OPEN LETTER TO MICROSOFT
Dear Sirs, including also the Madams, to be sure,
0. Introduction
This is an
enormously big letter, taken as a letter, so that you don't take it in this way. I mean that the things are related, there is a cause for writing it, but there are also many accumulated for years questions and I use the opportunity to say them now, so that there are also some ideas and propositions, there are also funny things, written as if directly to the very Bill Gates, and there are also my readers about whom I have to think, so that the problems are shown a bit popularly and interesting in order to make a palatable material. And now let me give you an idea about what is here, what will allow the different categories of readers to read more carefully what is intended for them and maybe leave aside what isn't for them.
In No 1 is the real cause for bothering of the purchasing department of Microsoft. It is more formal yet still in narrative form, to be a good reading for everybody. In No 2 is given some info about my person, which can be of use for the purchasers if they want to have a deeper look at the matter, but it is used also later in the next points; and my person, although fictitious, using a pseudonym, but is still alive and in the poorest country of European Union, in Bulgaria. Anyway, what concerns my trifling plea ends here, so that you, busy guys and girls, are not forced to read the left, you better pass it to some Microsoft bosses. Then in No 3 follow some moralizing, because you, on one hand, are good and liberal to the consumers company, yet in some aspects are not exactly this but on the contrary; this is for big "brass", the bigger, the better, or else for everybody because the morality can be made clear to all people. Then in No 4 follow some propositions of myself intended to make Microsoft even better for everybody, not only for people in wealthy countries but also for the poorest; these are principal things and surely for the strategists of the company. Then the 5th number is a letter (in the letter) to Bill Almighty, it is funny, there is even a dedicated poetry there, but it is also important or philosophical, it is not to be missed if you are not only busy members of the company. And there is even a sixth point about the future of your company coupled with the author of the letter; this is also funny, and also not to be missed, because in every joke there is a grain of truth. So that, sorry for bothering, but it is necessary to bother you (and maybe it is not off the point to explain that in Bulgarian, what is also common Slavonic, exists the verb "boda" meaning to poke, also "budja" meaning to awake, and the roots here are Sanskrit because you surely have head about Buddha, who was the Awakener).
Well, as if this is enough as introduction.
1. The cause for bothering Microsoft
So, dear purchasers, the cause is simple, I use one copy of your Windows-XP for about 5 years on a Pentium-3 with 1/4 GB RAM and hard disc with 10 GB, bought second hand before about 10 years, which as to the disc more or less suffices me for text processing, but so little RAM makes terrible paging nowadays, so that I decided to buy me from my first pension a new (old) computer, this time Pentium-4 with 2 GB RAM and 40 GB hard disc, Hewlett Packard Small Form, which has to serve me until I will be called by my maker, as is said, for the "big" amount of 20 (twenty) euro (40 Bulgarian levs), what for me -- but don't laugh, please, -- is as much as I use to spend in a whole month for eating and
drinking! And my pension (for your information) is nearly 70 euro monthly, while before this I have lived even
worse receiving nothing. And when I installed
the same Windows-XP, everything went well, if one does not take in consideration that there was no Cyrillic driver and no sound device at all (which things as if are to be managed with connecting to the Internet), until there emerged some message about activating of the operating system and a row with numbers to which have to be given an answer, which was unknown to me. Then after the computer stayed switched off for a week appeared some kicking sportsmen who kicks me out of the system, and forbids me even to make new installment and return to Windows-98, with which I also can do some work but there were problems with the driver for the LAN-card (if I am not wrong). And this now is
not at all
correct because I want to reject the installment, want to format the disc and you forbid me even this, i.e. your software product mingles with the boot block. Or maybe I can try to use some other operating system and you spoil my hard disc, where the problem is that such discs are now not to be found, they are too outmoded (yet perfect for me).
And I can tell you also why this happened. It happened because the previous time the system was generated by one my former colleague, programmer, who retired as research assistant in one University, who is now, and for always, I suppose, simply incommunicado, for the reason that he, in addition to all his illnesses, and his psychic problems, and his alcoholism, has earned also a cirrhosis, so that he is slowly dying and does not answer his email. Such things happen when one comes near to the 70, you know.
So that I am still working on the old platform but maintaining of emails is pretty complicated and only on one browser (Opera -- let God prolong twice their days!) I can use some basic email, which after loading it works perfectly and I don't need anything newer than this, but you force me to, what is another cause to blame you. Because, you see, this Hewlett Packard is not Microsoft, and the browsers (say Mozilla) are also not you but you are those who call the tune, you are the monopolistic giant, and there is no (or nearly no) avoiding you. I can't exclude with 100 percent the possibility that the other companies (especially in our barbarian Bulgaria) hide behind your back, or wash their hands with you, but I think that you are those who are to be blamed, that you instigated this kicking away of people who are glad to use your
old products and don't need newer ones, even if you can say that all this protection is done not because of some "lousy" XP, and the same Pentium-4 for the current moment, but because of really today's versions of your operating system which cost real money (I don't know how much but supposedly 100 euro or more). I personally can agree to pay for an operating system, and nearly 20 years old one, about 1/4 of the price of the hardware, what makes -- ha, ha, -- 5 (five) euro, if you so insist on this, only you tell me a way for sending of this money not by bank, where I will be forced to pay another about 15 euro for the sending.
Now, I can't vouch that this my copy of XP is legally bought, but I suppose the chances are about fifty - fifty. It is possible that it isn't because we, in poor former communist countries, had the bad habit to use software illegally but we were forced to this, we simply could not have allowed us to pay your mad prices in hard currency, how I still can't do this now, so that it's a matter of urgent necessity; and, after all, we don't sell this software things to other people, we use them to do useful work. And then this can quite well be a legal copy (one of the codes are: Q3JJQ XTTV7 F7R6D 3BJY9 9RQRJ , so that you may want to check this somehow), because this my unhappy now friend, teaching various students, have become bigger snob than them (because it is so, the consumer society depends on snobs and cultivates the snobbism how it only can) for the reason that he has bought for himself some portable TV back in the old times chiefly to make a nice sight in the tram when watching its bad performance). Anyway, I can't ask him now, and I think that this is not so important because the product XP is sufficiently old to be taken seriously by the people (with the exception of such like me who are very glad to have it). (And, to give you one more example, I personally have used some Pascal translator for DOS from the year
1986 to do some modeling about the 2000 for my "Curious Manifestos" and surely have received not a cent for this, but the book become extraordinary specific.)
So that, to cut the long story short, I beg you to tell me on Myrski's email address (or, eventually, if I will be blocked off it, on my phone: 359, for Bulgaria, + 889-101-365 , between 16 and 20 Bulgarian time) what to answer when am asked to provide the customer service representative installation ID with the numbers:
204492 238484 808794 808334 312540 284483 899215 044272 657174 .
