Category: Technology

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Software Police

All over the civilized world, the software police– at taxpayer’s expense– are invading homes and the offices of Internet Service Providers, warrants in hand, to shut down those evil, pernicious, dangerous, malevolent software pirates.

That’s the way the world works. The lawyers for a big company like Microsoft or Lotus calls the police. They say, “arrest that man– he’s stealing our software!” The police say, “yes sir!” and throw on their flak jackets, arm themselves to the teeth, hop into their paddy wagons, and go racing out to courageously fight for justice and truth and all that.

It should tell you something about the nature of our economy and our politics that if you called the police and asked them to arrest Microsoft or Lotus or Compaq, for the same crime, they would laugh in your face. You just know, don’t you, that the police would assume that a lawyer for Microsoft represents the forces of justice and truth, while a mere consumer represents… well… the average person. And the law, my friend, has become a tool of the rich, by which they exploit you and me.

Case in point. Do you own a computer? What does it mean to own? If you own your couch, that means that no one can sit on it without your permission. If you own a house, in the U.S., that means you can pretty well kill anybody who tries to enter it without your permission.

You own this computer. So why is your hard drive loaded with parasite programs that suck the breath out of your CPU? Why is your e-mail flooded with SPAM? Why can’t you delete certain directories like “My Documents”? Why does Office 97 exterminate your copy of Office 95, without giving you a choice? And when Windows crashes for the umpteenth time, costing you hours and hours of precious work, why is nobody accountable for it? Why is Compaq allowed to sell laptops with fake modems? Why can a software company sell a check-writing program that doesn’t work and refuse to give the purchaser his money back?

This is theft, of your time and your property.  It is robbery.

 

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Letter to Compaq Computers

Thursday, June 03, 1999

Dear Mr. Ciceri,

I’m a busy person, and I’m sure you’re very busy– so I will be very brief.

About two months ago, we were shopping for a laptop computer. I had not purchased a Compaq in some time, because I had been “burned” about seven or eight years ago by Compaq’s proprietary memory modules– we had to pay three times as much as other computer owners did for a simple memory upgrade. However, I thought it was time to give Compaq an opportunity to win more of our business. We bought three Compaq Armadas, and then I bought a Presario Notebook, model 1920, for myself—because I needed a large hard drive and lots of power.

I discovered, within a couple of weeks, that Compaq now installs “Winmodems” on its notebooks. I was shocked and extremely disappointed. I called your staff and asked to exchange this model for a Compaq that had a real modem. No dice—you don’t make any models with a real modem anymore. Fine, I will take a refund—it’s been less than 30 days. Then I’ll get a Sony or some other model that does have a real modem. Surely you don’t want a dissatisfied customer.

I won’t bore you with the details. I was on the phone for hours arguing with your staff. The bottom line was quite clear. Once Compaq has your money— they will never, ever give it back, no matter how dissatisfied you, the customer, may be..

I was a little stunned. Usually large companies that wish to do well over the long term realize that customer satisfaction is far more important than the profit margin on the sale of a single item. We are not a small company. I play an important—probably decisive – role in almost all computer purchases for this agency. You don’t even want to give me the benefit of the doubt?

Your staff argued vehemently with me that winmodems are great. I won’t repeat the discussion—ask any reputable, independent computer expert what he thinks of “winmodems”. They are the “mopeds” of the computer world. They only function with Windows. They create a larger profit margin for the modem vendors because, even though they cost less to the consumer, they also cost way less to manufacture. And they can sell you an “upgrade” without providing any new product at all. Just send the user a “patch” that shoves more of the work onto the CPU. And Winmodems increase Microsoft’s proprietary stranglehold on the desktop.

That’s not my only complaint about your notebook. I discovered that my 6.5 GIG hard drive is only a 5.0 Gig hard drive. Again, semantics aside, the Presario has stolen 1.6 GIG of MY disk space for something called “System Save”. I am warned that if I delete this, I will be in danger of losing data or worse.

Look, you had a reasonable customer who didn’t expect the world—only a decent, well-made notebook computer, with 6.5 GIG hard drive space, and a modem. Because this notebook has a “winmodem”, I cannot use it to run Linux, my favourite OS. Nothing in your advertising or webpages indicates that you can’t run Linux on the Presario 1920. And, well, you can run it, if you don’t need a modem. As if…

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Compaq had (has) a choice. Compaq could have said: we have an unhappy customer. We did fudge a bit about the modem. Maybe he’s got a point. Maybe not. But let’s make sure we don’t cost ourselves future sales: give him his money back.

Or… like any carnival huckster, Compaq can keep my money in their tight little fists and refuse to ever give it back, knowing full well that it would cost me more in legal fees to fight them than it would to swallow that unpleasant taste in my mouth and take my cruddy little notebook computer home and let it sit in a little corner somewhere.

