Some days ago, I was looking for an album by Hilltop Hoods. Unfortunately, iTunes Switzerland did not sell it (this alone would be material enough for another blog post).

Given these circumstances, I asked Google for help searching for "buy MP3" and "legal MP3 downloads", since I understand that artistic work has real value that should be paid for. Besides, searching endlessly through p2p networks together with the hassle of slow download rates just isn't worth the few bucks of the legal download.

Sadly, though, of the many results Google returned, not a single legal one offered MP3 files! They proudly call themselves mp3.com or claim to be "the largest MP3 music store" but in fact they just lie. And they lie insolently, since they sell amputated WMA crap. For the kids: WMA is Microsoft's proprietary answer to MP3, a format that comes with DRM restrictions that make listening to your music a real pain. As an example, it is not unusual that you can transfer a song file only three times to a portable music player.

But you're right, if one buys it, one agrees to these terms. Any lawyer will proudly demonstrate his plethora of expertise by explaining to you that such crippledness is proper. It's legal to impose restrictions that make a product useless as long as you inform the customer in advance. We all learned that law follows logic. This must be so complicated that there's not much room left for common sense.
Hence, it boils down to a simple fact: If you paid for WMA and feel pissed off later, it's your fault and, honestly, you're a poor idiot anyway.

So far, so good. Now comes the inconvenient truth: You thought that your WMA song will play on a device that officially supports WMA? Think again! You need new hardware devices that carry the Microsoft playforsure logo! You have an generously great choice of about 150 devices to choose from (as of this writing). 'In total', that means, every hardware piece, be it portable music player, cell phone, PDA etc. Isn't that great?

So, you want to listen to your WMAs with your cell phone? Just buy one of the 10 devices that support it. Given that WMA DRM in principles allows the shop to entirely forbid the transfer to portable devices, even a compatible device is not a guarantee. If you found a working match of WMA file and cell phone, you can call yourself a member of the very exquisite club of legal mobile music listeners! And guess what, as soon as too many people have bought into the very same club, Microsoft will introduce a new format.

Self-evidently, you'll need to get new hardware devices, too. At the same time, you must not forget to buy all your WMA music again. Remember, you most likely had two ineffective file transfers to your old portable player to find out that it really doesn't work, and one transfer to your then new playforsure device. Makes three transfers in total, and the DRM restrictions tak effect.

And what's the point of it? The revolution eats its children. The easy and modern, online distribution of digital music has turned into a customers nightmare. Whereas every part of the supply chain profits (from Microsoft via hardware manufacturers to the music companies), the consumer is blatantly cheated on. Buying a CD has become the surest way to listen to your music from different devices. But maybe that is actually the secret plan of the music industry? Back to the last century by enforcing DRM? Meanwhile, Microsoft excels once more in prostituting itself for its own short term profit and is on the best way to dominate the hardware business on an even wider basis of devices.

I'm an open-minded person. Over the last 8 years, I have looked into a bunch of different web technologies, such as Perl, Python, PHP and Java - heck, even ColdFusion. After a long, unhappy relationship with PHP I've settled with Perl and Python.

While the .net framework and C# in particular are considered a rather good product (for something coming out of Redmond, that is), the ASP.net part is conceived with mixed feelings in the community. This seems to be mainly for technical reasons: While some of them concern the tight integration of Visual Studio to the development process "making hard things easy but easy things impossible", others do not like the fact that while ASP.net provides you with an extremely complex framework, it doesn't make it obvious to write maintainable code - it seems, for instance, unclear if MVC design patterns are (practically) applicable to ASP.net.

Leaving the technical discussion to those who understand more about ASP.net than me, I'll add this to the list of ASP.net unhappyness: Why-oh-why is it impossible for a non-Windows person to learn about ASP.net? MSDN has a huge collection of well-made video tutorials that will - no doubt - give you a good insight into the development process. Apart from that, its just a cool thing...

However, it's simply impossible to watch these videos unless you have Windows XP SP2 with Windows Media Player 11 installed. Full stop - take a break. When you try to reach developers used to PHP, Perl etc., shouldn't you make your learning resources available to your intended audience? It seems Microsoft only wants to talk to confident I-buy-every-MS-shit-out-there fanatics that are on the ASP track since so long or complete dummies in web development that have never ever seen something else than Windows.

To be precise: I've got almost anything here: Linux, W2K and Mac OS X. I installed the newest Microsoft Windows Media Player on the latter two (version 9), but those damn videos require newer versions - an unfortunate situation, given the fact that Microsoft will not continue support for Windows Media Player under W2K and OS X.

Don't get me wrong - it's their choice to make the videos only available to those already developing with Windows. But it fits just perfectly into the typical Microsoft picture of a closed community, where you have no choice in the tools you use, where you are bounded to a specific platform and server software for deployment, and where you have to pay for each piece of crappy code extra.

One in four webservers runs MS IIS, 2 of three run Apache. Like with the training video codec situation, Microsoft cripples their own products for 'political' reasons. Besides, what's be so bad about running ASP.net on Apache? Quite frankly, I would have tried it out if ASP.net didn't require me to buy an extra machine and all the MS software just to try it out.

I start to understand why ASP.net has yet failed to build a strong community. Don't get me wrong, there certainly are many ASP.net centric sites on the net - but they're usually driven by companies who even charge you to read the forum. It seems to me ASP.net development is focused on developer teams in companies that are not used to share with the outside world - why should you, when you had to pay for every bit yourself?

Is this really the situation Microsoft strives for? PHP might win hands down against ASP.net - not meaning it's better, simply because people 'like' it more. Microsoft still underestimates that in web development, people DO have other choices.

It's a damn shame that I have now a bad impression of ASP.net not for technical but the same reasons that give a salty taste to every Microsoft product so far: They always piss you off by fooling you in one or another way.