Who "authorizes" my machine to send mail? DHCP on cable modems is evil enough. What new hoops are people thinking of to enforce the "client" nature of all but comerical machines?
Another sign of their cluelessness in that draft is their statement that "spam is not yet exactly defined". The definition is, and always has been, unsolicited bulk e-mail. You can't get more exact than that
I prefer the term, "unsolicited comercial email", but I see where you are comming from. UCE is the most obvious and obnoxious form. Bulk mailing by organizations you belong to may not be solicited but have legitimate uses. Either way, everyone knows what spam is when they see it, but there's little hope of building a useful filter based on "consent". The simple answer, to copy fax laws against unsolicited comercial faxes, is the best way to kill spam.
These IRTF people have other problems too. They've been hard at work with DRM and seem to give their End to End group the cold shoulder. Also their E2E projects included multicasting and other push like stuff. Everywhere I look, I see things I don't like, adding inteligence to a network that works because it has none. Who's putting these people up to this stuff?
Having sold their core business of testing and measurements, HP has been soul searching for a new relevant buisness model. This one is perfect! They can put to work all the Compaq computers they are not selling and they get to invent a new unit of measure. Excellent! It's just like the good old days when IBM and others rented time on their big iron. Such a new model. Others were sceptical of the complexity of the approach. One HP programmer who wished to remain anonymous said, "I don't know if we can add that much precision to the uptime program, it's going to be hard. Think about it, the average machine is uses 00.001 percent of it's capacity. Do we like charge nothing for 0 and 10,000 for 00.001? I've never seen it hit 00.002%."
In other news, an Armarni clad woman was seen touring an ice machine company. When shown a sales map, which indicated few purchases between Alaska and Fin du Mond land, she was heard mumbling something about what a perfect market that would make. "Eskimos love ice, they've got like dozens of word for snow," she crooned to herself as she slipped out the back door, "I'll bet we could get the government involved in this, just like they were in ATT's business, Happy Day!"
California never deregulated and the computers I own and run free software on want nothing to do with you or your regulations. There are two legitimate reasons for power monopolies, public easments and grid stability. No similar public interest exists for computing. A half assed deregulation sets up market manipulation more than either a regulated monopoly or a free market. That's more like what you'd have if you let HP set up regulations. People are going to be lining up to use HP's new service like they did not line up to use Fax machines at Fed-ex. As long as I'm not spamming people or engaged is other anti-social behavior, I'd like you to keep away from my systems. They are free, I own them, and you can fuck off.
I was a bit concerned that iTunes as it stood was a bit too lenient about what it would permit. This was probably a necessary change to allow them to continue to deliver RIAA content.
Where is this defeatist attitude comming from? Do I have to unplug my network card to oggenc my CDs next? Screw that and screw stupid restrictions. I'm not a music publisher, I'm just someone who wants to listen to my music. I might even swap those encoded files like I used to swap cassette tapes. It was legal then and it's legal now.
You could free yourself. Stupid shit like this is why I don't own a Rio and I don't own a Ipod. I've got a Zaurus and it plays ogg just fine. Compact flash is cheap and easy. I like it better open, which has better programs and works well with CF eathernet and wifi. I'd never trust a closed source "update" for it. Propriatory drivers and criple ware suck and ultimately make hardware into paperweights.
Improved technology offers many novel game ideas. We've seen game over reality overlays here on Slashdot. At the time, the equipment filled a backpack. That's sure to change. I imagine a system with dual cameras that overlays game information to dual screens before the player's eyes all talking to the network and other players in real time. What kinds of games you could make up to go along with that is where it's at. Even something as simple as voice instructions through an earbud can be used.
There's money in it. If the game and the software itself don't make money, custom equipment will just like the thriving paintball equipment market. You can always charge people for the overlays, much like gamelan.
Isnt this what Apple is doing and what Microsoft is considering doing? You sign up for the service and pay a fee to download songs?