Sir, you refused to make good on your promises. You made me feel ripped off. Your salesmen, beyond all comprehension, said, yes, we will write off any possible future sales to Christian Horizons for years and years and years, just so we can desperately hang on to the profit margin from a single laptop computer. I was amazed. If I had any money invested in Compaq stock and if I thought this was representative of how Compaq deals with its customers, I would sell my stock immediately.

Unless Compaq has a change of policy, you might as well send your brochures elsewhere.

Bill Van Dyk

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Your Hard Drive is Your Property

Did you ever consider that your computer is private property? You bought it. You paid for it. It’s yours. The hard drive, the motherboard, the CD, the RAM— it’s all your property, just like your couch, your stereo, and your house. If someone came into your house and tried to remove your computer without your permission, you could have that person arrested. If the same person tried to steal your computer three times, in California, he could go to jail for 25 years! Think about that. Our government is so concerned about your private property that is willing to spend millions of dollars to punish anybody who tries to take it without your permission.

The hard drive is your property too. That’s where the programs and data go. The hard drive is like a gigantic cathedral with thousands and thousands of rooms. And you own it! All of it! And like any owner, you can put stuff in your rooms.

Wait a minute! Somebody’s living in your cathedral! Some complete stranger just walked right in and made himself at home without asking for your permission. Not only that, but he’s brought hundreds of his friends. By golly, they are taking up a whole wing of your cathedral!

Why, it’s Bill Gates. He’s living in your house! How about that!

How did he get there? Well, first of all, on the day you bought your computer, Bill Gates and a large number of his friends moved right in. And guess what? Not only does he get to live in your hard drive without paying you any rent, but he gets to make YOU pay rent, even though you might never have invited him in. Yes, you pay the Microsoft Tax every time you buy a computer, whether you want Bill Gates to live on your hard drive or not. If you don’t believe me, go to a computer store and tell the guy that you want to buy a computer but you don’t want Windows on it.

Ever look through your Windows directory? There’s about a hundred subdirectories! That’s where all of Bill Gates’ parasitical friends live. You’ll find his best friend, MSN there, along with IE, and AOL, and Genie, and lots of other weirdos that you didn’t invite in. These guys are taking up space in your house! And they didn’t ask to come in!

Look, maybe you asked Bill Gates in, because you needed to use his Windows software. And maybe you don’t mind that he added a few freebies to your Windows, like CD Player and DeFragger. But after winning your good will with those freebies that don’t really annoy you, he has suddenly pulled up at your front door with two eighteen-wheelers. “Hi there? You don’t mind if I bring all this stuff in, do you?” And there he is loading up your hard drive with all kinds of bizarre little applications.

But this is like inviting an electrician in to come and fix your main electrical panel, and then finding out that he brought about a hundred of his buddies with and they’re all setting up hot-tubs and pool tables and beer kegs and partying down on your hard drive and smoking and blowing your fuses and leaving blood stains on your drapes and so on. Think about this next time your Windows 98 crashes. Why did it crash? Because it’s so hard to write a good computer program nowadays? Or because of all the other crap that got loaded onto your system along with Windows 98?

So you go– what’s wrong with that? Okay. You like hot tubs? So you decide to get into your hot tub. The hot tub manager says, hold it: you have to pay me $300 to use the hot tub. You say, that’s too much. I won’t use the hot tub. Do you think the hot tub is going to go away? No, it’s not. It’s going to stay there, steaming away, corroding your pipes, leaking into tour basement for ever. Every time you walk by, the guy goes, “hey, wanna use a hot tub?”

It’s not only Microsoft that is guilty of this invasion of your private property. Most computer vendors dump all kinds of technotrash all over your computer before delivering it.

I recently bought a Compaq notebook. I needed a lot of disk space, so I paid extra for a 6.3 gig hard drive. Well, Bill Gates had already taken up about half the house there, and then I found out that Compaq had stolen an additional 1.6 GIG of space on another drive. This is called “system-save”. Compaq sets it aside as a backup of the system so that when Windows goes bad, as it inevitably does, you can simply delete all your work and start over again with a fresh install. Great solution, eh? Compaq assumes you are a total idiot who wouldn’t actually decide to customize your software. Well, my attitude is: get the hell off my property! If I want to pay twice as much for a house so I can have a whole wing devoted to backup toilets and appliances, I’ll buy it from somebody else who gives me a choice, thank you.