Or then you can ask www.kvantservice.com whether they sell such computers for such funny (for you) price without operating system (to poor buyers), because they insist that are authorized representatives of your company and sell operating systems, too. There is some to be paid phone number (359-2731-088) which I have not called because they can tell me nothing that I don't know, right? I don't state that legally you are not right to defend your software products, I just beg you to do this for me, for one reason that I live in a very poor area, and for another one that I am, so to say, from the branch of programmers, and an educative person with sufficiently big auditory of readers (to what we will come in section 2). If necessary I can explain you that the begging is related with the bending of the
back thrice (according to one Russian expression, в три погибели), and with the ancient Oriental rulers called
begs /
beks. On the other hand the word "plea" means to make oneself flat, or also to fold something, because in Bulgarian exist the word "plise", which has to be French
plicet, meaning a fold on a clothe, and there is also the Italian
piegare meaning to fold. Or if you want I can also make a
temaneh to you, what is Turkish word known in Bulgaria meaning to bend and hit with your
teme-temple-forehead the ground before you, yet I am afraid that you will not see this gesture of mine.
But you can be pretty sure that I will never pay for some software that I don't need a price about ten times higher than the hardware, because that's how it is. I don't use bank accounts (
not that I haven't, I have many, more then ten, but there a rarely more money than 100 euro in each of them, and often less) and will never buy on Internet because this is another way to spend more money (at least paying the postages), and I have the habit not to spend but to spare. So that I don't need special security measures or other excessive things, all that I can do on Internet is to: read (say, in the library of Congress), publish books and papers (at least till the moment free, i.e. receiving not a cent), exchange letters (if I can find sufficiently intelligent persons for this purpose, not for chat), listen to some (usually classic) music, maybe to watch some "movies" (which I can't for the moment with 1/4 GB RAM), and play some simple games for the speed of reaction (it is good for old people).
2. Some personal details
Well, as I said, this is in order to allow you to have a better look at my case, yet also to give some useful information to the readers and to your bosses, and to make you acquainted with the situation in some poor countries. But I am, in fact, two persons, where the one is the fictional (or anonymous, or pseudonymous) writer Chris Myrski, and the other is one hereditary intellectual who lives like real pauper because has studied too much for to sell things on the streets. I will clear a bit the both persons.
a) Who is Chris Myrski? Ah, this is a world writer, because "mirskij" (or "mirskiy" for you) in Russian means world-wide, that is the reason for coining of this pseudonym. I am Bulgarian, but I know perfectly good Russian for the reason that I have studied there (my first tertiary education), and also using the English widely at least in the last 15 or so years I am publishing in three languages: Bulgarian, Russian, and English. Still, I intend to translate some things (my first three "whales") also in German, and maybe something in Italian (or maybe also in a language called English Myrskanto, which I have not yet ... invented, ha, ha). And if one asks, why is so necessary for me to work in several languages, then I will answer that this is because I am
not enough read! I mean, that I do not publish in Bulgaria -- I am a kind of democratic dissident, and nobody likes dissidents, right? -- and the Bulgarians are barbarian enough people
not to allow to the serious personalities to express their meaning if it is against the official propaganda. That's it. And because of all this I began to publish on Russian Internet sites and translated little by little, all my works (well, nearly all) in Russian, but because these people are also ... silly, generally speaking (and the Internet is not for reading of long and serious things, and I am more than untraditional writer, and not real fiction writer, etc.), then I decided to translate, first one thing, then another, and in the end, in this 2016, I translated myself also entirely in English. And now I am ready to conquer the world, not more and not less, and it turns out that this Microsoft company sets sticks in my wheels, figuratively speaking.
Well, you are right, guys and girls, to do this, and mainly for this reason I am explaining who is Myrski, because you are entirely entitled to stop my spreading on the West. I will publish what I have in English on Russian sites, and even if I intend to work further only in English (to begin my long awaited by me "Letters to the posterity"), I can do this there and this will be the end. Because, you see, there are no real borders on the Internet, but there are
preferences, like with the shops, and there will hardly begin readers from USA, or Canada, or India, China, Latin America, etc., etc., go to search me on these sites, so that I will be stopped. OK, the "ball" is in your hands or feet and you do what you want. But I can not begin to work on, maybe, 20, 30, or 50 sites all around the world from this relictual for the moment Pentium-3 with 1/4 of GB memory, and it will any moment stop to work, it is old enough.
So that you can cast a glance at http://samlib.ru/editors/m/mirskij_h_n/ (or also at http://www.chitalnya.ru/users/chris_myrski/ ) where is a folder "English Dominion", in which I have put my things as whole books, as well also at "Scientific Feast - PIR", where are many ideas and realizations, even in the area of programming and Internet, and maybe something else (you will understand what is in English, won't you?). These are ready things for publishing anywhere around the world, because the English is used nowadays in each country. But scientific ideas are also in the whole "Manifestos", and almost everywhere, because I may not be a proper fiction writer but am not a bad popularizer, I think. And I have also a bit of poetry in English, so that you may look at it, too. And you are not bound to pay whatever for this, Myrski is generally free writer (unlike Microsoft, ah?). For the scientific ideas I can also search suitable sites around the world, but not with this my old computer platform. And there is also some SF-like stories (which are not all put even in Russian, but this will be done), which you also will exempt from the West if will not show a rapid desire to help me. If I were you I would have even sent to this impudent Myrski some old
small laptop (say, 12 inches) of before about 15 years, gathering the dust somewhere in the basement of our (i.e. your) enormous company, to use it as electronic book in the bed. Yeah, but I am not you.
b) Who is the real Myrski? Well, I will not tell you this, you have to understand that anonymous is anonymous. Yet I can describe some of my more important characteristics. So for example I say that I am
intelligent laic, for the reason that I can think, I am intelligent enough, but I judge as laic about many topics that lie outside my exact educations. And as to the tertiary educations then they are two and a
half, in the sphere of electronics and computer science, received in three different countries, and I know sufficiently good three and a half (the latter being Italian) foreign languages, plus my Bulgarian. So that I am not everybody. What, alas, is not so good, because in a barbarian country like Bulgaria to have studied much means to receive less than the average, to find pretty hard suitable work, to be forced to live miserably during the democratic years, such things. For example, I told you that my pension is a bit less than 70 euro, because I am practically unemployed for 26 years, and for about 16 years length of service is given as much, but I have recently calculated this pension in ... bus tickets for the city transport and this makes a bit less than
3 tickets a day for
all expenses! How's this, ah, -
softist boys and girls?