That's what many publishers would like. It makes things like this impossible. You know, where they university purchases things share with their students and the public free of charge so that we can all appreciate and share our common culture? Some universites even used to take advantage of their royalty exemptions to broadcast that collection to the public - wow! Nah, pay per play is so much better, right? Anything else is like high-seas theft and murder.
Don't forget that kiddies, sharing is bad. Do what the good folks at McDisneySoft want and keep providing them content you never get paid for while paying for content you never asked for.
You need someone to hold your hand to grow a weed? DIY is dying, though it may never have been very strong in the drug crowd. Let's go straight to legal so Joe Cammel can sell you joints with cheezy airbrushes. phthththt-fit. Excuse me, we were talking about music.
Radio that takes advantage of government and educational exemptions for public performance royalty payments sounds like a more realistic collective work. You know, the university buys music bassed on advice from music experts and student volunteers who then share that music? Wow, what a concept - music education. Oh yeah, I forgot, most college radio stations have gone to "realistic" formats to get their DJ's ready for the real world of comercial radio playlists. There's no chance of extending the free radio concept to online music services is there? The dean it telling everyone to pay per play. What an industry whore.
That's enough to buy 8,138 CD a year. Compare this to the current holdings and you see a total industry rape about to happen. Buy the music, make it available and tell Universal, Sony, Time/Warner and all that to screw off.
It's nice to see that M$ has had universities in their crosshairs since 1998. With the increasing quality of free software, there will be less and less M$ crap floating around University networks and that's what's really got them scared. They noticed that Universities with good networks and a grip were using and producing free software. Universities that buy into this music bullshit and restrict their networks so that students can't share their work will hurt their accademic standing. Music is a side show at best, most people at school don't waste much time on it. Penn State's obsession with this makes them look like losers.
Once upon a time, universities did not have to pay royalties to broadcast music for non comercial programming. Students who knew something about music used to bring their collections or borrown them from university holdings and share with their fellow students. Why these things don't aplly to officially sanctioned university websites is as beyond me as the death of radio free.
At Penn State, it probably has something to do with the current administration.
Next stop, firebrands for the library's paper holdings. Sharing published works is like murder and theft.
a little dark in places, but essentially like watching it in the theater.
That's just the suspend mode. Tap your Zaurus Wrench Icon, goto the power and light utility and then press the upbuton on the darken and suspend mode to 3 x 3600 seconds to get 3 hours of bright viewing. Oh yeah, you might also want a compact flash wireless card to remote mount the storage and have your Zaurus plugged into the wall so the battery does not die.
Other than that, Yep, just like the theater! I really felt like I was there. It's impossible, but it set me free. I'm unplugged, so to speak.
Yes, the Matrix has us. A high quality, surround sound version was available two weeks after opening, the movie is a block buster and made 365,000,000 anyway, and we are supposed to feel guilty. Sorry, it don't work that way.
An eye candy movie is worth seeing big screen and will be untill home equipment can telepathically convince you that you are looking at a 100 foot wide screen and listening to a small army of speakers. Then the Matrix really will have you. In the mean time, go to a matinee, the one I saw cost $4.50. I would have gone to see it even if the Wolchoski brothers had mailed me a DVD. Those movies that are not worth going to see big screen, I'll just rent. If the local video store does not have it, then I'll consider making my computer spend 3 hours downloading it, but I've usually got better things to do.
Advertisments on TV, the Radio, in the sky and on the walls, but never in our dreams.
The real problem in our case is not so much the people downloading, but as we have a rather fat pipe to the internet, we're seen as very favorable download farm for people to grab files from.
True! and there's no way to throttle the Dean's XP desktop, no matter how many times it's owned.
"What?" He'll ask. "You let hackers break my computer? You are so fired!"
CacheLogic's Parker said a number of European ISPs are testing a new computer server that it has developed, which places limits on file-sharing traffic flow.
The server, which operates on Linux software, largely confines file-sharing activities to customers within the same ISP, resulting in big potential cost savings.
Wow, big dumb ISP discovers proxy servers! Glory be! For a minute I was worried that monopoly broadband providers were seeking to balkanize the internet and make it look something like cable TV in the former Soviet Union. I'm glad they came to their senses.
