Shunning the Real ID Enablers

[RS Davis]

Shunning the Real ID Enablers
by Garry Reed
Published 15 August 2005

Freedom's latest foe is the two-headed snake-in-the-grass Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. These cyberserpents are collaborating to create the hardware/software mission of turning us all into walking talking Real ID card chattel. (Quickie definition of Real ID: a thin slice of plastic containing our digitized biological and biographical persona so BigGov can steal our identities whenever it wishes.)

I was already soured on Hewlett-Packard. Two years back a pack of powercrats came up with a concept called the Continuity of Government Commission. Terrified that all of their kind could be killed in a single blow (a hand grenade tossed from a two-seater Cessna, perhaps) and we lackeys might learn to like life without our liege lords, the COG wanted to empower state Governors to cherry-pick replacement masters, not via special elections (Constitutional) but from their own personal wish lists (unconstitutional).

Noting that COG ought to stand for Congress Of Goons, I further noted that this BigGov plot was supported by the likes of the Hewlett and Packard Foundations. To quote myself: "Everything on my desktop is Hewlett-Packard. My computer, my printer, my scanner, my fax, my CD reader-writer, my cheap little promo pen with the lower case hp logo."

Then I sputtered indignantly, "I feel a boycott coming on. What's the phone number for Dell?"

Since then, my eight-year-old Pentium II kicked the bit bucket and went to that great Norton Protected Recycle Bin in the sky. I didn’t even consider an HP replacement. Viewing TV commercials that gushed, "I'm getting a Dell, Dude," I got a Dell, Dude.

And all those HP peripherals have been replaced by a single Epson All-In-One printer/copier/scanner/fax/toaster oven/wine press/nose hair trimmer.

In the not yet foreseeable future I’ll be latching onto a laptop. It won’t, as a matter of principle, be an HP. And that principle requires, as principles ought, a small sacrifice on my part. An HP employee/family member that shall remain anonymous could easily buy me a laptop with his/her employee discount. But I'll forego that advantage and obtain an Anything Else brand instead. A costlier Not-HP is now my purchase preference.

Microsoft is another matter. The MS colossus is a de facto standard. Yes, you cyber-encephalons will eagerly ballyhoo the benefits of Microsoftless open source alternatives. But I'm a freelance technical writer and my day jobs demand working with Windows wares. Besides, as a keyboard jockey, my computer is like my car – it's just something that takes me where I want to go. I'm neither a computer nor auto mechanic.

So how do I boycott the behemoth?

If I want to be a charitable chap, I'll remember how the DC bureaugoons punished the Gates gang with their antitrust attack for having committed the sin of succeeding while not lining their larcenous pockets from Gates' profits. An argument could be made that Microsoft has teamed with HP because they learned their antitrust lesson (cooperate with the Capitol Crooks or get pummeled by the powercrats).

Maybe that's too charitable. More likely, the Redmond monster is simply sniffing along the profits trail, unmindful of the difference between income from product sales and income from taxpayer-stolen government gelt.

At the very least, we need to remind them of that difference.

So, in addition to my personal HP prohibition, I've launched my anti-Microsoft mission – I'm joining the Browser Wars.

No, I'm not getting next to Netscape. I long ago elevated my nostrils at those low-level lowlifes. Netscape, being one of those incompetents unable to compete with MS, whined piteously for awhile, then joined the likes of Sun and Oracle who decided to sic their paid antitrust bureaudogs on 'em. The only reason Navigator darkens my desktop today is to make sure my web site properly displays for those of you who are Netscapers.

For all my everyday browsing business, I'm now foraging with Firefox.

Will refusing to purchase HP or use Explorer make any difference? Gunners groups snubbed Smith & Wesson when they caved to Clintonista demands that BigGov Bureaubullies boss their business. They survived, according to an LA Times tale, only because "After a change of ownership, Smith & Wesson cooled on the agreement, and President Bush allowed the company to back out of it."

So maybe if all libertarians refused to hang with HP or go site-seeing with Explorer, we'll read a story someday about how "HP and MS cooled on the Real ID agreement, and President Hillary (or is that Condoleezza?) allowed the companies to back out of it."

Hey, a boycott is a beginning.

- by Garry Reed