Even worse– most of that 1.6 gig is not taken up with essential files for running your computer– it’s taken up with all the crap that you didn’t want in the first place and won’t buy! Compaq insists you keep that crap right in front of you because sooner or later…

Bill Gates is getting pushier and pushier too now. You get your new computer—it’s already got a directory called “My Documents”. What kind of idiot is going to create a directory called “My Documents”? An idiot who is going to create all of about five documents in his entire life and wants to keep them all in one folder so he never loses them, maybe. And then there is “program files”. You can’t get to the program files directory by typing “CD \PROGRAM FILES” like you should be able to. You have to type “CD\PROGRA~1” for some bizarre reason! You can’t get rid of these folders either. Why not? If that electrician who fixed your electrical panel decided to leave a bathtub in the middle of your living room, you could get rid of it. But Windows says you can’t delete certain folders, including the idiotic “My Documents”. And when you browse to the Windows directory with Windows Explorer, you don’t see the files that are in there. Instead, you are warned not to tamper with anything.

Microsoft’s mission in life, of course, is to sell as much software as possible. Because there are a lot more dingbats in the world than power users, Microsoft keeps aiming Windows at the idiot-user. Don’t know how to organize your files? No problem—Windows will put them all in one directory. Don’t plan to ever customize your applications or edit their configuration files? You’ll never even know where they are. Can’t figure out how to configure dial-up networking so you can go on the Internet? Hey—Microsoft will do it all for you, and log you into their web servers, and demand your credit card number, of course.

In other words, most people are going: “Hey—I hired a plumber to fix the toilet and you know what he did? He put in a hot tub and a Jacuzzi and a sauna too! And I didn’t even ask him!” Oh, but how much did it cost? “It was free. It came with the computer.” Free, of course, except for the Microsoft tax on every new computer sold by mainstream vendors. Free, at the price of freedom and individuality and choice. Free, except for the fact that the primary objective of Microsoft is to turn the Internet into television: 67 channels and nothing on.

The software companies never tire of trumpeting their rights all over the place. It’s about time the computer user started standing up for his own rights. You own your hard drive. You have a right to demand that software companies and internet servers stop dumping their advertising on your hard drive. It’s time to demand that Microsoft install only the application that you asked for on your hard disk.

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The Cost of Books

Why does a book cost about $25 nowadays? Why do even paperbacks cost $15? How much do you think the author gets?

Well, the author gets about a buck. That’s right: $1.00. The rest of that “reasonable” price is the cost of printing, formatting, shipping, and handling. It includes the cost of display shelves, store clerks, cash registers, and agents. It includes the cost of advertising, promotion, travel, office furniture, telephones, and postage.

What if you didn’t have any of those costs? What if you could buy the book directly from the publisher? What if the book could be shipped to you over a phone line, in about 10 seconds? What if the publisher didn’t have to pay for paper? How much should the book cost? About $2.00, right? All right– let’s be generous: $3.50.

Wrong. It would cost $15-20.00. It would cost more than the same book on sale, in paper, on a shelf, in a store, in front of a counter with a cash register and a clerk.

This makes no sense. But it’s true. Meet the “electronic book”. Meet greed.

This reminds me of when the CD first came out. It was priced about $10 more than a vinyl LP. Why? The record companies said it cost more to produce. Well, today the CD cost way less to produce than a vinyl record. When do the discounts start? When do they start to pay their artists?

Yes, the first “virtual” books are on the market: The Software Book and The Rocket. They cost about $500 – 600. They are about the size and weight of real books and consist mostly of computer components and monochrome screen. Yes, you can read in the toilet again.

And how about that: you can buy Shakespeare for your virtual book. I couldn’t find out the price, but I’m sure you won’t mind paying a royalty on it.

Should you buy one? If you’re the kind of person who buys lottery tickets for birthday presents, then yes, by all means.

For the rest of us— forget it.

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Why is Microsoft Windows So Bad?

Is Windows so bad because Microsoft’s engineers are incompetent? Or is there a conscious strategy here?

It didn’t make sense to me for a long time. Microsoft is a big company. It hires some of the best programmers in the world to work on their products. They have endless resources and talent. So why can’t they come up with an operating system that doesn’t crash all the time?

You have to consider a few basic facts, first of all. How many “power users” are there out there? What I mean is, how many people out there are smart enough to manage their own computer systems properly? Let’s think of percentages. I would say that, of the people I know, about 10%, at the most, are potential “power users”.

Whoa! Let’s step back! Only 10%? Isn’t that kind of insulting to the vast majority of computer users?

Well, what is a power user? Someone who meets these qualifications:

  • creates his own logical directory structure for storing his files
  • backs up his data to a portable, removable storage media, because his work is important
  • installs programs himself, and maybe some hardware, like CD ROMS
  • knows how to fix problems with the computer
  • sets up and configures his own internet connection
  • customizes applications to be more productive (in vain—they will crash regardless).