I just don't understand why Microsoft didn't purchase this license years ago when the Services for UNIX was first started.
You said it yourself, they only thought of the lawsuit a year ago. Their desire to kill Unix is as old as NT and their half assed "Unix Services". Real M$ innovation takes time and PR planning. If they had thought of this back in the day they were making NT, they would have bought Unix Software Labs and carried out the anti-BSD suit themselves. Oh wait, that was a failure. Do you think it will work with all the strenghtened IP rape laws? Nah, if it does the US is dead for innovation and our technical edge will fall irrevocably elsewhere.
MS is taking the bullseye off of it's back to allow them to work on their Unix Stuff without worry and forces SCO to go after other companies such as Sun.
I'm not sure which is more comical, M$'s "Unix Stuff" or that M$ was ever scared of being sued by SCO. "Unix Stuff", is that the "Unix killer", New Technology (NT) by any chance? Well, yes it was. Gee, we all need a license for common unix commands, after all if we are not paying someone we must be stealing! M$ has shown such respect for other firms in the past, including the US Government, that we all know how careful they are when stealing other people's IP. Not at all.
Microsoft Lawyer XP(TM) is advising Bill that paying the Royalities is cheaper than going through yet another reputation damaging lawsuit over Unix.
That sounds like a M$ program, brain dead. What's more expensive than a defending yourself in court? Defending yourself in court and paying for the case someone else is going to make against you. There's no technical merrit to this case so if it flies, everyone is ruined, Microsoft included. But that's not going to happen.
I hope they prommise big bucks. It will all go to IBM when they get through scraping SCO off their shoes.
The idea of going ahead with the license was initially motivated by wanting to make a statement reinforcing everything we've been saying about IP.
So, SCO is parroting everything M$ wants. That's what a whore is good for. If there's a technical basis for the suit, SCO has yet to present it. All they've said is stupid and untrue stuff about the accountability of free software and innovation being a corporate exclusive. Sounds like the same old M$ bullshit people never believed in the first place, but now they can think badly of SCO instead of M$. Woops, statements like this remind us how's in charge.
What more could M$ want? About a year of FUD to delay free software deployment until Paladium is in place. It's not working.
They also said:
But if we didn't have any actual use for the license, it absolutely would not have happened.
I'd like to know what use that was, beyond the admitted desired statement. How long have they been using Services for Unix? Uh-hun, and now they think they need a license from someone else? Yeah right.
Finally, these things will have very little mass. A penny does not attract near by mass towards it with any noticable effect, so these won't either. Just because they are very dense does NOT mean they have an immense gravitational field.
Ah, but how much mass do you have to have in a singularity? Will one electron compacted so terribly be able to pull in a second that gets too close? What's the event horizon for a neutron? Any mass is infinitely dense if it occupies no volume. Hmmmmm. Tell me why this won't suck!
-Best Beavis voice - This sucks, it sucks, it really really sucks. Ahhhhhh!
I read the article before it hit slashdot. It made me angry, but I shrugged it off as typical M$ shill blather.
Then I decided to think about it a little. Yeah, I wrote a big long post refuting the general notion that "everyone needs microsoft tools" and other trolly things. I looked up the author and found it on a page seved by "takedown". The bells were ringing,but I did not put it together.
John, it's not about breaking into other people's computers, stealing things and getting something for nothing. It's about understanding how things work, owning your computer and making it do what you want it to do with the help of a community of like minded people. It's about peer review, free speech, enterprise, initiative, innovation and many fine Amercian things. Check it out and get into it or quit writing about it.
JOHN MARKOFF's article was dissapointing. He applied lots of critical thinking to free software advocate's fears but his research was shallow and he missed the bigger picture of dump, entrap, extort and how this might apply to the tiny "charity" market. The main points made were (all direct quotes):
Everyone needs Microsoft tools.
