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Belgium: A Computer in Every Home
joost writes "In an article published online by Belgian newspaper 'Het Nieuwsblad' (sorry only a dutch link), Belgian minister Miss Laurette Onkelinx speaks about her plan to provide every Belgian household with a computer. The minister is (amongst other things) responsible for 'equality' and therefore pushes the plan to provide the less fortunate with a pc. In the same article, she said she already started talking to Compaq for the hardware and Microsoft for the OS. Belgian Linux users are starting a campaign to petition Miss Onkelinx's departement, explaining their concern about the decision, and advising to look towards linux for an alternative.(more on be.comp.os.linux) You too can send an email by clicking here."
You put an email address on the front page of /. and you do not even obscure it.
/. reader is not going to be objective or polite. It mostly certainly is not going to aid the cause of putting Linux on these machines.
/. hurts more than helps the wide spread adoption of Linux?
/. is _NOT_ the place to post email addresses of individuals who are percieved not to get it. The typical
I wonder if
Holy crap, just about every response I've seen is in favor of MS, not linux for this. Did someone at MS email the whole company like with that ZDNet poll that they rigged?
Recent versions of Mandrake are nearly as easy to use as windows, and gets better with every release. If mandrake made a dumbed down version of their distro with the same features of windows ME, I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem. Plus, if you've used OSX lately, you'd realize how much more advanced it is than windows. Easier to use too, but still has lots of power under the hood.
Seriously, I can't imagine that Belgium will want to tack on $300 for an OS on each machine, and another $450 for an office suite. That's insane.
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Gee, from the tone of your letter we might assume that people on Slashdot are rude. You abuse the people who run the site you seem to enjoy and that seems to be the sum of your contribution. Thank goodness you are not the typical Linux user.
Now let's think a little about that. What makes you think that M$ slaves are not already flooding the address with tons of abusive and stupid comments (like yours!) for us already? You know, trolls like we see here all day? In this instance, as in so many others, the finacial incentives for such "aggresive" abouse are clear. If it were not for the moderation system that Hemos and others developed, useful comments would be lost in piles of M$ astroturf here. Even so, it's difficult to fight all the toads. Your example proves the usefulness of the address inclusion, thank you.
Hopefully many people will write well reasoned letters that will shine through the noise. We all know the superiority of any Linux distro: stability, privacy, ease of use, ease of upkeep, ease of software upgrade and addition. We all know the good things that all the money not spent on M$ "products" can buy. We can write many inpired and polite letters expressing those things. I'm proud of all the useful, well reasoned and well put letters I've seen from previous letter campaigns, such as the RAND fiasco, and I expect to be proud of the letters that get sent this time too. The exercise is much easier after reading some of the nice clear posts that will rise to displace your abuse.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The only problems here are that the Iranians didn't eat pork, as well as that SlashNET is a major BSD troll hangout, not linux.