Okay? So there you go. Power users are basically like people who renovate their own homes: they want to design the system to work for them.

What do we call non-power users? Consumers. Consumers live in malls. Consumers don’t want to be challenged: they want everything provided to them on a silver platter. They don’t care about the environment or monopolies or long-term interest rates. Consumers, after all, just want to consume.

Consumers want to turn on the computer with that knob on the front and then play Doom or cruise the internet for pictures of Alicia Silverstone. That’s about it. And maybe send e-mails to friends that consist mostly of messages like this: “Hi. I have e-mail now. Isn’t this cool. Send me something so I know it’s working.” Of all the people I know, about 90% are potential computer consumers.

Think about that. 10. 90. 10. 90. If you were Microsoft, which would you rather have as your customer base?

That’s why Microsoft expects you to store all your documents in “My Documents”. You don’t get to name this directory something logical like “work” or “data” or “letters”. Oh no. You can’t even delete Microsoft’s “My Documents”. It’s like mom telling you what to wear every morning. “Here’s your turtleneck.” “Think I’ll wear a t-shirt today.” “Here’s your turtleneck.” “Have you seen my t-shirt?” “Here. It’s your turtleneck.”

And that’s why Microsoft puts all your applications in “Program Files” even though, when you go to the dos prompt, you can’t type “CD Program Files” but have to type, instead, the idiotic abbreviation: “CD Progra~1”. Of course. What consumer would go to the DOS prompt anyway?

That’s why Microsoft is constantly trying to run your computer life for you. When you go to the DOS prompt, it puts you into the Windows directory. Why? What idiot wants to go there? When you use Windows Explorer to go looking for files, it displays the names only, without size, date, or type. Why would you want to know those things? You’re just looking for “letter to mom”. Microsoft is pushing modem and printer manufacturers to design their equipment so that it only runs on Windows, even if that means taking precious processor cycles away from your CPU. They don’t tell you, when you buy one of these modems or printers, that they only work on Windows, and that, in a couple of years, you are going to have to replace that equipment because Microsoft will make sure that the software that runs it will be out of date.

Microsoft Word even tells you when it doesn’t like the way you write. Fix it, or I’ll annoy you to death with colored squiggly lines all over the page. All of your family and friends will know that you write stupid.

Microsoft isn’t the only offender here. Quicken used to be a useful, snappy little checkbook manager that did it’s job and got out of the way. Now it tries to reach into your wallet and take control of everything you do. It wants to hook you up to the internet every time you fart in the direction of the phone. It tries to create new accounts and categories for you every time you don’t type something just the way you want them to. When you enter a new check for a payee you have entered previously, it helpfully copies details into the current transaction— including the “reconciled” flag!  Great idea!

Norton Utilities and Norton Anti-virus have the same attitude problem. These tyrannical little programs really get out there and try to push you around, constantly harassing you about rescue disks and live updates and all that baloney. And you know, it wouldn’t be quite half as bad as it is except that most of these programs don’t work! Norton keeps begging me to let it update it’s files, so I say, okay, go ahead. What does it do? Lock up. Norton anti-virus crashes my Windows 98 every time it boots, so I now have to step around it. Uninstall the program? “This application could not be uninstalled”. Best of all, some of the third-party uninstall programs won’t even uninstall themselves!

Netscape thinks you would like nothing more than to go the Netscape web site every time you turn on your computer.

You can see why Linux is getting so popular. Microsoft is like your Mom, constantly harassing you about what you should be doing. Linux is like your Uncle Max. You go up to him and he says, “What do you want?” At first, you might think he’s a little rude, but if you say you want to go out for a beer and a smoke, he’ll say, sure, what do I care?

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Windows 95 on Pentium 350

Microsoft doesn’t want you to install Windows 95 on a Pentium 350. Why not? Well, obviously, if you can use Windows 95 on your new Pentium 350, you don’t need a copy of Windows 98. Seeing as most people can’t buy a new computer without paying the Microsoft Tax, it’s probably a moot point. Or is it? Windows 98 doesn’t run particularly well. And some applications won’t run at all under Windows 98. Anyway, here’s how you do it.

1. Delete Windows 98 if it’s already on there. Here’s how: first, create a Win98 boot disk with CD ROM drivers (Go to Control Panel/Install Software). Boot to it. Fdisk the drive, delete the partition, create a new partition, and format it.

2. Boot up to the Win 98 boot disk with CD ROM support. Put the Windows 95 CD in the drive and run SETUP.

3. Windows will stupidly lose the CD ROM drive when it gets to the “install printers” stage, which it won’t let you skip. Skip it anyway by clicking on cancel. Reboot. Your CD will be back.

4. Once Win 95 is installed, you will find that ethernet cards, modems, and other devices will not be recognized. That’s because Win 95 doesn’t talk to the PCI IRQ manager the way it should. Here’s how you fix it.

