Ah, yes, the great American dream. When you can’t get your way by providing a better product or service, just abuse the fucking legal system to crush people with fewer resources than you. That seems to be what Microsoft thinks these days — according to the software company (the same one who brought us wonderfully unstable/slow/buggy-as-hell products Windows XP, Windows Genuine Advantage, the soon-to-be-a-flop Zuna media player, proponents of Digital Restriction Management (DRM), and bedmates of the content cartel), every Linux user is somehow infringing on a patent owned by Microsoft.

There are no specifics, of course — no mention of what patent Linux infringes upon, how the infringement is taking place, or what effect it has on Microsoft’s bottom line. Let’s conveniently ignore the fact that Linux has been around since about 1990, way before Microsoft even offered a 32-bit operating system of any kind. Let’s also conveniently ignore the fact that Microsoft used the BSD TCP/IP stack — just lifted the whole damned thing — for its early server products.

So, what’s the lesson here, kids? If you’re the biggest bully on the block, you can just buy or steal other companies and/or their ideas, call it “innovation” when you come up with a new name for the existing tool (“Windows Defender,” anyone?), and threaten to sue anyone who actually starts to take away a slice of your income.

Oh, wait. That doesn’t actually work either, as I’m going to demonstrate over the next few months to a group of people who apparently need to learn this lesson the hard way. At the very least, it doesn’t work without a good long fight first.

Bed time for Will. More rantings on the ‘morrow.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas