just as my dear friend - g call him simply "f" - has his show tonight on matrix i have finally to put his conversation with xxx here. just to give the right perspective of the used phone interview. actually she was reading the answers from paper over the phone. and - shame on you mr f.: this woman had to stand in a phone box, somewhere in arizona, in the middle of the night, just to talk with mr f., the journalist.

collega, i still think that sucks. asking a woman to stand there at 3 o´clock in the morning!!!! i mean arizona is not barcelona, where it is normal that people are out there at this time. man, you were really more than lucky to get this material. and i think her first sentence is true in a lot of regards.

with permission here is the email:

You honestly don't know what you're asking. I'm grotequesly tongue- tied in real time. Without the luxury of thinking through my sentences, and prodigious use of the backspace key and "delete line" function of my editor, I don't know what I'd do to communicate. Probably clap wooden blocks together (once for "yes", twice for "no") or something.

When I speak, especially with folks I don't know particularly well, either I can't spit out anything at all, or I go on a nervous ramble. Just ... be ready with your editor to clean it up, 'k? Just in case, how's about a run-through in writing?

why did you insist on your right to get refunded? (that is the whole idea of freedom of choice - instead of the dumb microsoft-bashing which seems at some points to be the ideological basis of the
refund-movement)

Ya know, I've been asked that question before, so I'm almost braced for it, but the first time it was like being asked a question in a foreign language. Basically, what you've really just asked me is, "Why did you insist on your right not to pay for something you don't want and will never use?"

(This is, IMO, the hardest part about understanding what Choice is all about: those assumptions we pull in from our culture(s) influence us to look at problems from an angle which is not conducive to Choice.)

To me, the question has always been: what right did THEY have to take MY money for something I actively tried to avoid accepting in the first place?

Perhaps a little background would be useful: I'm a build-your-own type. Always have been. If I didn't need a laptop every now and again, all my systems would be DIY models.

In addition, there's the whole culture from the early days of the IBM Personal Computer, which was the ancestor to the systems we're talking about now. The 80xx line of processor was intended to be open, to be OS promiscuous. And in those early days, we had choices. Okay, not many, but we had them. I dunno how computer stores worked where you are, but here, even if you bought a pre-built model, the MS/PC-DOS was in boxes placed strategically near the computers, enticing you to pick one up while you're there, but not forcing itself on you. Other OS's would be boxed a little further away, maybe along the wall at the back of the store, but they were there. I don't know of a single computer store which didn't have them all for sale.

Once the machines could support hard drives, in the better shops you could pick out your computer and your choice of software, and the guy behind the counter would load everything for you and have it ready for you to pick up the next day. But only if you asked for it.

No way am I anti-Microsoft. Don't like their business practices, and I've yet to touch one of their software products that didn't feel stilted, limited, and clunky to me, but they've got their right to be in Redmond as much as I've got my right to *NIX software. There are lots of other businesses I'm not crazy about, and I don't do business with them, either. But I'll defend their right to exist, too, cuz I can hardly be for Choice otherwise, nu?

In the beginning, I was torn between CP/M and MS/PC-DOS, and I ended up using both. But right around MS/PC-DOS v2.1 -- right before the first Windows came out -- QNX was already out for the Intel processor. For me, switching was a no-brainer: I had *NIX background, plus QNX made possible multitasking on a puny little 8088 CPU, back in 1983-84!

If others found their needs met by a single-tasking command processor calling itself an operating system, that's their business. Mine was multitasking on the cheapest equipment possible, and at that time, that meant QNX on an IBM clone.

(If that sounds too snotty for you, let's try a different example: I never thought of automobiles as anything more than transportation, and I was satisfied with any old clunker brought back to life from the junk heap. But others, with lives, preferences, needs, and desires different from mine, saved until they could afford Mercedes. This is the essence of choice: deciding for ourselves what kind and level of functionality would make our own lives happier and more productive, and then being free to act on those choices.)

I must have been the last computer user on earth to learn about Windows preloads. If I hadn't needed a laptop in 1997, I still wouldn't have known about the problem. (My first laptop was back in the days when we still had choices about which software to load.)