5. Get the file USBSUP.EXE from the internet. If I get time, I’ll post it here. You also need the PCI INF update file. I got my copy from my computer vendor. Run the USBSUP.EXE program first (just run it: don’t try to install it as a device driver). Then run the PCI INF program (called “setup”). You must do it in this order.

6. Install the devices and drivers as usual. You should now have a functioning Windows 95 installation on a Pentium 350.

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Garbage Compaqter

My first experience with a Compaq computer must have been about ten years ago. A social service agency in Chatham had been persuaded, by MicroAge, to buy one Compaq’s “Deskpro” models. It had run pretty well for them for a couple of years, but when we needed to upgrade the memory for some new applications we wanted to run– surprise! You couldn’t just go to the computer store and buy a couple of off the shelf SIMMS. Oh no– you had to buy Compaq’s own proprietary memory modules. I’ll give you one guess as to which cost more. A lot more.

The Compaq representative tried to tell me that Compaq’s memory was more than twice as expensive because it was “better quality”. Leaving aside the question of whether or not any sane customer would be willing to pay $575 instead of $150 for memory that might be 1 nanosecond faster on a 386 computer, you have to ask yourself what Compaq really thinks of their customers.

That was the last time I recommended Compaq computers to anybody in a long time. I would guess that in the seven or eight years since I became aware of Compaq’s nasty tendency to booby-trap their hardware with proprietary devices (they even sometimes soldered memory onto the motherboard) my recommendations have been the deciding factor in about $200,000.00 of computer purchases. Maybe Compaq doesn’t care about the business they lost. They did pretty well anyway– until this year–, meaning that you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

Don’t ask me why, but I recently recommended the Compaq notebook computer, an Armada 1700, to a few people. Lapse in judgment? I thought maybe Compaq had changed. Most of the computer press had given the Armada 1700 favourable reviews and I didn’t have time to review every detail, so I made a snap decision.

Surprise! Compaqs now come with built-in WINmodems. You know what a WINmodem is? Well, in the old days, a modem was a device that translated analog signals from a telephone line into digital information that was then forwarded to your CPU for processing. Well, the WINmodem offloads that translation function onto the CPU itself. This has a couple of wonderful effects. First of all, it adds work to your CPU, slowing down your computer. Secondly, it is proprietary to Windows– you can’t access this modem with Linux because Linux programmers aren’t stupid.

The real effect of WINmodems is to increase Microsoft’s death-grip on your desktop, and to add profits to the modem industry by making it cheaper for them to change models (they only have to rewrite the software: they don’t actually have to manufacturer new chips anymore).

Isn’t this a GREAT idea? No wonder Compaq embraced it!

There is nothing on the advertising or system information that comes with the Compaq notebook that tells you that you are getting a WINmodem. You have been suckered.

I called Compaq about a week after I received a Presario 1920 with this problem. I explained that I had been tricked: I had expected a real modem. I wanted to return my Presario for a similar model with a real modem. The technical support guy, who was polite at all times, said that Compaq did not make any notebook computers that did not have a WINmodem. Fine, I said, I’ll take my money back and go shopping for a brand (like Sony) that does have a real modem.

Unfortunately, Compaq said– in polite, but firm language: SUCKER! WE ALREADY HAVE YOUR MONEY! Even though the computer was less than 2 weeks old, there was no way that Compaq was going to take it back.

I said to the technical support guy something to this effect: A week ago you told me (figuratively) that this was such a wonderful, valuable, noble notebook computer that was worth every penny of what you were asking for it. In only one week, is it now so worthless that even Compaq doesn’t want it? There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

There are a couple of other reasons to dislike Compaq Notebooks:

Compaq has their own version of Windows and makes dire threats of evil consequences if you dare to install any other.

Compaq loads the notebook with tons of advertising and software for AOL, GENIE, MSN, and other on-line services. This is YOUR hard drive we’re talking about.

Compaq advertises a 6.4 GIG hard drive, but 1.5 GIG is taken up with something called “System Save”. Apparently, you can delete it if you want to, but, once again, you get dire warnings about potential problems.

Compaq’s installation CD over-writes everything on the hard drive. So, let’s say your Windows 98 gets buggered up somehow. Normally, you could try reinstalling it over your current system. If that fails, you can delete the Windows directory and try reinstalling again. Either way, you get to keep your precious data and configuration files. But Compaq’s install disk OVER-WRITES everything on your hard drive!

Here’s the biggest idiocy of all: due to overwhelming consumer demand, Compaq has decided to do away with the OFF switch. I kid you not. Compaq is so sure that Windows 98 is going to work just great that they have left it up to Bill Gates’ malevolent mishmash of mushy modules to shut your computer off.

