I'm getting a little bored with a certain unnamed corporation using its leverage to manipulate its customers. Just like I'm fed up with the on-going patents fiasco with stupidly broad applications being filed (and in some cases, accepted), except I can't be bothered to comment on that one.
So anyway, that unnamed corporation (Microsoft) is getting noticed for its current policy of not limiting Critical Updates material to actual critical updates.
First they rolled-out their anti-piracy tool Windows Genuine Advantage as a high-priority security update. This was purely for their own gains as it really doesn't provide any security whatsoever, and it certainly doesn't patch any security vulnerabilities in the classical sense.
The tool effectively converted unlicensed copies of Windows XP into shareware by plastering registration notices all over the logon screens and the Desktop. It's probably a tenuous argument to suggest that pissing off the pirate community is cause to moan at the firm, but here Redmond is seen to abuse the trust with which users "allow" it to download any software it likes under the guise of that well-known Microsoft facet, security. (And yes, it is annoying.)
Legal Windows users probably didn't care much about that, branding the WGA tool "a good thing" and not saving any thought time for the trust issue. But then it went on.
As Techdirt reports:
When a circumvention technique was discovered for its PlaysForSure DRM, the company immediately rushed out a patch, which it labelled as 'critical', not even waiting for Patch Tuesday. Of course, most people wouldn't be inclined to install a patch that prevented them from enjoying their music as they saw fit, but most people wouldn't question Microsoft when it says a patch is critical, either.
And now IE7 will be hurried out as a "High Priority security update".
Well, besides the fact that that is just plain wrong, what about people who don't want to install IE7? Maybe because [it sucks, or because] they use an alternative browser? And let's face it, it's a user's choice… at least according to the world outside one little town in Washington.
Presumably users who don't want to install IE7 for whatever reason or another will be repeatedly shouted at for "forgetting to install a critical update" when they go onto Windows Update, only to find that it's only a web browser. What about Automatic Update? A browser potentially updated to a new major revision with some incredibly intense GUI changes without so much as a prompt?
We all know Microsoft never really considered that a user's Windows PC belongs to anyone but Microsoft, but to leverage a consumer's faith in allowing security updates to be delivered to their system into throwing a new browser (which, incidentally, comes with an MSN Search box as standard) is… evil.
I don't know how many more ways I can say it. It annoys me. Microsoft's attitude to corporate control of information delivery and top-down provision of services goes against the grain of where intelligent netizens are looking to be taken.
They wonder why MSN's 'success' pales in comparison to Google's: I hold that Redmond's insistence upon including all manner of gossip-magazine-style crap around the edges puts people off, whereas Google Search is just a search engine: which is, after all, what someone wants when they type in the URL to a search engine. MS don't seem to understand the intelligent consumer market.
And no, I won't switch to Linux. All the applications I want are on this platform and to be honest I couldn't see myself sitting in front of a shell window all day. I want to use Windows… but I want Windows to be good. And I want Microsoft to be a lot less arrogant about how it uses its dominant market position.