Yeah, that's how it is, but, on the other hand, I can be an exception as to the education but not to the misery, because there are many pensioners with pensions less than 100 euro monthly, and the minimal pension for people with 38 years service is 80 euro only, what is said to be three times less than in Africa, in the country Gabon. Because, you see, we so desperately wanted to have not the previous people's democracy, that we have now, obviously,
anti-people's democracy, that's what we have. And we have now 3 fascist parties in the Parliament, because the fascists are like the weeds, they begin to grow the moment when the cultivation is somehow hampered. And the unconsciously performed nearly genocide of the intellectuals is expressed in this that we are now on the last place in European Union according to our standard of life and everyone more or less capable person is trying to emigrate in some normal country, and who is not so highly educated is trying to work at least for a pair of months in an year abroad. If I have not been so old in 1990 I would have also lived now on the West.
Yet I am telling you this because we are not the single poor people in the world, there are many other nations who are living worse than before, especially during this crisis years (about which I have some time back said that the crisis will end in the middle of the year ... 2022), and you just forget that such people exist. And, on the other hand, you have to be very
glad that such people and nations exist because this is why you, in the wealthy countries, can say that you are living well, right? Because everything is recognized in the comparison with something else. More than this, if there were not we, the poor, to hinder the prosperity everywhere, the capitalist civilization would have already ended on the West, and so it still continues and prospers. If you doubt in this I may remind you that back in the year 1990, when the Berlin wall fell, there was a crisis, not like this now, but a crisis, then were high interests in many banks around the world (I have looked that in England, for example, they have reached 8-9 percents), so that I am not lying to you, we, the crashing of socialist bloc, delayed the crisis. And then came the Bin Laden's terrorist act which speeded the crisis. And many clever capitalists understand this and try to smooth a little the things because the business needs peace. So that everything is related and the wealthy need the poor, hence help us, because otherwise arise revolutions, you know. And Myrski feels these things for the simple reason that he is "poorer than the poorest".
3. Preaching of moral and showing of drawbacks
You see, my dear -softist guys and girls, sometimes you are bad boys and girls, what isn't good, and sometimes you make many wrong things and don't make the right ones. But let me proceed in some order.
a) So even if I was pimpled drug addicted adolescent, and not a penniless old intellectual, you have
absolutely no moral right to hinder my access to the Internet, to isolate me from the people and from the ... knowledge! Because this is how it is. The Internet may be used for spreading of porno and for advertising and selling of whatever, yet it is the most powerful educational means nowadays, and this is the core reason for the existing of multiple variants of Wikipedia. Without the Internet, for example, I wouldn't have known that Bill Gates is alive and smiling, and wouldn't have written my dedicated to him poetry, what would have been a big loss for him and everybody else, surely. Because the knowledge, the education of the masses is, maybe the slowest, but the
surest way for making the life more peaceful, this was understood by a big number of humanist somewhere in the Renaissance, and I adhere to them. This somehow raises the spirit, makes you to be more civil to the others, this brings the people (and even the animals) up. And especially nowadays, in the period of crashing of many moral values (say, of unnecessary fighting to prove which nation is better, how the people have done at large scale at least in the World War One, or in the collapsing of the communist bloc, etc.), is simply a must to have such strong factor for communications and comparing of meanings throughout the world. And don't forget also the really amazing success of computer translators, what returns us to the old parable for the Babylonian Tower, which building becomes possible now, figuratively put.
It is sure that people use it mostly for silly chat and for listening to modern pop music, watching of sporting events, etc., but even this is a necessity, this makes the world peaceful, really. If you want I can add also that one can find something to still his hunger, especially in well developed countries, if he looks around some ... garbage cans, but he will never find there anything to satiate his hunger for communications, am I right? Without Internet nowadays one is simply imprisoned in his soul, so to say. And don't tell me, please, that you had no such intentions, because this is what you are doing with your wish always to win, even when the old software has returned many times (I suppose) the invested in it money, and if it has not returned the money then simply stop to produce new one for some time and people will continue to buy the old software, right? And I don't see big difference (in regard of the invested money) between Microsoft Office pack (Word, Access, Excel) and some basic operating system (like Windows 98 if you like), and the Office pack is taught in schools as far as I know. So that you can as well allow free use of some of your Windows, and on the Internet (not to abolish the use of older versions, like some browsers, say, the Mozilla, do, but surely you are the instigators). After all, if the business wants better platforms for showing of their ads than let
this business circles pay you for the software, not the ordinary users like me.
b) Another bad thing maintained by you is that
you have no concept at all (at least up to my knowledge)
for ... second hand software! And don't tell me that it does not age because it surely becomes obsolete, hence, it ages. As well don't tell me that it is hard to measure this and it is impossible to tell weather a software is old or not, because in the next section I will propose one simple measure for this, but my propositions are usually the simplest and obvious in order to show that some solution exists (like, to give an example, I proceeded in my first Manifesto after finding that both, the dictatorship and the democracy have faults -- I invented the "democratic dictatorship"). So I mean that you have to ponder about this question and if something does not exist than to
invent it, in the same way like people before millenniums have invented the dear God (because you, my dear -softists, are intelligent people to know that already from Ancient Greece was known that there is no way, either to prove, or to disprove, the existence of some extraordinary immaterial being like a deity). But when hardware ages then the software has also to age, and to become cheaper.
And you also
do not maintain different kinds of software for different users, different in sense of their wealth. And in producing of every other articles there are different qualities, to be had for different money. Id est, you have not second or third class software, but if you travel to somewhere there are different classes, though the people there don't travel faster, yet with more comfort. Every good shop nowadays (and I suppose always) tries to sell different qualities of things for different people, only in the totalitarian countries there were the same things for everybody. This difference sometimes might be symbolic but in the prices there is a difference and this is important for the buyers. As to the operating system there have to be
different levels of priority and security, and for the highest security is normal to require more money, but not for the lowest level (which I, for example, use). There is also
no concept of temporary access to some resources (like bank accounts), say, for a month, or an year, what will surely be cheaper for the users.
c) Then there are many unsolved
problems in the very Internet, which looks like the market somewhere in the ancient Babylon. I mean that there everybody can "cry" what he or she wants or cheat everybody, I have mentioned some of these things in my ideas about browser's searching, and although Microsoft does not own the Internet it gives the tune, hence this tune has to be the right one. More precisely there have to be different kinds of sites in regard of their trustfulness, one has to know whom to believe and whom not to. There has to be also some administrative body of the Internet, like, say, the United Nations in many cases. It is true that the UN are basically those who pay the money for their existence and this are chiefly the USA, hence it might happen that the Internet will be chiefly the Microsoft, but not exactly, the rights can be legally divided. Otherwise can happen many curiosities, like, for example, you type in the browser "Bulgarian survival", and before my booklet with this name was written, and even now in front of it appear some sites with ads only, not what you search; the same if you type some rarely used word, there are cites that mention (in their headers) nearly every word in order to appear in front of everybody and catch your attention and then you read a heap of ads. And this can be coupled also with pornography, say, you type "Obama" and there appears "Obama and teenagers sex", I have met this with the Russian Putin, so I don't invent here. Such things must not happen. It is very bad when something arises only bottom-up, without some top level ideas and regulations (like, for example, our proverbial Bulgarian poverty, because we have no single concept about the measures against the poverty, we simply use it to enhance the exploitation).
d) And, last but not least, I will mention that in recent times, in the times of common (well, not exactly, but still) prosperity is often applied the strategy to give something free to the people, so that to leave them alone to decide whether they will buy this or not, and also to be able to use this free thing for advertising purposes, in which case through the ads is paid the thing in question. What, put in other words, means that the wealthy people or instances pay also for the poor people, what is only just. Yeah, but you forget about this with your operating systems, and it turns often that the poorer and those who use least the services, pay
proportionally much more than the wealthy who use many available options.
