November 25, 2007

I studied about the term "monopoly" during Social Studies (Chapter 6: The rise and fall of Venice) when I was in Secondary 4 back in Maris Stella High. Basically it means having control total control over a particular resource (for Venice, it was salt and fishes) so that you can set the price for that resource. Even if you were to set exhorbitant prices, other people or countries will still buy from you because you are the only one that has it and the people need it.

I haven't really experience "monopoly" (unless you're talking about the board game) yet in my life until today, thanks to Bill Door's Microsoft.

I switched to the Mozilla Pyrofox browser recently because it is said to be much more safer than the Microsoft Internet Venturer. I went to Microsoft's website just now wanting to download updates for my PC but when I clicked on the "Windows Update" link, I was greeted with the following message:

"We thank you for your interest in Microsoft's updates. However, we can only provide the updates in Internet Venturer. Please switch to Internet Venturer and come back again. You may want to download the latest version of Internet Venturer here. blah blah blah."

Its not exactly what was shown but that is the gist of it.

After switching to Pyrofox, I also encountered problems when accessing my Swelteringmail account. Everytime after I signed in, instead of the mailbox interface, a seemingly never ending list of words and numbers will appear. I need to refresh the window several times before the mailbox appears. How amusing.

Also, when using Pyrofox, my MSN Live Envoy kept logging in and out by itself. Sometimes, I would be in the middle of a chat and the thing will just disconnect and as if to mock me, once it disconnects, a timer will pop up, indicating the amount of time left to re-connection. Why would it disconnect and then reconnect by itself in the first place?

In conclusion, I believe its Microtender's ploy to take over the world - the virtual world that is. No wonder up till now Apple's iLife isn't even anywhere near to Microtender's back.

...

Back to my main point; monopoly. See, once you have monopoly over something, you can more or less bend people to your will. In my case, I am forced to switch back to Internet Venturer because of incompatibility issues between Pyrofox and Microtender-related products.

Anyway I am not really complaining. At least now I can view my blog in normal sized words lol. So Mr. Commando, stop complaining about the large font size on my blog and switch to Internet Venturer. Submit to the insurmountable prowess of Microtender!

*Pardon me for all the paraphrases (eg. Microsoft becomes Microtender). I need to practice my English skills because my Scholarstic Assessment Test, more commonly known as SAT, is due next Saturday.

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