Microsoft is the standard
{Microsoft] software has more features than open-source software
Maybe this is paranoia
this is a case of no good deed going unpunished
Any user of a current GNU/Linux distro knows that Microsoft software is lacking. Everyone needs to store, manipulate and exchange information. Microsoft formats and tools get in the way of all three needs by ignoring published standards and best practices. No one needs Microsoft tools except people who use Microsoft tools. Free software offers a tremendous selection of tools that do all of the above without crashing, with ease and platform independence.
The bigger picture story that John missed is a history of dumping software to defeat competition and then gouging the victims. Microsoft has pushed it's software on influential groups forever. Each "market" has been tiny, but the cumulative effect has been much larger. Witness past efforts to woo business students and the effect on corporate america. Now that they are hooked, here comes License 6. Microsoft is constanly "giving away" software to public shcools and at universities to keep the learning curve up. Yet the BSA has extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from those same schools. He saw the Apple complaint but was unable to place it in it's propper perspective.
M$ has made it difficult to own a computer without their software on it. By vendor manipulation, you STILL can't buy a computer from a "mainstream" vendor without the latest and greatest M$ junk on it. Because free software answers all sofware needs at a lower price, this directly contradicts normal market forces. Microsoft has tried to make it hard to build a PC yourself and take advantage of the cost differential. John should look up. Microsoft's "Naked PC" campaign. He might also investigate the Microsoft Server market and think hard about the implications of IE only services for banks, government and professional offices. With that kind of perspecitve he can examine this new round of charity give aways.
Microsoft is trying to insure that those who ordinarilly can't afford a computer will get one with a M$ OS on it and may have ambitions for state sponsorship. The market is huge. Computers are becoming a necessity, and about half of the US does not have one in their home. Think what this means to efforts to eradicate the "digital devide". First come private charities, then come public, tax payer funded ones. The influential market now are are charities and governement offices. It's not new. Remember the US post office adverts for M$ that occured before the anti-trust suit was settled? Most government offices run M$, except a very few bright ones, in effect this is a government subsidy. The new potential market is going to see Microsoft and be influenced by people Microsoft is doing it's best to treat well. With enough encouragment and Astroturfing, the public might ask for M$ junk as part of the social safety net. It's perposterous when free software is available at no cost.
Those that take the bait will be punished in the end. If the public school model is followed, we can expect the BSA will visit tomorrow those who trusted Microsft today. They have already had a talk with the United Way. All of us will pay if M$ makes themselves the standard welfare computer.
John, get in touch with your local Linux User Group. Chances are they will set you up and be very happy to chat with you. You would be amazed at
As an aside, we use Star Office at work on about half the Windows machines, but the people using it do seem to be envious of the staff with MS Office installed. Problems with printing multi-page spreadsheets/images, problems opening files etc, and lack of speed seem the biggest problems.
Ugh, you know that the underlying OS is the problem. Those machines would be great clients. Just get one nice little machine for documents and load it with Star or Open Office. Ohhh, imagine raid and easy find/tar based backups. Star Office runs OK on Woody if you don't want to take much of your work time maintaining a Gentoo box. Printing works great with CUPS/KDE. You could samba share out the document directories to those poor devils left running windoze, with it's latency and crash problems. The clients could have it through ssh X forwarding, and I promise the clients can be made faster than windblows.
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Who "authorizes" my machine to send mail? DHCP on cable modems is evil enough. What new hoops are people thinking of to enforce the "client" nature of all but comerical machines?
I prefer the term, "unsolicited comercial email", but I see where you are comming from. UCE is the most obvious and obnoxious form. Bulk mailing by organizations you belong to may not be solicited but have legitimate uses. Either way, everyone knows what spam is when they see it, but there's little hope of building a useful filter based on "consent". The simple answer, to copy fax laws against unsolicited comercial faxes, is the best way to kill spam.
These IRTF people have other problems too. They've been hard at work with DRM and seem to give their End to End group the cold shoulder. Also their E2E projects included multicasting and other push like stuff. Everywhere I look, I see things I don't like, adding inteligence to a network that works because it has none. Who's putting these people up to this stuff?