But to make the poor pay for the wealthy is totally immoral! The poor can pay for the wealthy only in barbarian countries like Bulgaria, where (I have mentioned this somewhere) the cheapest food, which is basically imitation, is sold for relatively higher prices and with more profit than the natural things. (There are such proportions of the cheapest mincemeat to the real meat, or the tiniest fish to the normal one, or animal innards to the meat, or pig feet to pork meat, etc. Even with the bus tickets is not the same whether a person like me, with about 3 tickets daily income pays the fare or such who
spares money using city transport instead of his or her car. We have even a flat income tax, which is the utmost rightist taxation in the poorest country of EU.)
In principle it is obviously difficult to require to make the prices personal for the buyers, but it has to be looked not to come to the other pole, where those who use a small subset of the possibilities (of the operating system) pay for all possibilities, and single users on an outdated computers should not pay for many extras which they do not use. Like also people who do not do banking via the Internet should not pay for this possibility, this is unjust. Yet this happens, as you see, not only in barbarian countries but all around the world, like, to give another example, there is a so called Open University, where everybody can enroll to study, but it isn't, in fact, open, when one has to pay for it, the payment "closes" it. So that there are many unjust or unmoral things that exist in the Microsoft "field", and I tell you all this because you, being such powerful company, can think and solve them, while some other small companies have really to think about their existence. In this way will be solved the problems with some basic access for everybody, with the enhanced security for the prosperous, with different kinds of software for everybody, with temporary payments lessening the prices in the moment, and with the paying chiefly by the wealthy.
4. A bunch of Myrski's propositions to Microsoft
Well, there are many things here, and you better cast a look at all (or at least at half of the) things in my mentioned PIR folder, but now more precisely at the browsers searching (or, then, do this after reading of this material, the things there are ordered, they have titles, you will orient yourselves easy in it). I, for my part, will list some things more or less in the mentioned before order of what has to be done, yet not exactly because the things are related..
a) There have to be several types of operating systems in regard of their
access rights to the Internet. I propose chiefly the following types: common, full rights, temporary full rights, and VIP. The common rights of the operating system means that it is for everybody and has to be given usually free, can be somehow obtained (bootstrapped) from the Internet free, but there can be a variant to require up to 1/4 of the price of the computer or 10 euro, what is less, for the installment. This has to allow reading of everything on text sites, listening to music, watching of video or TV, using of email accounts, various chats, and playing of simple games, yet there are not principally excluded partial bans on some sites (like for watching of porno, or of live sporting events, or playing of the newest games). The full rights access allows everything (including banking, the newest games, etc, yet there can be required some additional payment for porno or whatever); one has to pay for such operating system, even if it is not the newest, but for older less than for the newest.
Temporary (full) rights means what is said, and can be for a month, for a quarter, for half an year, and for an year (but maybe also for every number of years, yet if it is more than three years this will be not much different than to buy the operating system and have full rights); for a week I somehow don't see sufficient reasons but this should not be forbidden. And VIP is VIP, some extras, like improved speed, or personal satellite channel, or something, I don't know now, but something always can be found.
Now about controlling of these full rights and where they have to be written. Well, surely
not on the very copy of operating system or in the computer, because this will allow somehow faking of it. This has to be written on some site of Microsoft, and every other site has to have the rights to look there periodically. But this will not be so difficult to be done because for the common rights there is nothing to check, everybody can read, listen, communicate, et cetera. Whenever the full rights are required the corresponding sites have to maintain a list of physical addresses of all such users and check them, say once a week, or even a month, and if everything is OK to allow these services, or else to reject them. The temporary rights will be checked in the same manner and controlled the period of access. While for the VIP users may be required checking each day, and even may be done so that the very Microsoft sends each day list of such users to each site that wants this. The word "each" or "all" may seem troublesome, but for the contemporary computers this is not real burden, and have also in mind that the VIP users will be usually thousand times less than those with full rights.
b) Now about the
second hand software. Well, I propose the simple formula:
CP(NY) = IP * 0.9^(NY-1), where
CP is the current price,
IP is the initial price, and
NY is the number of years. For example, CP(1) = IP, CP(2) = 0.9*IP, CP(3) = 0.81*IP, CP(4) = 0.729*IP, CP(6) = 0.59, CP(11) = 0.348, CP(16) = 0.206, CP(21) = 0.12, CP(26) = 0.072, and the turning in percents I leave to you, my dear -softists. Surely you can change also this mysterious coefficient of 0.9, but I suppose that this is nearest to the real case in the majority of cases.
Starting from this formula you can compute also the very price of the software for each year accepting that for 20 years (or maybe 15, how you decide) the software has to be paid entirely. I mean that there is a geometric progression:
FI + FI* 0.9 + FI * 0.9^2 + ... + FI * 0.9^19 = IP, where
FI is the first installment, what gives:
FI * (1 - 0.9^20) / (1 - 0.9) = IP, or
FI * (1-0.1216) / 0.1 = IP, or
FI * 0.8784 / 0.1 = IP, or
FI = IP * 0.1 / 0.8784, or
FI = IP * 0.1138. Then (if I have made no errors) the first installment will be 0.1138 of the total price, the second installment will be 0.9*0.1138 = 0.1024 of the same, and the third will be 0.0922, or for the first 3 years one has to pay 0.3084, and so on, what still makes sense.
But this is for an yearly basis, and if you choose to pay for a month then even the first installment will be a bit
less than a percent of the total price, everybody can allow to pay such prices, if this is necessary, this will be much more liberal policy than to sell whole operating systems. The only problem for me remains the way to send small sums not via a bank, but maybe this also is solved, I simply don't do such transfers and because of this don't know how exactly. Hence, if the goals are correctly defined the solution can be found. And if there exists some administrative body of the Internet, not when everybody acts as in a jungle.
5. My letter to Bill Gates
Hello my dear Billy,
How are you doing in your filthy rich America? And I think you will allow me to call you Billy, because I am a bit older then you, with five years. And an older brother in Bulgarian is called "bati", but this is not only our word, this is related with the father /
pater, this is something big and swelled (like a baton), and it is pronounced in Gypsy like "bahti", and this is the usual defender of the person. Hence Myrski will be a kind of defender of the great Billy, this sounds pretty melodious to my ears. Only that there is a little problem: you may have no time for me, surely, unless some of your thousand (and one, maybe) bosses under you will not turn your attention to this letter or will not narrate it to you somehow, in what I hope.
