2008-02-09

Vive la liberté: I am burying my MSN and Yahoo accounts

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother. - St. Crispen's Day Speech, HENRY V, by William Shakespeare, 1599

Brothers,

I know you love freedom, so I think you will fight with me, for our future free market. This is a war, to secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our children. I know this is tough, but "Freedom is not free".

Due to Microsoft acquiring Yahoo transaction may form a terrible monopoly that can

1. kill our chance to make money in a free market (i.e., they can "pay" politicians to treat your company unfairly.)
2. force us to pay more money for more sucking service (e.g. AT&T's rate in 1980s)
3. control us where to go and where not to go (i.e., they don't wanna us to use better services of their competitors. They may also control the freedom of speech by controlling our web surfing. )
4. violate our privacy and freedom (i.e., they may turn United States into Nazi Germany or Communist Russia since they can control the freedom of speech.)

To defend our unalienable rights endowed by our creator, I am abandoning Microsoft and Yahoo services. If you wanna reach me, you can use Email or other IMs, such as Google Talk (as well as other Jabbers), Skype, AIM, IRC channels. You will also be able to find me at Facebook, Linkedin and other online forums and mailing lists. Don't worry, you still can contact me if you use the non-evil services through free market, with hot competition.

Since this afternoon, I have "forced" many people to shift their ways to IM me, including my sister. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and uncountable people dedicated their life to freedom. Now I just ask you my friends, not sacrifice your life, but just click your mouse to switch your online service and disconnect any relationship with the evil company - Microsoft. I know you may not find a workable alternative beyond Windows, so I won't ask you to stop using Windows. My idea is to let Apple fight with Microsoft on OS market and we can enlarge our Linux share meanwhile.

You may ask, Forrest, don't you afraid of losing friends? Well, firstly, I don't have much friends on MSN and Yahoo. Secondly, most of them are also using Google Talk, AIM or Skype. Third, to the rest of them, I am persuading them to switch. So, to the rest few couples of people, I have to say "For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother".

You may say that this Microsoft-Yahoo deal is still under-going. Well, I wanted to say goodbye to Yahoo and Microsoft a long time ago, since their online services both suck very much. Now, Microsoft give me a chance to abandon it. Even if Microsoft's bidding fails, I will continue burying my Windows Live (a.k.a. MSN) account, including instant messaging and blogging. No need for Windows, coz it has already been pissed by me since my sophomore year. If Microsoft successfully acquires Yahoo!, I will also stop using Yahoo! mail, Yahoo! 360 and Yahoo! Messenger. If Microsoft wanna modify Flickr, I will take further action.

Well, I won't only rely on Google. I will "balance" the services on different providers. I don't need one guru. In stead, I prefer many "big brothers" fighting each other. And some day, I will open fire to them and eat their market shares later.

So I will be very happy to see later that Microsoft can't acquire Yahoo so that Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Apple, AOL, Skype and all other Internet companies continue fighting each other. Then we can enjoy the free market by maintaining a competition among them.

Vive la liberté! (Long live liberty!)

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