The Mike Hardy Saga, Part VIII: It’s Not Over Yet

(note: read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII if you haven’t already)

It is not over yet, although the end is in sight. Today in the Michael J. Hardy saga, I will be looking at some web browser madness, a media player, and another strange thing. Unfortunately, even I am getting a little tired of going over all of this, so pardon me if I sound less than enthusiastic.

Although I looked at Asylum Explorer in Part IV, that’s not the only web browser Mr. Hardy has released. Witness Mozilla Lite and Platinum Browser, two strangely similar-looking browsers that he purports to have made. I find it strange that they are both “the most widley used Web Browser across the nation and world because of it’s unique Features.” This is only true in part because, behind the Mozilla-looking exterior (with Mr. Hardy’s name pasted everywhere), they use Internet Explorer’s rendering engine, which just so happens to still be the most popular web browser right now. While both of Mr. Hardy’s browsers are free to download and use, for some reason he is charging money for the source code. Not to mention he is using trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation in the graphics on his pages without permission. Strangely enough, he packages Mozilla Lite with “Two Cool Flash Game ‘s of Tetris (One is for Aduilt Only!)” Gee, I’m an Aduilt. I can hardly wait to try it.

Platinum PlayerAnother little something that is coated in a very dense but precious metal – Platinum Player. What do you get? Why, a CD player application that also has Mr. Hardy’s name and picture placed just about everywhere. I must say, the actual player itself is actually not butt-ugly, but the options dialog says otherwise. In keeping with tradition, Mr. Hardy has included “two Game’s with Platinum Player. (1) is a SpongeBob SquarePant’s Uno Card Game, and the Other one is a Cool Marble Game called ‘VBSame.'” Whatever you say, Mike. Just be certain I will not be donating $15 to your cause, because I’d rather download the real program: CDRun. (Thanks to Infurnus for finding the original.)

Lastly, we have Mr. Hardy’s Free SEX Wizard (local mirror). Wait a minute. That says “Free SFX Wizard.” Whoops, the screenshot immediately led me to believe that it was something else. What is an SFX, you ask? It means “self-extracting archive;” essentially it is a method of packaging ZIP files into executable files so that an unzipping utility is not required to extract them. It can come in quite handy some times if you are transporting data somewhere, need to compress it, and do not know if the remote computer has an unzipping utility installed. Of course, with Windows XP, since it includes such a utility, that possibility is lessened, but is still present. Unfortunately, Mr. Hardy is charging money for a program he didn’t make and is originally free: FreeExtractor. (More thanks to Infurnus for finding the original.)

I guess that is about it for this session. Like I said, we are almost done, I hope, so stay tuned.

» Continue to Part IX