Because, come to think about this, there are about 100,000 seconds in a day, more precisely 86,400, and in an year this will make 31,563,000 seconds, and if one multiplies this by 1.6 this will give nearly exactly 50 mln such parts of time. You, naturally, are right to ask why I do this calculations, but they have a very precise goal, this is in order to invent a new
chronos, a particle which is approximately equal to one average, ah, sorry, ... fart! So there are 50 mln average farts in an year, though some of them may last even by ten farts, am I clear? And this isn't such difficult guess on my part because you have heard about the farthing, yes? One may say that this is 1/4 but it begins exactly with this "fart", so that there surely were some ideas in the heads of old Englishmen.
Well, and now let us look from the other side, from the side of the income. I suppose that you earn at least a billion -- you see, Billy - billion, maybe because of you they are using this word in USA instead of the widely spread milliard -- of dollars; they can be even 20 billions, for what I know, per year, but I will take a billion as the lowest limit (say, in times of economic crisis). So if you earn one billion, or 1 with 9 zeros, divided by 50 mln, or 50 with 6 zeros, this will be the same as to divide a thousand by fifty, what will make 20 rustling US dollars, and this is the price of your standard fart, Billy, my younger brother! So I, obviously, have no rights at all to bother a magnate with 20 dollars fart about some computer equipment costing about 30 euros (with the traveling expenses, and because the hard disc was, in fact, of 80 GB, they haven't smaller then), he will surely give a fart about me, right? Yet I do this, Billy, because the things are related, and I have touched, and will touch, other more important problems, worth not merely a fart, but maybe a ... pissing and even more?!
So that let me now invent another
chronos called a standard
piss, which in my opinion lasts about 1.5 minutes. Because it is so, Billy, you have to spend time for opening of the fly, for taking it properly, for concentration on the business, for some final shaking, for stowing of the "instrument" back in its place, for closing of the fly, and for adjusting of the "device" in the trousers with a hand, and if one is healthy one does not waste his time on small pisses, right? Hence here we start with 60*24 = 1,440 minutes in the day, what divided by 1.5 (precisely by 1.44 min, what are 60+26.4 = 86.4 sec) gives a round thousand pisses in a day. Then in an year this will make 365,000 such p. chronoses, or 0.365 mln p., and if we likewise divide 1 billion or 1,000 mln to 0.365 mln this will give 2,740 US dollars for the Billy's piss. But, my dear Billy, if my pissing was worth so much then I surely would have employed a nice girl (or a boy, according to the preferences) to perform this nasty business of the holding of it for me for some rustling 100 US dollars bill, yet I will never ask you whether you do this or not, because this is your own business, and I am a decent guy, to tell you. Still, now that you know how worth is only this small toilette business for you, you can take some measures to do it while thinking (about the poor people, I suppose, because this is what I usually do, I think about something while doing this). But enough, I will not calculate other of you necessary activities (because you can do this alone, clearly).
And, well, Billy, don't get mad at me, because I simply try to catch your attention, and this is how I can, inventing something funny, because I have no money to spend on some advertising or on bribing of you employees, and the life is hard for me, while at the same time the problems that I raise deserve your attention. Because I have not been interested in your philanthropic activity but the wealthy people are bound to be such, they need this and they wonder what to do in this area. Hence I will tell you that to give your wealth to the others, how the communists have preached, does
not solve the problem, people
need the exploitation and the inequality, only some enlightened persons (like me, surely) don't need this. So that the important moment nowadays is to invent some new and nice form of exploitation not for money, but for something else -- say, for pleasure, or for the right to have children, or for something else, because otherwise remains only the self-exploitation but not many people are such masochists. I have thought about this but till now have not found of what kind has to be this exploitation form, so that I share this problem with you, because knowing this one will be able to predict more precisely what will come after the capitalism, which will emerge pretty disheveled out of this crises which continues quite long for the people's endurance and for now has led to negative interest rates in the banks, what has to land a severe blow on you, my dear Billy. Yet this is a bit off the point for now, let me focus on the problems concerning Microsoft which can be bettered (there can always be bettered something).
So I have spoken about these things in the previous section, having before this poked my finger at the sore areas of your activity. Because the business is business, but from the wealthier is required more, this is, like the French say, noblesse oblige. And you have not a clear concept about aging of the software, while I have given you a pair of ideas: how to calculate this aging, how to sell it in installments, how
not to sell it to the poor who will never be able to pay, especially for things that is supposed that they use but they don't. So that you ponder about this, Billy, because you are the monopolist, but there are others, and if you will not want to listen to my advices, which are openly published, as well also this letter, then it may quietly happen that some day the Unix, Lunix, Munix, Bunix, Strunix, and Trandamunix will unite and make some new operating system called Popunux, meant as Popular Unix, and will conquer the world. And I will suffer for you because we are now going to became pals, I am dedicating a poetry to you, and wish only that you improve yourself, together with your company.
So that you continue to work in the direction of complicating of the operating systems and increasing of the usage of main memory, but do some work also in the opposite direction, in the making of small systems for single users, like me, with the basic requirements for reading, chatting, communicating, watching TV, and playing of
simple games, what has to require not more than 10-20 GB disc space. Up to my opinion there have to be at least several hundreds of millions of such users around the world, maybe even
a whole milliard. Because there is not only the poor Bulgaria, the countries around us, on the Balkans, are not very rich, and then there is half of the people from the former USSR, like Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kyrgyz- and other -stans, a big part of the Near East, nearly the whole Africa, nearly the whole Far East,
America Latina, Hindustan, China, and others, where many people will be glad to have something like my Pentium-4 and for about 50 euros all: computer, monitor, and operating system. To use this if only for watching of TV, and for the -pedias, the translators, the music, etc, will also be good; even 100 euros is not much for such computer if there will not be browsers that will say: change the OS or we will not serve you (how the "bad" Mozilla does).
Because there are different people, I have said this, and the younger are always bigger snobs, they will want, anyway, to pay for something better, even if they will not use it fully, but there are also people who will be glad to have this what I propose and want for myself, if this is cheaper enough. But this is as if a
new market, Billy, these old or refurbished computers may be specially produced, nobody will lose, the point is to grasp that who wants something new he will always find so much money for an OS and a contemporary computer, but who does not want to spend much he will be glad with what is cheaper, these are two different categories of people. And then let us return to the paying of money for OS in installments: if one such monthly installment costs 1-2 euro people who pay 5 to 10 euro monthly for the connection to some net will agree to pay a bit more for doing of money transactions or whatever, the problem is only how to collect the money, but you know how to do this, Billy, don't you?.