Having sold their core business of testing and measurements, HP has been soul searching for a new relevant buisness model. This one is perfect! They can put to work all the Compaq computers they are not selling and they get to invent a new unit of measure. Excellent! It's just like the good old days when IBM and others rented time on their big iron. Such a new model. Others were sceptical of the complexity of the approach. One HP programmer who wished to remain anonymous said, "I don't know if we can add that much precision to the uptime program, it's going to be hard. Think about it, the average machine is uses 00.001 percent of it's capacity. Do we like charge nothing for 0 and 10,000 for 00.001? I've never seen it hit 00.002%."
In other news, an Armarni clad woman was seen touring an ice machine company. When shown a sales map, which indicated few purchases between Alaska and Fin du Mond land, she was heard mumbling something about what a perfect market that would make. "Eskimos love ice, they've got like dozens of word for snow," she crooned to herself as she slipped out the back door, "I'll bet we could get the government involved in this, just like they were in ATT's business, Happy Day!"
California never deregulated and the computers I own and run free software on want nothing to do with you or your regulations. There are two legitimate reasons for power monopolies, public easments and grid stability. No similar public interest exists for computing. A half assed deregulation sets up market manipulation more than either a regulated monopoly or a free market. That's more like what you'd have if you let HP set up regulations. People are going to be lining up to use HP's new service like they did not line up to use Fax machines at Fed-ex. As long as I'm not spamming people or engaged is other anti-social behavior, I'd like you to keep away from my systems. They are free, I own them, and you can fuck off.
Where is this defeatist attitude comming from? Do I have to unplug my network card to oggenc my CDs next? Screw that and screw stupid restrictions. I'm not a music publisher, I'm just someone who wants to listen to my music. I might even swap those encoded files like I used to swap cassette tapes. It was legal then and it's legal now.
You could free yourself. Stupid shit like this is why I don't own a Rio and I don't own a Ipod. I've got a Zaurus and it plays ogg just fine. Compact flash is cheap and easy. I like it better open, which has better programs and works well with CF eathernet and wifi. I'd never trust a closed source "update" for it. Propriatory drivers and criple ware suck and ultimately make hardware into paperweights.
There's money in it. If the game and the software itself don't make money, custom equipment will just like the thriving paintball equipment market. You can always charge people for the overlays, much like gamelan.
That's what many publishers would like. It makes things like this impossible. You know, where they university purchases things share with their students and the public free of charge so that we can all appreciate and share our common culture? Some universites even used to take advantage of their royalty exemptions to broadcast that collection to the public - wow! Nah, pay per play is so much better, right? Anything else is like high-seas theft and murder.
Don't forget that kiddies, sharing is bad. Do what the good folks at McDisneySoft want and keep providing them content you never get paid for while paying for content you never asked for.
Open your eyes.
Radio that takes advantage of government and educational exemptions for public performance royalty payments sounds like a more realistic collective work. You know, the university buys music bassed on advice from music experts and student volunteers who then share that music? Wow, what a concept - music education. Oh yeah, I forgot, most college radio stations have gone to "realistic" formats to get their DJ's ready for the real world of comercial radio playlists. There's no chance of extending the free radio concept to online music services is there? The dean it telling everyone to pay per play. What an industry whore.
80,873 students x $2 fee/student = $161,746
That's enough to buy 8,138 CD a year. Compare this to the current holdings and you see a total industry rape about to happen. Buy the music, make it available and tell Universal, Sony, Time/Warner and all that to screw off.
It's nice to see that M$ has had universities in their crosshairs since 1998. With the increasing quality of free software, there will be less and less M$ crap floating around University networks and that's what's really got them scared. They noticed that Universities with good networks and a grip were using and producing free software. Universities that buy into this music bullshit and restrict their networks so that students can't share their work will hurt their accademic standing. Music is a side show at best, most people at school don't waste much time on it. Penn State's obsession with this makes them look like losers.
At Penn State, it probably has something to do with the current administration.
Next stop, firebrands for the library's paper holdings. Sharing published works is like murder and theft.
