As part of the 'Open Source', 'Slashdot', 'Linux' or what ever community we think of ourselves as being a part of, we need to be very careful to avoid elitism.

It's very easy to fall into the trap. We're the underdogs, the oppressed masses. It's certainly how many of us like to see ourselves (c'mon, be honest). The community has worked hard to achieve some amazing things, and those that oppose us, who would try to undermine what we have achieved, make themselves our enemy. We feel justified in our anger.

We can't let ourselves see oppression everywhere we look though. We can't simply lable things that at first sight seems wrong, as evil.

There was a story a while back, about using a device so that a childs location could be tracked and a parent could be confident that the child had got to school without being kidnapped or something. Well, I got on my high horse and made a posting about how wrong such technology was as it violated trust etc. etc. But thinking about it now, I was being everything I hate. opposing certain applications of technology. Given the technology, people should be free to develop and use it in anyway they see fit. I still don't like the idea of the suggested use of the device from the story, but the issue I would have is with the parents that actually abused the device, not the people who developed it. If we start labeling things as evil, then we start to hinder progress which makes us just as bad as those who we think of as our enemies.

I was reading the recent post about cameras reading number plates in Florida. At first sight, it does seem a little 1984-esq, but these are cameras in public places, the number plates of these cars are on display to the public. All that is happening is that freely available information is being collected. I really can't think of a good argument for why this is wrong, although my first instinct would have been to lable this (in my head at least) as an evil policy.

We are part of a community that has found an alternative to the current capitalism driven IT solutions, and we're shouting loudly to make the world understand that our way works, that it is viable. It's all to easy to shout just as loud about other things before we have properly considered them, we run the risk of undermining our own credability.

Struggling with my Dads computer the other day really highlighted what I've come to love about free software:

Everytime that monstrosity of a piece of software, RealOne Player, loaded, the machine would blue screen. Very bad. What's worse is that when you try and uninstall it, that also causes a blue screen, leaving me the task of manually uninstalling it.

But the problems we were having aren't really what I want to talk about.

I'm sure nearly everyone has installed some version of Real Player at some point. I'm sure I'm not alone in hating it. Windows comes with a very capable media player, yet if you're running windows, you pretty much have to install two additional media players; Real Player and QuickTime Player. Why? Becaue Real Player is the only player that understands Real Medias proprietary format, and likewise, QuickTime for Apples. Real Player, of course, is capable of playing all the same formats as Windows Media Player, and during installation, it helpfully offers to associate its self with all of them...

This is what I'm talking about, this arrogance. They're saying that their product is obviously better than whatever you've been using up until this point.

Of course they're going to act like this, I don't blame them, they are a company trying to sell a product after all. Real Media aren't solely to blame either, Wouldn't it be just as valid a solution to just use Real Player and remove Windows Media Player? But nowadays, Windows Media Player is pretty much an essential part of the Windows OS.

These attitudes aren't present in free software, there are no wild claims of being the greatest thing since sliced bread, and no attempts to force software on people because of one small vital feature in a bloated app, or integrating it into other vital software. Most of the software is written by people who needed something they didn't have, and as such, they're not trying to cater to everyone at once, nor is there any need for them to push it onto people. The free software community, and the more I use it, the more it does feel like a community, is so much more relaxed then the commercial environment of Microsoft, Real Media et al.

I really am turning into a hippy...

If I was able to code programs that ran on Microsoft operating systems, it'd perpetuate their monopoly... I mean, if I was a good coder, people would want to run my apps/games and need an MS OS to run them.

However, Microsoft seems to want to punish me for even thinking such things. The DirectX SDK is nearly 170 MB, now that takes a long time to download... it doesn't help that Internet Explorer kept telling me that it'd finished after 30 MB. Microsoft also want to charge me for Visual Studio, the package I would use to develop software for thier system.

Not wanting to pay for software and an SDK to develop software that would potentially encourage people to pay Microsoft even more money for their OS to run my software (on the off-chance that I might have developed something worthwhile), I opted to attempt to download the SDK (as opposed to paying $15) and pirate Visual Studio .NET

However, installing Visual Studio .NET caused my system to crash. And thus, my Windows 2K partition was officially dead.

So, where as before I was a potential developer for the MS platform... I now thoroughly despise Microsoft. I now run Linux exclusivly. Screw learning DirectX, who makes an SDK that's 170 MB anyway??

Just today, Microsoft annoyed me even more. It's like they can reach out beyond my boycott of their products and annoy me with their services, just because they have to annoy me somehow...

Since I left University, Hotmail has been my main e-mail account. Which seemed to work okay for a while. But I tried to apply for a job today, which involved e-mailing my CV to a company. I didn't think this would be a problem, but it appeared that Hotmail didn't let attach files to e-mail anymore. I stared at it for a while, but the button to attach files didn't seem to be there. I tried on my Dads 2k box, and there it was, clear as day, but back on my Linux box, nothing. Perhaps if I was running Opera I could check what happened if I pretended to be an IE client, but under Mozilla, even viewing the source for the page confimed that there was no attachment button.

So, what this means is, although Microsoft feels it's okay to make money by forcing me to see advert banners while I use their Hotmail service, they don't think it's enough money and want to punish me for not spending stupid amounts of money on their operating systems too.

I have to laugh that underneath the compose e-mail text-box it says:

MSN - More Useful Everyday

Edit: it appears that the attachments button has magically reappeared in Hotmail... not that I send e-mails from that account anymore.