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Cringely: MS To Hurt Linux Via USB Enhancements

Posted by timothy on from the embrace-and-extinguish dept.

frogspit writes "In this article, Cringely suggests that MS's proposed enhancements to USB to address security issues have the added benefit (for them) of hurting Linux."

1 of 877 comments (clear)

  1. Re:bad presumption.... by garcia · · Score: 5, Informative

    An "enhancement" could always be included in a service pack to allow DRM CDs on 95,98,etc.

    And MSFT knows this would make the original idea worthless. It won't happen. Upgrade or suffer with using old programs.

    What about legacy auto/component players?

    What about them? You want to listen to the new music then buy a new player. It's not exactly as if your VHS player plays DVDs. Sure, you can get VHS movies currently but I would go out on a limb to suggest that eventually they will be discontinued for DVD and its successors. You can continue to watch your old media no problem but you won't have access to the new features.

    Here's to hoping the OpenBIOS project can workaroud some of this junk.

    Sure, you can run all the free software in the world on your OpenBIOS computer. You will not be able to watch media, listen to media, surf the net, etc, because everything will require a "trusted" computer.

    Yeah, it's paranoid, yeah it's probably unlikely, but this is where we are headed whether we like it or not.