How fool-proof is this? Within three hours, my Presario would no longer shut off. I called technical support. They said to hold the button down for four seconds. No dice. They said try again. Try again. Try again. Finally, he put me on hold and went off seeking advanced expertise. The advanced expert advised me to unplug the thing and pull out the battery. Brilliant! This approach has the advantage of possibly corrupting your systems files, requiring a re-install of Compaq’s proprietary Windows and the destruction of all of your data.

Finally, after about six or seven hours of use, my Compaq Presario 1920 began to lock up while running Word for Windows. Again, I am not kidding. A brand new 300 Mz. Pentium notebook computer with 64 MB of RAM locked up within six hours of use. And before it locked up, it began to thrash and hesitate: I would be typing away and the keyboard would be locked out while the CPU ran off to lala land. When it locked up, not even ctrl-alt-delete could revive it. Dead meat. Lost work. Thank you, Compaq. Thank you Microsoft.

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Idiotic Shopping Experiences

I went to Future Shop today to buy a battery for my camcorder.
I don’t, as a rule, like big, boxy “super-stores”. I bought the camcorder itself from Steve’s TV, which is a more traditional, little, boxy store. But I needed a battery quickly, and Future Shop was right there on the horizon, so I dropped in.

First of all, the place is infested with well-dressed salesmen. They’re all over the place, watching you, waiting to pounce. You have to be very careful with your body language in a Future Shop. One dropped elbow or inquisitive glance, and you are immediately surrounded by these polished, buff, slick, oiled robots.

I found the camcorder section at the back, in front of a wall of television sets. One of the robots came over and tried to help. The batteries were locked in this rack. He didn’t have a key. Why not? I don’t know. Where I work, we tend to trust people with keys. If we didn’t, we would never get anything done, because everybody would spend most of their times running around getting keys from the people who are supposed to make sure you don’t do anything stupid with them.

Mr. Robot went to another salesman. He didn’t have the key. Another salesman came up: the manager has the key. Where’s the manager? We don’t know. We stood there waiting for five minutes making small talk with a robot while the other salesmen ran around looking for the manager. Finally, they found him. A key was brought. They opened the rack and we bought a camcorder battery. This is a “lithium ion” battery, which is supposed to last for four hours. It cost $89.99. It takes four salesmen to release the battery from it’s guarded position on the display rack.

There is a desk and a computer near the camcorders and the salesman took my VISA card and charged my account and then printed a receipt. Then he escorted us to the door.

Now if I owned a store and customer came in, I would think that the last thing you want to do is clear him out of the building to prevent him from doing any further shopping. But that’s what this salesman did. He took my battery, and some blank video tapes I had purchased with it, and escorted us right to the check-out counter. At this point, the cashier touched the items with a magic wand so we could escape through the detectors and leave the store.

I had wanted to check out the CD section– about time I got a digital remaster of Springsteen’s “Born to Run”. And I wanted to check out their prices on CD players. And I’m always on the lookout for interesting software or computer accessories. Not today though. One purchase, and out you go!

I’d like to talk to the idiot who devised this strategy. I’d like to know his reasoning. I don’t like Future Shop, but I’m curious about a marketing strategy that consists of reducing the possibility of customers making multiple purchases. Is it to prevent shop-lifting? Is it to keep people from switching price stickers around? Don’t they have enough robot-salesmen in the store to prevent such things from happening?

At Steve’s TV, I bought the camcorder from a salesman. He took me to a counter where a pretty girl rang it up on the computer and then gave me a receipt. I walked out of the store un-noticed. But I’ll be back.

For the record, by the way, on the items I purchased, the prices at Steve’s TV were either cheaper or the same.

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Amazon

Everybody thinks Amazon.com, the on-line bookstore, is such hot stuff. In the past year alone, the value of Amazon stock soared from about 2 cents a share to $550.00, or something like that. Amazing.

The trouble is that Amazon has never actually made a profit. They lost about $45 million last year. Yet everybody thinks they are worth more than K-mart. Amazon was given a business load of $275 million dollars last year. Why? Does anybody seriously think an on-line bookstore operating out of a garage that hasn’t made any money yet is worth more than a well-known discount chain with hundreds of stores and offices and other assets? No. But everybody thinks everybody else does. So, you buy some Amazon stock and hype it up until everybody else starts buying it up. Then you sell it and get the heck out of there before it all crashes.

As a store, Amazon sucks.

I ordered a book, “Into the Wild”, by Jon Krakauer, in paper-back. How much is a paperback at a conventional book store? About $12-15 nowadays, I guess.

