Symphonious

It was extremely hot today in Brisbane and my house doesn’t have air conditioning or ceiling fans and I didn’t own a pedestal fan, though the house is very open and picks up breeze well.  Even so, it was definitely time to invest in a cooling device and it was hot enough to convince me to splurge on an air conditioner for my room.  That is of course until I wondered around the beautifully air conditioned store for an hour or two looking at price tags around $1000 for air conditioners that didn’t really suit my needs anyway.  Eventually I saw a pedestal fan for $15 and feeling nice and cool now anyway figured that would do.

Sadly for the air-conditioning sales-folk, the product was just too effective and did them out of a sale.  Better yet, by the time I got home from the store the sun had dropped below the horizon and stopped shining straight in the window so my new fan was plenty cool enough.

I’ve defended Sun a fair bit in the past and I still think that there’s a huge number of people making mountains out of molehills and just looking for any chance to knock them down a peg, but even I can’t believe the bone-headedness required to release source code under a "look but don’t compile" license (Graham Hamilton was the initial source of the news for me and the official site is over at jck.dev.java.net).

I’d go off on a big rant about it all except that John D. Mitchell has pretty well covered it all.

You know, I often ignore click-through licenses because I’m lazy, however I’m always suspicious of software that feels it would be beneficial for me to change my browser’s homepage to some cluttered, ad-filled portal with no useful content - it’s just a pet hate of mine, even if you can easily turn off the option.  Since the MSN toolbar asks to set your homepage before it shows you the click-through license, I thought I’d flick through it quickly.  Section 2 is enough for me to not agree to it:

2. HOW WE MAY MODIFY THIS CONTRACT.

We may change this contract at any time. You must review this contract on a regular basis. You can find a link to the most recent version of the contract at http://toolbar.msn.com/. The changed contract is in effect immediately. If you do not agree to changes in the contract, then you must stop using the MSN Software. If you do not stop using the MSN Software, then your use of the MSN Software will continue under the changed contract.

So I’m agreeing to a "contract" that I haven’t seen, can’t possibly know what’s in it and don’t get any chance to disagree with it (it comes into effect immediately - before I could possibly have read it, even if I constantly checked for updates).  Now I understand the need to change and update a click-through license from time to time and that’s fine, but you need to provide some notification of it and a chance to disagree.

Oh and of course, since we’re so concerned about privacy when Google’s involved:

10. PERFORMANCE AND USAGE INFORMATION

Microsoft may automatically upload performance and usage information for evaluating the MSN Software and the MSN search services associated with it. Such information will not personally identify you.

The data may not personally identify me,(though the source IP address would)  but wouldn’t it be nicer if I had a choice about this?  I’m not so worried about this, except of course the fact that it may change without notice to include personal information.

Thus completes my experience with the MSN toolbar, let me know when the license becomes at least half sane and I might actually install it (that is of course, if you notice it changed…).

Oh and on that note, when reviewing software it’s probably not a good idea to use the template provided by one of the company’s evangelists.  Not that the list of things to consider is particularly bad, but it goes down in my book as one of the smoothest and craftiest marketing moves I’ve seen in a while - use your blog to stir up excitement about an upcoming event and provide a neat list of features to look for in the new product when you review it - don’t worry about anything else, just go through the check list!  I’m still undecided about whether or not Scoble gets a bonus for these things or not (he should).