I was buried deep in work (as usual) and suddenly out of the blue, Seena Called me. He wanted to buy a computer and was looking for some advise from me.
“A Computer?? For you??” I asked.
Seena was working in one of the many industries in Bangalore as a storekeeper. He got fired from there and he worked as an assistant for his former boss. His boss got a job, and closed this business. Not having too many options left, he rented a small shop and started his own business - recharging currencies for the mobile phones. He now wanted to improve his business by offering to copy images/music to the mobile and handhelds of his customers. Luckily for him at this very time a small land deal came through his in-laws and got him the moolah. So the need for a computer and so the call to me.
Being a simpleton, he does not know about the copyrights or copylefts, and if somebody tells him that copying the songs of A R Rehman on to the storage media of his clients mobile phones is a punishable business... he just wonders why and he would never understand the point. Not with so many people doing the same thing.
As usual I tried to escape the responsibility, and I know my suggestion was not very helpful to him. A couple of weeks later he called me and told that he had bought a HCL Computer with so and so configuration for such and such price. It had windows XP installed on it. I congratulated him and wished him good luck.
I was pretty sure that I would be hearing from him soon.
As expected he called one noon and told that he had virus on his computer and it was causing a lot of trouble. He was trying to copy something to a memory card of a customers and suddenly some folders started creating in his computer and even though he keeps deleting them, they KEEP COMING BACK!!!
Now the things get challenging for me. No, its not the virus that are challenging. Its Seena because he does not know what a virus is, how to overcome them, what an anti-virus will do and how to update it. I suggested Linux. More trouble – he does not know difference between XP and Ubuntu. He does not even know what Microsoft is. Heck, the chap doesn’t know what an operating system is.
I tried to explain him what an operating system is, and asked him to install an anti-virus. I even thought of gifting a legal version of some anti-virus to him, so that he could update it regularly. When I told him updating needs Internet connection, he said that an Internet connection would cost him few hundreds every month and his business was not yet profitable and he cannot afford it.
I visited him and after listening to all his problems, and seeing how he was actually managing this “Copying to memory card” business, I told him to more to an open-source operating system. He could still run his business without worrying about virus and without internet for a few more days.
I loaded ubuntu 8.10 on his system and whole thing was done in half an hour. I taught him how to use Ubuntu, how to open his windows partitions and copy the files from there onto the customer storage medias
Unfortunately I had not carried the opt-on CD which have mplayer or codecs for totem. So he could not play his collection of avi, mp3 and mp4 media files.
He was happy about all this. Somehow I knew that a call would be coming to me very soon.
Two weeks later he called me.
"Manjanna, I have got viruses in the version that you loaded also. Please delete everything and reinstall everything newly."
"What...?” I wondered.
"I have got viruses in Ubuntu also. Please reinstall everything again"
I was perplexed. I visited him on that very evening. He showed me a memory card - probably NCP. When loaded and opened there were already some files in it. Autorun.ini and some .exes. His interpretation of those files was that it was some virus. His previous experience with the windows XP and virus looked similar.
I inserted my mobile phones memory card into his system and kept it there for almost half an hour, and nothing new got created. No virus.
Then what are those files? They are the software loaded by the manufacturing companies so that they are readily work with the mobile phones. I am not sure whether he was convinced or not. His business continues and hopefully will flourish someday.
This whole episode has raised a few Questions in my mind. These hardware companies, in trying to make their hardware ready for M$, keep some software on the storage media.
Is it a fair business practice?
As if this was not enough, I came across a Video CD that has a .swf and some .exe files. This VCD can work only with M$ system.
I know this saga will continue when I install mplayer and other codecs to play different kinds of media on Seena’s System.
Somehow I know that this is not the end. In fact, I think “its just the BEGINNING…”
PS : Special thanks to Praveen for editing this write-up.
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