And let me tell you something about the new software and the
terrible amounts of available memory nowadays. I personally think that there is nothing really new in the software field after "The art of programming" of Knuth, am I right? Well, these browsers are fine expert systems, but they work well not because of special programmer tricks but because of the enormously increased memories (say, 1,000 times), and speeds of the processors (say, 50 to 100 times), compared with what was available in the times of Knuth. And the memories on discs, they are simply unnecessary, but here is applied the Parkinson's Law that the amount of work or space increases so as to fill the available resources, this is simple, my clever Billy. And you, surely, work in league with the hardware producers, don't you? I can even tell you one story (fictitious) by one Bulgarian humorist called
Chudomir (what is a pseudonym meant as Amazing World), who narrated about one young boy that has begun to work as chimney sweeper and everything went well until one night he was attacked by a gang of other boys who beat him tough, and when he asked why they condescended to explain him that they were from the guild of those who put tiles on the roofs. And when he still couldn't understand how this is related with him they explained him that there was unwritten agreement between both guilds such that those who put tiles have to shove some cloth in the chimney, but those who cleanse the chimneys have to break a pair of tiles, to what he said, OK guys, but how could I have known this, nobody told me this. So that the softists and hardtists are like, so to say, ...
a bottom and pants, without precising of who exactly is the bottom, right?
Ah, Billy, the disc memory increases unnecessary because: what can one put on hundreds of gigabytes, that he can't avoid, ah? I, for example can put all my books (about a dozen if of 200 pages and more, and multiplied by 3 for the languages that I use, in some 10 MB, but let them be 100 MB, let them be 1 GB, and that's all. Surely that one usual picture is about 2-3 MB (1,000 by 1,000 pixels usually by 3 bytes), but even for this a pair of GB, one flash memory, suffices, and films is not necessary to store in random access devices, there are tapes of some kind for them. Yet people put what they can, they fill their discs until some day they crash, that's what I suppose. Where on the other pole are people who can use really moderate, according to today's measures, discs, and computers, not laptops or such flat gadgets that one has to work calluses from moving a finger over them, for multiple purposes and be glad with this if they were offered to them. Surely people do usually what they can, not what is necessary, but everything excessive ricochets sometimes.
Anyway, Billy, I have tired you and let me move now to my poetry
Dedicated
T_housands of terra bytes are called just Gates,
O_bviously -- such big chunk is simply great.
B_ut imagine robot with such cache of RAM
I_n the all of ten processors -- I'll be damn'd!
L_eft behind will be the people then
L_ooking too moronic, wifes and men.
Y_eah, castrate them, maybe, with two bricks: bam, bam!
G_ood, the people will say, who's to blame 's the point.
A_h, this
Entrance guy who Microsoft's name coined
T_hrowing money for a software things,
E_h, let's catch him, here's were stinks.
S_till, he will be long dead and as saint anoint.
Your "bahti" Chris Myrski.
6. PriPop, the new joined venture
Hello, Billy,
This is again me, your pal Chris
si, and maybe your future companion. I hope that you have liked my verse and want to make me a little present on this occasion, so that I will explain you now what exactly. But surely nothing expensive, just a dozen of your valuable farts, something in that range, in no case one of your pisses. What I would have liked is a small, 10-12 inches, laptop, with about 1 GB RAM, 20 GB disk, and operating system that will allow using of satellite videophone, what you call skype I think. But mark that I mean laptop with a keyboard, so that it can be used for typing or programming or reading, et cetera. It has to be something simple, not heavy, and with small inscription in gold (or platinum) in the bottom right corner saying "Donation by Bill Gates", where "Gates" must not be bigger, but maybe even smaller and with a little crown with three diamonds above. Something like this, and it may have no battery and work only on power adapter (hence you may put a dozen diamonds or a gold plate, or something else valuable (say, a wad of folded 1,000 dollar bills), on the place of battery, if this is your wish, but I don't insist on it). And, Billy, this will be simply necessity if we will make this
PriPop company, what is deciphered as
Prince and Pauper, you see, a company for princes and for paupers! How do you like it. ah? You may prefer to write it as PriPaup but I think that it may be written also like I propose, and there was earlier some jazz style called "bebop" so that this sounds similarly, is again a melodious name.
And don't try to refuse me this pleasure on the grounds that you have not liked the verse at all, because then you may want to give me this present in order, so to say, to bribe me, for
not to write more such verses, ha, ha. Because I can continue to write, I may invent a nonsense poem called, say,
Billy and the runaway mouse, or something similar, I have experience in these things, I have written about a dozen limericks in English dedicated to Bulgarian politicians even in the last century, I have dedicated in Russian a verse to Gorbachev, then to Putin, so that I stop at nothing, it's good to know this. Not that my poetry is read much, in fact it is nearly
not read, but this is for the moment, and if I succeed to conquer the world and after my untimely (as it always happens) demise the things may change drastically, it may even become so that after a century people will forget who was this Bill
Entrance of how he was, but they will never forget the inimitable world writer Myrski (with his, just to give an example, three poems "Sounds Impossible ...", which have not yet been used as libretto to write pop songs on them but this can happen any moment).
Yet, on the other hand, if you will not want to build this joined venture then send me no skypes, no nothing, because I have not a soul to whom I can phone and boast that, look, this thing was sent to me by the great Billy, do you know him, etc., because I use my usual phone about a pair of times
in the year, and receive calls, say, five times for the same period, I am, literally said, an intellectual anchorite. And the company must work on the famous principle of the fictitious hero Ostap Bender -- and don't tell me, please, that you have not yet read the books about him, you can always fill this gap in your education -- who proclaimed: "Your money, our ideas!". Because, obviously, I, being one intellectual pauper, or, then, one paupery intellectual, have no money, right? And as to your ideas, I never said that you haven't, but, you see, you are working, driving the heavy car of this enormous company, and are moving in some commercial ruts, you have no time to look around (and enjoy the landscape, for example).
So that now listen to my first proposition for new, and chiefly old, operating system named, say, "Windows-21" as the Windows of the 21st century, because it will not change each year but will remain the same for, well, let's say 20 or so years, and later you can always add some plusses, right? It has to be offered free for simple computers and laptops and when you switch on the computer on the screen will be shown, under the sounds of the final of 9th Beethoven's symphony, a view from the sky to some tall building on which is written vertically "Microsoft". Then the camera gradually lowers down and, see, before the building, shown in close-up, stands the smiling Billy who waves a hand to the camera and headed for the surprisingly closely situated big park surrounded with wrought iron high fence and just nicely ornamented big gates. Then the camera moves a bit away to show that after the man is gathered a big crowd of people of all races and ages and before the gates Gates stops, takes out of his inner pocket a big and shining golden key, and puts it in the keyhole, while in the moment of turning it and opening the gates resounds this joyous cry "
Freude" meaning joy, ecstasy, and it becomes clear for everybody that this is the garden of Eden. Alternatively the actor playing you, Billy, can hit a buzzer and on the other side of the gates can appear another actor impersonating me impersonating the Saint Peter and then I take the big golden key hanging on a chain on my neck, put it in the keyhole, and when I am opening the gates resounds this "
Freude". Then are shown many trees under which on tree trunks are placed open computers with another trunks around them for sitting, and on their screens is seen the smiling Billy, and the people are heading to them to choose by a computer for themselves. All this lasts about a minute or one p. unit of time.