That's just the suspend mode. Tap your Zaurus Wrench Icon, goto the power and light utility and then press the upbuton on the darken and suspend mode to 3 x 3600 seconds to get 3 hours of bright viewing. Oh yeah, you might also want a compact flash wireless card to remote mount the storage and have your Zaurus plugged into the wall so the battery does not die.
Other than that, Yep, just like the theater! I really felt like I was there. It's impossible, but it set me free. I'm unplugged, so to speak.
An eye candy movie is worth seeing big screen and will be untill home equipment can telepathically convince you that you are looking at a 100 foot wide screen and listening to a small army of speakers. Then the Matrix really will have you. In the mean time, go to a matinee, the one I saw cost $4.50. I would have gone to see it even if the Wolchoski brothers had mailed me a DVD. Those movies that are not worth going to see big screen, I'll just rent. If the local video store does not have it, then I'll consider making my computer spend 3 hours downloading it, but I've usually got better things to do.
Advertisments on TV, the Radio, in the sky and on the walls, but never in our dreams.
True! and there's no way to throttle the Dean's XP desktop, no matter how many times it's owned.
"What?" He'll ask. "You let hackers break my computer? You are so fired!"
Better not mention it.
CacheLogic's Parker said a number of European ISPs are testing a new computer server that it has developed, which places limits on file-sharing traffic flow.
The server, which operates on Linux software, largely confines file-sharing activities to customers within the same ISP, resulting in big potential cost savings.
Wow, big dumb ISP discovers proxy servers! Glory be! For a minute I was worried that monopoly broadband providers were seeking to balkanize the internet and make it look something like cable TV in the former Soviet Union. I'm glad they came to their senses.
You said it yourself, they only thought of the lawsuit a year ago. Their desire to kill Unix is as old as NT and their half assed "Unix Services". Real M$ innovation takes time and PR planning. If they had thought of this back in the day they were making NT, they would have bought Unix Software Labs and carried out the anti-BSD suit themselves. Oh wait, that was a failure. Do you think it will work with all the strenghtened IP rape laws? Nah, if it does the US is dead for innovation and our technical edge will fall irrevocably elsewhere.
I'm not sure which is more comical, M$'s "Unix Stuff" or that M$ was ever scared of being sued by SCO. "Unix Stuff", is that the "Unix killer", New Technology (NT) by any chance? Well, yes it was. Gee, we all need a license for common unix commands, after all if we are not paying someone we must be stealing! M$ has shown such respect for other firms in the past, including the US Government, that we all know how careful they are when stealing other people's IP. Not at all.
Microsoft Lawyer XP(TM) is advising Bill that paying the Royalities is cheaper than going through yet another reputation damaging lawsuit over Unix.
That sounds like a M$ program, brain dead. What's more expensive than a defending yourself in court? Defending yourself in court and paying for the case someone else is going to make against you. There's no technical merrit to this case so if it flies, everyone is ruined, Microsoft included. But that's not going to happen.
I hope they prommise big bucks. It will all go to IBM when they get through scraping SCO off their shoes.
So, SCO is parroting everything M$ wants. That's what a whore is good for. If there's a technical basis for the suit, SCO has yet to present it. All they've said is stupid and untrue stuff about the accountability of free software and innovation being a corporate exclusive. Sounds like the same old M$ bullshit people never believed in the first place, but now they can think badly of SCO instead of M$. Woops, statements like this remind us how's in charge.
What more could M$ want? About a year of FUD to delay free software deployment until Paladium is in place. It's not working.
They also said:
But if we didn't have any actual use for the license, it absolutely would not have happened.
I'd like to know what use that was, beyond the admitted desired statement. How long have they been using Services for Unix? Uh-hun, and now they think they need a license from someone else? Yeah right.
Microsoft, you suck.
Ah, but how much mass do you have to have in a singularity? Will one electron compacted so terribly be able to pull in a second that gets too close? What's the event horizon for a neutron? Any mass is infinitely dense if it occupies no volume. Hmmmmm. Tell me why this won't suck!
