if every time you were watching your favourite TV show some damned icon came on the screen and asked you a bunch of idiotic questions?

If these things happened you would drive your car back to the showroom right through the front window … you would hold your dealer’s hand in the microwave as you gradually turned up the heat … you would cram your camera somewhere close to the salesman where it didn’t naturally belong and you’d give your TV set to someone you detested. Yet the equivalent things happen with Mr Gates software programs all the time.

Now I’m no newcomer to this computer game – I’ve been using one as a word processor for nearly 20 years, have been online for several years and run a website. But who hasn’t had their computer seize up so that after all the button pushing and unfriendly imprecations, you’ve had to crash the computer thus losing all your work? I know, I know if you have Microsoft Word there’s an automatic saver but suppose you’ve just, in haste, worked off a disk or maybe your most brilliant work came just before the crash and before the next scheduled "save" …whatever … the Computer has crashed or has momentarily lost power and there’s nothing you can do about it.

And who hasn’t just found that location on the Internet and, before marking it in your favourites, the computer just for the hell of it locks and the only way out is to crash it?

Who hasn’t been writing a letter in a certain size and font and had the computer strike out on it’s own size and font of the moment. And what about that damned fool icon that looks like a drink crazed doctor with a stethoscope around his neck asking if you would like some help when you’re writing a letter. If you make the wrong click getting rid of this unasked for nuisance you can really get into trouble including arriving at a program from which there is but one retreat – crashing the computer. And what appliance or car has its buttons so close together that even the most expert user will hit the wrong one occasionally whereupon all hell breaks loose? And how about numbering paragraphs. It won’t let you do it yourself unless you go into the bowels of the machine and give it explicit instructions. If you don’t, it keeps numbering, or bulleting paragraphs forever. You wouldn’t want a car to keep on going after you’re finished with it.

Why do we put up with this crap from Bill Gates? The plain truth about his merchandise is that it’s sloppily made, unbelievably intrusive, and calculated to drive the mildest of souls into being tempted to hit the monitor – which is not your tormentor - with the nearest blunt object.

I hope Microsoft really gets it this time … and I hope that this produces a competitor with a novel idea for the software customer – a product that actually works.