Haven't I arranged it brilliant, ah, Billy? But surely I have. So let me mention now some more important features of the OS. It will be based on some Windows from the very end of the century, with 32 bit FAT, with all usual commands and not very special protecting shield because will not support bank accounts. Still, something can be added, and I propose to introduce
versions for the files (there were versions on PDP as far as I remember) because one usually changes something in the files with which works and this "copy of" elongates unnecessary the name of the files and appears not in the proper order. We have to decide this together, naturally, but I think that most suitable will be to have a small one-position field (separated with "." or ";") for the version
before the file name, and clicking on it can be chosen another version, else (if clicked on the name) is opened the last one. One does not bother to change them, the versions are maintained automatically in the range of 2 to 5, 3 by default, and can be allowed up to 9; in addition can be added also a command called "truncate versions" or "trv" which will be called from the version field; each time when one edits in some way the file with save is saving the new version, and on exit are rearranged the versions automatically and renumbered if necessary when exceeding the top limit, permanently deleting by this the oldest version. I think this will create no problems for your programming personnel because nearing my 70 I don't intend to work as programmer in a field which I don't know.
Yeah, but then you may want to adapt my old idea for splitting of the words of
any language without dictionaries! It worked by me in DOS not exactly perfect, but quite
passable, and this is a must for all devices, like phones, and other small screens, not only by printing yet also then. All this is described for everybody in my PIR folder and in English, but it is based on the analysis of the letters of each alphabet (I worked back then with Cyrillic and Latin), discerning 3 major categories: vowels, consonants, and modifiers (like "h" and "j" if I have remembered it correctly). In the Word this can be invoked by hitting CR to end the paragraph and then to be perform splitting of the words in it; it has to be possible to be invoked specially for any portion of text, to do some manual splitting and again to call this function for the remainder. This surely will make the pages better looking, and then can be thought to apply the same approach also for all Internet sites. My method allows working in several languages together and arranging of some presettings about this when has not to be divided, or on the contrary, but for every language can exist some standard small tables (of about 10 items).
Then there is my idea about very strange and unprofessional method of condensing of files of
any type also universally without whatever analysis of the file type, this also is described briefly. Then there are my ideas about the browsers and the Internet at all. There nothing is done, the Internet is maintained more or less like how the first settlers in America organized their farms, this is nearly pre-deluvial method of work. Think what will be after a pair of centuries, when the Internet is now on about 25 years -- I suppose everything will be necessary to be done anew, all -pedias, everything. This isn't the right way of doing the things and if people with such big influence like you will not take the initiative then will be lost much time and efforts. There is also my old (from about 2003) idea about one
universal alphabet for
all languages, which is not yet accepted, surely -- my ideas are usually too revolutionary for to be accepted in my lifetime, I suppose -- but there is not invented the very alphabet and the modifiers, so that it is good if this could be available in advance, and there are some peculiarities there (with superposing of two characters, or rather of a standard character and a modifier). And so on.
But well, Billy, Rome wasn't built in one day, so also our joined company will gradually gather its momentum. And when we will become pals then I may make some exception for you and, for example, allow you to choose whatever you want from my books and papers, in
arbitrary order on you sites. Because I have said in my conditions for publication that I begin everywhere with my "Communism", then "The manifestos", then the "Cynical essays", and so on, but you may want to begin with my "PIR", then my poetry, then my "Urrh", and just then the "Cynical essays", or in some other order. And free, of course, I can't publish everything free on Russian sites and require from my pal payment, right? For some of my ideas I require something, but this is if the ideas will be used, not otherwise, and this is for old ideas. Then you may want to invest some filthy tens of thousands dollars to issue something from my works in paper form, but this will not be lost money, I suppose, and everything depends on the advertising. It is true that I say that I want 25% of the selling price for me but this is because the books are only mine, and this does not mean that the editor has really to pay me all the money, I have explained these things.
Because. Billy, you see, I just
don't need much money today! I needed some 20, 15, or 10 years earlier, and now I don't need, because I suffer from one very strange psychical "illness" -- I simply can't spend! That's it. I told in the very beginning that I spend about 25 US$
monthly for eating and
drinking, what is true; I
can spend another 25, maybe even 50, but I can't imagine how I will spend a hundred on this only! Well, there are communal expenses etc., so that I can freely spend 100 US$ each month, but, again, not more. I need also to make some unavoidable repairs in my home, this will make about a pair of thousand dollars, yet I can't allow myself to pay to the plumber for a day's work as much as my monthly pension. And because of this I
avoid this repairs for years. And even if I will sometime do them then this will be in order to bequeath my small flat in better form to some educational institution, or some money (if I will have) to another such institutions. What means that if you, for example, decide to send me 50 or 100 dollars I will make myself a "feast", I may buy either an ice cream or a tart, or something of the kind, and will save not more than the half, but if you send me 500 then I will surely put 450 in some bank, and they even give no interest now, hence, -- for what purpose? So that in our joined venture you can give the money but you can also
retain them mostly. Did you get it? What is reduced to this: why not to try to use some of my ideas, ah?
But, well, let us return to something more funny, Billy. Let me tell you how I may call you and show you a glass of homemade vodka with essence or tincture of rowan (or mountain-ash) berries (in Russian it will be called "ryabinovka"), coloured in red like diluted blood, and you may show me your glass with
111 old whisky (supposing that it is the oldest to be found) with the colour of condensed ... urine, and we will clink glasses via some satellite. Despite the time zones and the 7 hours difference this can sometimes happen, if you take you aperitif about tee-time, 5 p.m., and I will not yet sleep till midnight. Or then we can talk about this new kind of exploitation, it has to exist, people will not stop to work just because they will not need more money (what I think can as well happen till the end of the century), and when there are now no families, almost no fatherlands, no castes (with the exception of such tiny groups like you all the others are nearly equal), something has to bind the society, else we will return to the jungle. Or we can also ponder about the socializing of society, and is it possible some moderate communism which must be
equal to the moderate capitalism, according to me.
Or you may became interested how I can manage with my a-dollar-a-day sustenance for my body, and I may became interested how you succeed to spend at least a pair or millions in a month because your position requires this, people want that the highlife spends, otherwise they will be disappointed in it. But I will never ask you is it true that your ... toilet seat is of pure gold, or is it of platinum, and do you know why, Billy? Because I know that it is of semiconductors! Well, maybe it has to be said that it is of a semiconductor type, but you know that the English isn't my mother language, so that I may make by a mistake from time to time. What I mean is that it conducts the sh..., the whatever-it-is-that-comes-out when you sit on it in the direction from your bottom-emitter through the bowl and in the collector-pipes, but never vice versa, right? Even my toilet seat is of this kind, only that it works with manual rinsing (because a plumber wants too much for me).