The Amazon.com price for this book was $10.36, U.S.. That seems like a pretty good deal. Let’s order some more:

Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen, $18.20
Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, $21.00
Wow! Three books for $49.56!

Actually, that’s pretty pricey. I think the government should subsidize books. Reading make you smart. The smarter we are, the more money we make. The more money we make, the more taxes we pay. The more taxes we pay, the more money the government has to build obsolete bombers and missile defense systems. Go for it.

Anyway, you hand over your VISA number and wait two weeks, and, voila: your book arrives by parcel post. Then you get your bill.

Whoa, Nellie!

The bill is for $59.00! How’d that happen? Oh yes— the ubiquitous “shipping and handling” charge.

Now, could someone explain something to me? You walk into K-mart. You see a book. The price of the book is $10.00. You go to the check-out. You hand over $10.00. You walk out with the book. Well, okay, first you pay $1.50 in taxes. Then you walk out with the book.

Didn’t they handle it? Didn’t they ship the book to the store? Didn’t they pay for electricity and water and heat? Didn’t they hire someone to clean the store? Of course they did. Those are all operating expenses. But they are included in the price of the book. They make sure that they sell enough books with a big enough profit margin so they can pay all their expenses.

Now, Amazon.com ships me my three books and then, surprise, hits me with a $9.85 “shipping and handling” charge. I can understand the shipping charge. That seems fair. But when I ship a package this size, I pay about $2.47, thanks to our volume deal with a well-known courier company. Amazon ships gazillions of books, so they must have an even better deal. So where does the rest of the $9.85 come from? Don’t tell me it cost $7.38 for someone to put the books into a box and slap a sticker on it? Of course it doesn’t.

It’s simply a way they have of picking your pocket on the way out of the store. Amazon has no more reason for charging for handling than K-mart does. The honest thing to do would be to include the “handling” charge in the list price, so you don’t get tricked into buying a book that actually cost more than they’re telling you. Then you can compare prices fairly, and disconnect yourself from their web page and head down to your local Chapters and buy the book in person and take it home with you right away.

Amazon.sucks.

Update 1999-06-25

Call me stupid: I went and ordered some more books from Amazon, “Digging up Sundance” by Anne Meadows, and “Etta Place: Her Life and Times with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, by Gail Drago. Cost of the books: $15.96 + $10.36 = $26.32. Now get a load of the shipping and handling on THIS order: $18.90. That’s right– $9.45 per book. What the heck is going on here? This is double the amount I paid on my last order, even though both books were delivered in the same package. I shudder to think what the charges are going to be for a couple of CD’s I ordered but which haven’t been delivered yet. Boycott Amazon!!

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Copyrighting Life Forms

The Monsanto Corporation is one of those gigantic entities that give me the heeby-geebies. Firstly, it is huge, massive, rich, and powerful. It is one of those big corporations that have a lot of full-time representatives in Washington D.C. persuading law-makers to change the laws to its favour. Secondly, it is smart. These guys know where the money is, and they know how to market their products, and they know how to use government policy to their advantage. Thirdly, these guys are ruthless. They will stop at nothing to make money.

In the 1980’s, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that corporations can patent life forms. These rulings may yet go down in history as some of the most sinister acts of jurisprudence in the history of mankind. For now, they merely permit corporations like Monsanto to claim “ownership” of genetically altered plants.

Monsanto sells these mutants to farmers. So far, so good. Just like in the old days: the farmer buys his seed and plants his crops. At the end of the year, he keeps a portion for replanting. But wait— Monsanto claims that since it has genetically altered these seeds, that they are now copyrighted. They are patented. Monsanto owns a life form. So the farmer is not allowed to replant. He must buy the seeds over again, from Monsanto, if he wants to plant the same crop next year.

I find this whole concept mind-boggling. Suppose you buy a dog. Suppose the guy selling the dog makes you sign a document saying that you recognize his sovereignty over this doggie-life-form, and therefore, you must turn over all of the dog’s offspring to him. Would you buy the dog? Where does this guy get off claiming ownership of the progeny of a living thing? What does it mean to “buy” a dog, if you don’t “own” the dog’s eggs or sperm, and, therefore, the progeny? What if the guy also wants the offspring of the offspring? He’s got it, if you agree, and if the government agrees to enforce these rules.

Free market advocates would say, big deal. If you don’t like it, buy a dog from someone else. They act as if they can change what it means to buy and sell arbitrarily, whenever it suits them, regardless of our traditional understanding of the law.

What happens if all the other dog breeders get wind of this guy, and decide, hey, this is a great idea! Without performing any additional services, I can accrue more property, simply by declaring, “I own this dog’s progeny!” Suppose all of the dog breeders impose similar agreements on their customers? Why wouldn’t they? Competition? Ha ha! They would ALL gain. And all the customers would lose.