-Best Beavis voice - This sucks, it sucks, it really really sucks. Ahhhhhh!
"You don't need eyes to see where we are going."
Oh, and this ship will not sink.
There are probably a few tiny black holes forming and dying far above you right now.
So what signature are we expecting? If you don't know, you won't see it. Do we see it now from way up there? Wny not?
Then I decided to think about it a little. Yeah, I wrote a big long post refuting the general notion that "everyone needs microsoft tools" and other trolly things. I looked up the author and found it on a page seved by "takedown". The bells were ringing,but I did not put it together.
Then it hit me. This is exactly the kind of clueless junk we could expect from someone who's still running on a reputation built in the late 80's and early 90's, and does not know squat about free software and hacker culture.
John, it's not about breaking into other people's computers, stealing things and getting something for nothing. It's about understanding how things work, owning your computer and making it do what you want it to do with the help of a community of like minded people. It's about peer review, free speech, enterprise, initiative, innovation and many fine Amercian things. Check it out and get into it or quit writing about it.
Any user of a current GNU/Linux distro knows that Microsoft software is lacking. Everyone needs to store, manipulate and exchange information. Microsoft formats and tools get in the way of all three needs by ignoring published standards and best practices. No one needs Microsoft tools except people who use Microsoft tools. Free software offers a tremendous selection of tools that do all of the above without crashing, with ease and platform independence.
The bigger picture story that John missed is a history of dumping software to defeat competition and then gouging the victims. Microsoft has pushed it's software on influential groups forever. Each "market" has been tiny, but the cumulative effect has been much larger. Witness past efforts to woo business students and the effect on corporate america. Now that they are hooked, here comes License 6. Microsoft is constanly "giving away" software to public shcools and at universities to keep the learning curve up. Yet the BSA has extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from those same schools. He saw the Apple complaint but was unable to place it in it's propper perspective.
M$ has made it difficult to own a computer without their software on it. By vendor manipulation, you STILL can't buy a computer from a "mainstream" vendor without the latest and greatest M$ junk on it. Because free software answers all sofware needs at a lower price, this directly contradicts normal market forces. Microsoft has tried to make it hard to build a PC yourself and take advantage of the cost differential. John should look up. Microsoft's "Naked PC" campaign. He might also investigate the Microsoft Server market and think hard about the implications of IE only services for banks, government and professional offices. With that kind of perspecitve he can examine this new round of charity give aways.
Microsoft is trying to insure that those who ordinarilly can't afford a computer will get one with a M$ OS on it and may have ambitions for state sponsorship. The market is huge. Computers are becoming a necessity, and about half of the US does not have one in their home. Think what this means to efforts to eradicate the "digital devide". First come private charities, then come public, tax payer funded ones. The influential market now are are charities and governement offices. It's not new. Remember the US post office adverts for M$ that occured before the anti-trust suit was settled? Most government offices run M$, except a very few bright ones, in effect this is a government subsidy. The new potential market is going to see Microsoft and be influenced by people Microsoft is doing it's best to treat well. With enough encouragment and Astroturfing, the public might ask for M$ junk as part of the social safety net. It's perposterous when free software is available at no cost.
Those that take the bait will be punished in the end. If the public school model is followed, we can expect the BSA will visit tomorrow those who trusted Microsft today. They have already had a talk with the United Way. All of us will pay if M$ makes themselves the standard welfare computer.
John, get in touch with your local Linux User Group. Chances are they will set you up and be very happy to chat with you. You would be amazed at
Wanna bet there's more to come?
Ugh, you know that the underlying OS is the problem. Those machines would be great clients. Just get one nice little machine for documents and load it with Star or Open Office. Ohhh, imagine raid and easy find/tar based backups. Star Office runs OK on Woody if you don't want to take much of your work time maintaining a Gentoo box. Printing works great with CUPS/KDE. You could samba share out the document directories to those poor devils left running windoze, with it's latency and crash problems. The clients could have it through ssh X forwarding, and I promise the clients can be made faster than windblows.