And so on, but as far as I suppose that have wasted already about hundred thousand dollars of your time I will stop here, because enough is enough.
Affectionately yours
Chrissi, intelligent laic and worldly popularizing writer.
9. Conclusion
So, dear Microsoft people, I have finished at last my enormous letter to you beginning with a trifling for you plea, making you acquainted with the poor life in some post-totalitarian countries and especially for the intellectuals there, turning your attention to some important drawbacks of you company policy, giving you briefly a pair of propositions and telling you where to find more things of the kind, and then allowing myself to make many (and not pretty decent) jokes with your legendary Bill Gates, together with some funny propositions to him for me working together with him, but, after all, this is also a kind of publicity for him and you, and even this is not much off the point of the future of your company and the strategic goals for you. But then people like to make jokes with the highlife or with their idols, and the more unexpected they are, the better, and "Billy" was not exactly my idol, for I have never dreamed to became
capitalist, but was a brethren for me, a programmer of high rank. So that don't get angry at me but think, after solving of my primary problem, what you can better in your work, because this material being published on the Internet it may as well happen that some "raincoats" or "pears" or other funny names of software and hardware companies can begin to use these ideas and increase their popularity and /or wins.
Oct 2016, Chris Myrski
P.S. Ah, dear Microsoft people, I have tried for more than an year to come in touch with you and have begged my readers to send you an email to look at this letter, and alone have tried this again but have not succeeded, alas. For one thing because my readers don't care much about me, yeah, they are glad to read something funny and philosophical or scientific, but they don't accept me as real person to whom they can show some help (and why should they?). For another thing because I alone have tried to do this, for I have managed somehow to solve my problem (after about an year delay) via my Internet providers (one small company), who have helped me in order not to lose me as client and have installed me some Windows from 2003 on which I work since about Nov 2017, and I have nowhere found email address to which to write, only some web-pages, with questions about which of your product it goes, so that you can offer me something new and for more money, yeah. Id est, you are interesting only in making more profits, not of some useful feedback from your users.
Well, maybe you are right, up to some extent, I don't pretend to have knowledge in the field of delusion of the clients, sorry, of the lulling of the clients the you are those who offer the best possible products and all other competitors are, hmm, not exactly sh#ts, but so, mediocrities. You are acting, maybe, according the old proverb: In Rome do as the Romans do. Good, but the bad thing is that all I have said (as well also many things that I have not said, surely) continues to be true. This is chiefly, in some philosophical aspect and generally speaking, because you, and your colleagues programmer manufacturers, have simply ... reached their climax, can't make something really better, and then continue to worsen a bit the things, trying only not to worsen them more than the others do. Because it is so, when someone reaches some top he (or she) can go only down (or stay at the same level -- what nobody wants, whatever but not the same), providing this was really a top, no matter local or more global. So, to give an example, the world capitalism has reached its top level somewhere about the turn of the last century, with the Eiffel Tower or Ford's conveyor, or mass applying of electricity, and because of this were lead the two World wars, including the not long ago executed ... Bin Laden's attack, I suppose. And in the field of software the latest important achievements were till about 1980, or the turn of the century at most, in my opinion, and what happened later became important only due to the breath-taking achievements of hardware technologies, that's it.
In confirmation of my statement I can give you some examples with the new, after the turn of the century, Microsoft Office products. Let me take the Word, there is nothing new (well, maybe only this, that now I can mark some area holding the left mouse button and dragging down the mouse and this is done
slowly while before was used all speed of the computer, but this is a trifle), yet there are obvious worsenings, and I have met on one site the statement that one has to work with Word not after 2006, and they have based their requirements for submitting files for ebooks to them in such form. More concrete, what I don't like now (and this even for 2003, not for 10th or higher year versions) is, say: the guessing of the language, which surely can't be very good, and it happened that I, mixing several languages, insert some English word and want to check its spelling, and am answered that there is no spell-checker for Bulgarian (but the word is English, and in Bulgarian there is another alphabet, it is easy to check the English spelling), while before the language and grammar checking worked good at least for the English; i.e., you have seen that such things are done in many browsers, but one editor must not compete with such much bigger programs, and you again want that somebody paid you something more for using of another language checker, while the browsers offer such things free; in other words, you offer unnecessary luxuries in order to get more and more money. But there is worse than this, there is, for example, a straight line below which are placed the foot-notes, which has to take one line only but it is unmanageable (even before was so) and now it happened with me that once it began to grow and inserted first 2 lines, then more (up to 7-8)
for no reasons, which I succeeded to manage only using an old copy of my file, what for me is an obvious bug. Then there happened even more strange things (maybe due to using of other alphabets and unnecessary spell checking but this is not excuse), like when my file began simply to grow (from about 2K KB) and this was initially with 30-some percents, then 2-3 times, now about 8 times and I have not managed this.
I can continue in this direction with other examples of unnecessary complications, but you know quite well that there are used also other editors which are simple, can't do indexing etc., but work pretty well, while in Word it is often impossible to mark some chars, it
guesses something more what is not necessary in many cases. It is like -- for to give one funny example --, to want to take one cigarette out of the package and received it always ... lighted (because you usually will want to light it. About the Excel I don't remember an example now (because have not used it for long time) but in Access there is not well maintained vertical compatibility and I can't open one my old file because of various checks for written by me programs, and here is no remedy at all (unless to make an entirely new structure of the base and load anew my files, what I think is scandalous).
Not to repeat that there is no splitting of words proposed, in no language, more so not language specific (what I mention as proposition); also no ways for easy writing of new chars, new alphabets (while I remember that in DOS existed one Chi-writer for such cases; there is even no way for
superposition of two (or more) chars, be it for adding something above or below, be it for composing of new chars (what was done by printing in DOS with the use of BackSpace but not with Delete). So that I am right, guys and girls,
you are wrong.
Yet, on the other hand, being forced to write a pair of other Open Letters to various instances, I have come to the conclusion that the open letters are usually
not read by the persons to whom they are sent; this might be because the people nowadays have no time to read their "closed" letters, not to mention the open once. Well, if it is so, then I will try to draw my conclusions and derive some benefits even from this, because, thanks to your ignoring of my letter, I have come to the idea to write one rather philosophical Open Letter to ... God Almighty, Who will, surely, not bother to answer me, right? So that maybe in a pair of years I will write it and my readers will have one more paper to read (and think), and from the case with you I have also written an interesting paper and increased the number of my, not very copious, readers, so that, as the Germans say,
nichts für ungut (nothing for ungood), and I am not much angry at you (because you are part of the decaying capitalism, with which all must cope somehow, it being not only bad but, in some aspects, also good).
March 2018