So, those farmers should just go buy their seeds elsewhere, right? The trouble is, the farmers really do compete. If some farmers use Monsanto seeds, which do grow faster and are more resistant to insects, then the farmers who fail to compete efficiently will be driven out of business.

Monsanto is the manufacturer of Agent Orange, the dangerous defoliant used in the Viet Nam War, and PCB’s. There are, according to Harper’s Magazine, 48 dumps in the U.S. that contain dangerous toxins that Monsanto is at least partly responsible for. Why don’t they pay to clean up? What? And have excessive government interference in the marketplace!!! And take money out of the hands of those New York investors??? What are you? Some kind of communist?

Monsanto also manufactures Bovine Growth Hormone. This is a controversial drug that many activists and environmentalists believe poses serious health risks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has decided that consumers don’t need to be advised when Bovine Growth Hormone is added to the food that goes into your body. But wait– it’s enough for the FDA to deny consumers information about the chemicals and drugs that contaminate our foods. The FDA has gone further. It has warned grocery stores that they could be in trouble if they DO label milk as produced with BGH!

Could this be because some FDA commissioners happened to be former and future employees of Monsanto? Could this be because Monsanto maintains 42 lobbyists in Washington?

When a British Magazine, the Ecologist, devoted an entire issue to Monsanto, the printer ended up destroying all of the copies for fear of a libel suit. I wonder how those people who feel that government is too intrusive feel about corporations that strong-arm printers into destroying information that they don’t want you to have?

Monsanto is onto something really hot with “Terminator Technology”. Through genetic alteration, Monsanto wants to engineer seeds that destroy themselves after every season.

Think about that. In a world where more than 1/3 of the population is inadequately fed, Monsanto wants to introduce seeds that destroy themselves after every harvest, in order to protect their billions in profits for American investors. And what if these seeds began to blend with surrounding plants, and cause massive crop failures around the world? Will Monsanto adequately compensate those farmers and consumers? Right. Just like they cleaned up their PCBs.

Monsanto would argue that, under free enterprise, they are simply being rewarded for their cleverness. They act as if seed patents are some kind of sacred extension of traditional property laws. If they did not have that protection, they say, they would not be able to produce those magnificent seeds that do so much to alleviate hunger around the world.

But who asked them to invest the time and energy into creating new, genetically altered seeds? Nobody. Why would a farmer want to pay extra money for Monsanto seeds, if he can pretty well grow enough food with normal seeds? Well, only one reason: because his competitors can grow their crops faster and more efficiently than he can. Why? Because they use genetically altered-seeds. So all the farmers start paying Monsanto a premium for their seeds. What have they gained? I don’t know.

Furthermore, with all the mergers and take-overs in the agribusiness, and the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. government to prevent concentration of ownership, there is a good chance that in the future no farmer will have a choice about where he buys his seed.

Does Monsanto, as they argue, have a right to sell self-terminating plants? Who says they do?

What Monsanto did was find a new way to use an existing technology– developed, ironically, partly at tax-payers expense!– and then get their crack lawyers and lobbyists busy creating new laws and policies to make those technologies profitable for them. The existing patent laws were quite sufficient for Monsanto to make a healthy profit on their seed and herbicide business. By inventing an extension of that law, to the seeds of the plants grown by the farmers from Monsanto’s seeds, they simply awarded themselves billions of dollars in new profits at no additional risk or labour. And if we passed a law making it illegal to copyright biological entities, as we should have long ago, Monsanto would continue to be profitable and farmers would no longer be squeezed coming and going by just another heartless mega-corporation.

You can either be appalled by this new example of corporate greed, or you can join in the party. Here’s a number of new ways that other businesses and entrepreneur’s can make money, inspired by Monsanto’s example:

1. Musical Instrument makers: demand a royalty payment for every recording or performance in which they are used. No no — even better: charge by the note.

2. Photographic Film: patent your chemical film processes and then demand a royalty for any photograph taken on your film that is sold for publication or display.

3. Cars: instead of selling cars, “license” them to the consumer, for a fixed number of kilometers per year. For every kilometer beyond that, make the consumer pay a royalty. Make them pay extra if they intend to have passengers or cargo.

4. sod: when a person buys a new house, tell them that the grass is only “licensed” to them for a period of five years, for, say $500.00 a year. After five years, they must renew the license at a new rate, or the sod will be dug up and removed. Better yet, get Monsanto to design a grass seed that dies after five years.

5. glass: you make the view possible. Charge consumers for every glance through the window. Little computers with CMOS cameras will monitor each home-owner as they wander around their homes. Whenever they look outside– kerchunk! Charge them a nickel. If they don’t pay up, the glass goes dark. If people don’t like it, fine, you can have a hole in your wall.