When I went to buy that laptop in '97, and discovered they came with Windows already on them, I tried to get the retailer to swap a clean hard drive for me. "License doesn't allow that." Okay, so, how's about their tech support wipe the existing drive for me, so I don't have to muck with it? "Sorry, our license doesn't allow that."

There was VA Linux, of course, but they were still small back then and Couldn't compete in pricing with the larger OEMs. The situation turned my choices into:

1. buy locally, bring the box home now, wipe Windows from the  		drive, install and configure Linux 	2. buy mail order, pay about US$1000 more, wait a few days 		for it to arrive, and then install and configure
	Linux

(Of course I'd have to do the Linux myself. No matter how good the folks at VA Linux are, they don't know how I run my desktop, nu? It's only fair, really, cuz I don't know how they run their desktops, either.)

So I sucked it up and bought the Windows preload.

It wasn't until I got it home and booted it, when it wouldn't finish booting until I agreed to their license agreement, which I had no intention of doing, that I discovered the EULA and the refund possibility.

Since I'm not in the habit of paying for things I don't want and have no use for, and I was already steamed over the attitudes of computer salescritters, I jumped at the opportunity to get my money back.

Perhaps the reason for this disconnect in looking at the question is that I don't consider my software and hardware to be irrevocably yoked together, married 'till death (or power surge) do they part. I have taken full advantange of the 80xxx-based processor's open architecture and the choices which have followed it, which is really a wide and rich variety.

Sorry I didn't think to say it more succinctly the first time.

what were the difficulties in negotiating with the dealers? (what actually were the steps you took? what were the replies?)

It was like talking to somebody who's lived on the Equator all zir life and trying to explain what "snow" is.

It was all in a series of e-mail with Canon, and the primary difficulty was reaching SOMEbody who grokked that the 80xxx architecture is capable of functioning with multiple operating systems. The first several rounds went along the lines of, "If you want to return your computer, you'll have to take it back to the retailer where you bought it".

Once they finally realized I was talking about the software and not the hardware, they spent a few more rounds of e-mail telling me that they couldn't warranty the computer if I didn't use the software they put on it.

That turned into, "oh, we'll warranty the hardware, but we can't give you technical support if you use a different kind of software".

Eventually we got to, "What's Linux?"

After that it was fairly easy. IIRC, a tech support manager sent a memo to the company lawyer, who must have told them that yup, that's what their agreement with Microsoft said to do. I was given mailing instructions for returning the unopened packages of documentation and whatever media they used. Which I followed, and later cashed a check for.

why do you think the local

ms-stores were the wrong place for refund day?

Because every EULA I've read or read about says that the refund is to come from the manufacturer of the computer.

I'm not really sure why OEMs allow themselves to be put in that position, but they did, and accepting responsibility for one's decisions, and standing by one's agreements with others, is the other side of the Choice coin.

why do you think that despite the

millions of alternative-os-users the refund-movement faded away pretty quick?

Because the folks who ran the movement, for whatever reason, chose to make a stand at Microsoft's offices, instead of going to their individual OEMs like the EULA said to do.

Before they descended upon Microsoft, they got a lot of publicity, and when Microsoft wouldn't even talk to them, I think it was an embarrassing situation for them. As an outsider looking in, I got the impression that Linux users were a bunch of impetuous kids who thought they'd get their way if they stamped their feet hard enough.

As a fellow Linux user, I know that's not true, but that's how the refund movement looked to me.

i got interested to read more about charles simonyi, because he was babysitting the ural. (... The elder son of a Budapest professor of electrical engineering, Simonyi had first encountered a computer at the age of fifteen. This was a Soviet-made contraption called the "Ural 11"?? - was there an 11? or should it be II???) (source) seeing the create flag on chris side together with his history links of the day made me even more curious.

i found this interview at edge: intentional programming.

after reading it, i guess he was the right guy for billy boy, but i don´t think i would like to go for a drink with him.

just one quote: "We [at ms] were competing very effectively against Visicalc using a strategy that is very much like Java today; it was a platform independent, interpretive, bytecoded system, that enabled us at one point to run on 100 different platforms, (....)

well, i don´t know what to think about it. clearly there is some exaggeration and i don´t like his attitute overall. he got criticized here

later readings