It’s funny how these two stories showed up within days of each other. In one, Bill Gates bemoans how spyware is so bad he even has it on his home PCs. And in the other, Steve Ballmer complains how his 12-year-old wants to pirate music.Here’s Gates, from an article on C|Net: “‘This malware thing is so bad,’ he said in a speech at the Computer History Museum here. ‘Now that’s the one that has us really needing to jump in.’
“It’s also a problem that has affected Gates personally. He said his home PCs have had malware, although he has personally never been affected by a virus. ‘I have had malware, [adware], that crap’ on some home machines, he said.” Microsoft’s solution? Create a fee-based antivirus program. First they sell you an OS riddled with flaws and then they can software to patch those flaws. Aren’t there laws against that?
Meanwhile, Steve Ballmer takes a shot at iPod owners by suggesting “the common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen’.” (His comment will at least probably be news to all the columnists who have been saying the iPod only works with iTMS.) The Register has the best take on this: “He singles out the Mac maker for attention because — wait for it — ‘we’ve had DRM in Windows for years’. The implication is that [Digital Rights Management] hasn’t been in the Mac OS for a similar duration, and that’s what’s allowed all those stolen tracks to seep through onto the web.
“Windows has, of course, also had Napster, Grokster, Streamcast, Aimster, Kazaa full and lite, et al for years, but — again — none of that Windows-only music theft apparatus has registered on Mr Ballmer’s radar screen, it seems.” Gimme a “tee“ and gimme a “hee”.
