I recently got back from visiting family in Ireland, and one of the things that I did during the trip was "fixing" the family's computer. I say fix loosely because all I really did was uninstall some really shitty software, namely by a company called Symantec. The family had a decent enough computer (P4 3ghz, 512mb RAM), but no matter what they were doing, the hard disk would grind away relentlessly. Normal events like starting Window XP's Control Panel or starting an application would require an annoyingly noticeable delay, even on a cold boot with nothing else running. Clearly something was amiss.

Since there was a big ugly Norton button permanently stuck on the taskbar, I didn't have to do much diagnosis. It turns out that Joe, my distant Irish relative, followed the instructions that popped up after the computer's pre-installed copy of Norton Anti-virus complained of expiring. Being extremely safety oriented, Joe happily went along with the scary messages NAV was popping up, and via dial-up purchased the entire Symantec Norton Internet Security Suite, and, get this, Symantec Norton SystemWorks. He spent 2-3 nights downloading and installing the applications that were supposed to help his system but instead turned it into an unbearably slow, useless piece of shit - Swiss-cheese Windows XP home propped up by a few hundred megs of prime, bloated, Symantec harmware.

I explained to Joe what I thought should happen with the computer, and he quickly agreed that we should replace Symantec. After uninstalling Symantec's LiveUpdate, Norton Internet Security, and SystemWorks through Windows' Add/Remove Programs, the uninstaller asked to reboot. Great, I thought, we're almost done. Nope, on reboot, Norton GoBack took another hour to uninstall itself (what kind of application takes that long to uninstall?). After that was finally over, the computer booted into Windows and was instantly cured of its' Norton ailment. GUI interactions were snappy again and the hard drive wasn't on 100% grind mode.

Being the safety-oriented person that Joe is, he was clearly uncomfortable with losing an antivirus program, a firewall, an anti-spyware program, and the system restoration that the Symantec harmware "provided." Personally I wouldn't have bothered with any of that stuff, but to make Joe comfortable, we turned to free software to take care of it all. The firewall and system restoration was already built into Windows XP SP2, so we turned those on. Anti-spyware was taken care of by Windows Defender, a free download from Microsoft. That left only anti-virus, which I wanted to use WinClam, but then realized that WinClam doesn't yet provide realtime, in-memory protection. So I turned to Grisoft's free AVG Anti-virus. Although it took quite a while to download all of these on Joe's dialup connection, after it was all configured Joe's computer ran like new, and he seemed quite happy with the result.

While it all turned out nicely for Joe, there are millions of other novice, but willing and trying, computer users who just don't know any better. They see strange and scary pop-up messages instructing them that they must renew or upgrade their Norton subscription or else their computer is in grave danger. But the real problem is that instead of making these computers perform any better, harmware like Norton actually make computers less usable. They are constantly popping up annoying messages, taking up valuable screen real-estate with useless and fear-inducing messages, and most importantly taking up essential computer resources for not a whole lot of good (actually, not too far off from the Bush administration's tactics on the War on Terror - fear-mongering terror alerts, anyone?).

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Paul Graham writes some good stuff. I've stumbled across some of this articles in the past and, unlike most of these types of essays from other dot-com millionaires, I've always been very impressed.

His latest essay takes on the subject of software patents, a subject that nearly every hacker has an uninformed opinion about. I've always had a very libertarian view about patents in general, and was very glad to read that by Mr. Graham's assessment, I'm at least uniform in my opinions on the validity or worth of patents in our society.
Mr. Graham compares software patents to traditional patents, insightfully and accurately explaining what he thinks are some reasons for the sometimes silly patents issued by the USPTO. He compares the rules to a game of hockey, and lawsuits to the rules of body-checking:

Hockey allows checking. It's part of the game. If your team refuses to do it, you simply lose. So it is in business. Under the present rules, patents are part of the game.

What does that mean in practice? We tell the startups we fund not to worry about infringing patents, because startups rarely get sued for patent infringement. There are only two reasons someone might sue you: for money, or to prevent you from competing with them. Startups are too poor to be worth suing for money. And in practice they don’t seem to get sued much by competitors, either. They don’t get sued by other startups because (a) patent suits are an expensive distraction, and (b) since the other startups are as young as they are, their patents probably haven’t issued yet. [3] Nor do startups, at least in the software business, seem to get sued much by established competitors. Despite all the patents Microsoft holds, I don’t know of an instance where they sued a startup for patent infringement. Companies like Microsoft and Oracle don’t win by winning lawsuits. That’s too uncertain. They win by locking competitors out of their sales channels. If you do manage to threaten them, they’re more likely to buy you than sue you.

If you've got an interest in intellectual property law and the business of technology and computing, it's certainly a good read. Like always, you'll learn something from one of Paul Graham's essays.