Where do you want to go today?TM

This is becoming almost boring: I feel like writing against Microsoft again. Here is how it goes:

Microsoft Office Publisher^TM lies dormant on my hard disk for ages, on a boring day I decide to see what it is. There you go, a sleek design tool, a lot funkier than Front Page: I design a template page in a way that looked quite naive, and go

File > Publish to web.

A pop-up comes up, saying



Fine enough. What is even more fine is that is you chose 'ok', it just opens a 'save as' dialog and saves the file on the hard disk. There is no option whatsoever to set the ftp address of my hosting service, nor other details. After trying this a few times, I decide to click that link and see what's up. It opens a browser window, which takes me to MS Office Online, which in turn directs me to a list of so-called Web Presence Providers.

Hmm. No ftp; no front page extensions either; what they need now is Web Presence. What the heck is that anyway? I dont care: What's interesting is that the freakin list has only nine companies listed there! And the page goes:

So if you want to host your Web site on the World Wide Web, it's recommended that you purchase services from a registered WPP.

Now that's non-technical, unethical and untrue. It should have at least said that's the MSO Publishers way of doing it. True, anyone can get it over with the word 'recommended', but it's an undue expense on the customer unless MS gurantees that the guys in the list provide the cheapest solution. After all, Publisher's way of doing this does not seem to be meant for techies. So, although the list is followed by a provider search, it's simply limiting the not-so-techies' options, and even those of techies who might simply want to get their pages published with the cheapest option available.

Allowing FTP uploading was an easy thing, and simple enough that anyone who can use email could possibly get used to it: all that is needed is hostname, username and password - rest can be more or less automated. Why doesn't MS do it that way?

Before finding answer to that question, I'll recall another similar incidence: Yesterday I discussed with a true blue MS loyalist how Windows Rights Management can't get any better than what we already had with PGP. (I was pretty proud to learn today morning from the horses mouth that what I was telling him was officially true.) Again the same question: WHY did MS want to do it that way than to use already available well-known techniques?



My argument is that MS is becoming another IBM - so big, so powerful - and increasingly losing creativity: giving up innovation, and either reinventing the wheel or copyrighting everything in sight one thinks one did invent- or doing both, while suing everyone right and left. But Bill knows damn well what went wrong with IBM, and tries not to get drowned and become irrelevant that way: instead, MS uses all its nails and teeth to lure, drag, bind, tie, limit it's own customers to as much proprietary techniques as can be. Once the customer pays you, make him have no other option than to pay you more. Skim the cow while you can - so plain simple it's almost boring. These facts are not far from the ones in the slashdotted article on Seattle Weekly by Jeff Reifman.

Well, I don't wanna be too much communist than necessary: It's MS's right to do all this, because as far as business goes, one's only true aim is to increase revenue. But as a customer, all this makes me increasingly drawn away from MS because now it has started to act against me: not its competitors. It wants me to pay for Web Presense guys no matter how cheap I can get simple ftp-enabled web hosting, it wants me to use freakin WRM instead of well-known and open security schemes, and offers nothing new in return. In short, MS tries to dictate Where I want to go today, as in their famous trademark slogan (of which I can't find anything on microsoft website now). All these just because I bought one product from them.

And dont get me started on version changes of document formats that force people to upgrade their software for no real benefit other than the ability to read the documents sent by someone who is richer than you and paid for the upgrade.

Can someone explain why I should trust MS any more? Be informed: I'm not a masochist: so "because it screws you, and it's fun to be screwed" is not an acceptable answer.