APPLE HAS FASCISTIC tendencies. The only reason I am being so nice to the worthless controlling weasels, no offence meant to members of the genus Mustella by comparing them to turtleneck wearing egomaniacs, is that Mike won’t let me write #$*(^ or #(@_!*.

If you thought Apple was one of the good guys with iTunes and iPods and other mindless fashion slave icons, think again, you are going to get screwed, these weasels don’t know when to stop turning the screws on you.

If you haven’t noticed yet, their plan with iTunes is to sucker you in with slightly less than intolerable DRM. Once you have bought enough songs that you are trapped, they turn the screws and retroactively remove your rights. It is a slow and painful erosion of your liberties, but most Americans are more than dumb enough sheep that they won’t notice. Good consumer, sit, and when you have no more choice, you will beg, trust me.

What brought this on? I was trying to view the latest trailer for the Firefly movie online called Serenity. It was a good show, and I am really looking forward to the movie. I went to the official site to find the trailer, and they had the usual streaming versions and a HD version to download in .WMV. Cool, I grabbed it, and the first thing it did was tell me that the content that was protected by DRM needed me to ’upgrade’ to view it. Now, the whole idea of a trailer meant to entice you to spend money on something containing DRM-worthy precious IP aside, WTF? ’Upgrading’ like this is roughly akin to peace loving Germany deciding that Democracy wasn’t cutting it and upgrading to Nazism. So, screw the MS fscktards, time to move to Apple.

So, I get to the Apple site and go to look at the trailer. I of course chose the highest rez, and am greeted with two buttons labeled ’I Have iTunes’ and ’I Do Not Have iTunes’. Not wanting to debase my computer with DRM, even if it is megalomaniac approved rights removing DRM, I chose ’I Do Not Have iTunes’, and was brought to a download page. Not wanting to sully my machine with such filth, I went back and chose ’I Have iTunes’. It immediately gave me an error.

So, here is the plan, part 12, to remove more of your rights. If you want to view freely available content, things that the people making movies want you to see, you have to give up your rights and infect your PC with DRM. Well, screw them, I guess I will just have to wait until about a month before the movie comes out and download it, because at this point, it would take a lot of convincing to make me give them any money.

Moral, MS are fairly sleazy, but is that news? Apple is worse, and subtle, which makes them much more dangerous. Don’t give these weasels money, it will come back to haunt you. As the refrain on the message boards goes, instead of don’t feed the trolls, don’t feed the megalomaniacs, they will just use the money to sue you.