What about P.N.03. Was there any mention of it? I've been waffling whether or not to buy a GameCube, but when this game comes out, I will probably buy it.
I don't think Sony is better. It's just Microsoft is positioning themselves to remove generic non-MS computers from the markets where I live. First they got rid of any for-profit Operating System developers (unless you count Linux Distros), now they may get rid of computers which will run the non-profit ones too.
Maybe Sony is doing something similar in Japan, but I don't live in Japan. So I don't know, and it won't affect me. Not that it would be right for Sony to take over Japan or anything, I just have other priorities...
But then you can get to the problems of dilution of trademark and trademark infringement
So you're saying we can't even put up webpages about them? Haven't you heard of freedom of speech? So if I have a page with a url "http://mysite.fake/artistname" titled "Artist's Name", put in a summary meta tag which says: "page about Artist's Name", and the body says: "Artist sucks!", then I am breaking the law? What about my friend Britney's picture of her spearing the team mascot? I can't put the caption "Britney spears team mascot"?
IANAL either, but trademark infringement would be if someone (not Madonna) made a music CD, and sold it under the name Madonna. Dilution of trademark would be if someone used the name Usher as a generic term for a style of music. Such as saying: "the song Foo Bas Bar sounds really Usher." Putting up a bunch of pages voicing my opinion about various celebrities isn't against the law. Suggesting others do the same isn't either....well unless you live under a communist / taliban regime, but if so, you probably have bigger fish to fry.
You could be responsible also for civil or criminal libel, civil or criminal defamation, slander...
When did I say to tell lies about them?
...unfair competition...
You mean like pulling together an "industry" and suing a web site (mp3.com), then a company in the "industry" "mysteriously" purchases the site (Universal Music)? Yeah, I call that unfair competition!
I doubt any judge would confuse free speach--such as hosting a RIAA (or whoever) sucks site--with unfair competition. That would be just as stupid as if Sun Microsystem's Java trademark could be enforced against coffee web sites.
...IP theft, or illigal use of copyrighted material.
When did I even come close to mentioning violating their copyrights? Do you even know what a copyright is? If someone took a CD, encoded it to mp3, and put it on thier website without the copyright owner's permission, that's "illegal use of copyrighted material." Same thing for pictures. Which search engine will search for the audio traces of a specific persons voice--besides the NSA? None. Which search engine will search image files for visual look alikes for a person's facial features? None.
I doubt even the RIAA would be stupid enough to try claim copyright on a page which says "[artist name here] sucks!"
Get a lawyer and proper legal advice before doing anything that might offend any company on the planet.
Yeah, exactly the problem with the world today. Give in to any company's or any person's demands (even before they make one) because they might sue. You might like living under a rock, but I don't.
There are far worse ways to be screwed over than a frivolous lawsuit by some company. How about elimination of free speech?
trademarks like RIAA and IUMA are owned by their respective owners
So according to you, you are breaking the law here? Well, unless you are an employee representing them. I think you interpet the law too broadly. Next you'll be saying it's jaywalking if I walk across my driveway.
I'm not sure that would work. They'd probably just send DMCA complaints anyway, and if you have a stupid hosting company, your site would be shut down.
A much better idea: make fake fan sites where the title, summary, and url look real, so anyone searching will have trouble finding the "artist's" page. Get together with a bunch of people and link the pages together, so Google will give the fake sites high PageRanks. Let's see Britney fans find her page. We can play the spamming game too.;-)
Then again, putting the names of these organized crime supporting celebs somewhere in all your pages may mess searches up just as much.
ask Macromedia Dreamweaver MX to test a stored procedure with a hundred parameters, and it'll freeze for 30-90 seconds on all of the P4's I've tried it on, pegging the CPU at 100%.
Have you tried increasing the nice value? Wait a minute...were you playing around with real time schedule policies? No wonder your system locked up!
Seriously, get an OS with a real scheduler, and you won't need SMP. At least not because of stupid problems like this.
It's funny. The activities of Microsoft, the RIAA, and the MPAA can easily be considered racketeering, but the DoJ does nothing, but if some small time prostitute wants to spread some love, they're all over it. Gotta love the Christian Taliban.
As an aside, screwing with font sizes in the main text of a page should be made illegal too.;-) I end up with either ridiculously small text which is unreadable, or (like the "media release") I get ridiculously huge text which fits only five words on the screen.
I bought a used PSX. It appears to be in good condition, but it sucks. Half my games won't play at any given time. I bought some used, but even the new ones with no scratches have problems. I'd like to be able to play the game I want when I want.
Are all the PSX systems like this? I'm sure their black CD surface "copy protection" doesn't help. I'd rather go back to the days of DOS where you have to configure the game for all your hardware and cross your fingers--assuming the game even supports your hardware at all...
Except M$ is trying to apply that same "copy protection" (meaning keeping out competitiors and open source developers) crap on generic computers! I don't want to be forced to use only M$ software on my computer.
...[microsoft] have done a lot of good for innovation. By developing and supporting a common platform (the Win32 API), they have allowed for tons of innovation in software.
This is crap. They have blocked a "common platform" from being adopted. They create proprietary APIs so developers have a difficult time creating cross-platform products. Posix, ANSI C, X11, and even Java have allowed interoperability in software, which allows more freedom and innovation. MS has suppressed innovation to keep their monopoly.
I wasn't saying they can't take common names. My point was by crap flooding the network, they will make it just as difficult for finding legitimate files. Especially on a system like Gnutella where your search query has a limited "time to live."
I could find the article about the madonna because there were only legitimate search terms. Imagine if the RIAA had filled Google's database with crap sites, and the first hundred search hits were spam.
Even with the popularity of the singer, the first search page contains 3 non music pages out of ten--some sort of equation solver, a university, and a nice place to sleep. I wouldn't have bothered looking if I had to look through ten pages of spam first.
What you just wrote is technically infeasible with any of the currently mooted DRM technologies
Which part? All of it? How do you know what all of the "currently mooted DRM technologies" do? Many of the companies have been working on DRM in secret.
Do you even know how key management and trusted authorities work? To be able to publish, you will be required to have your key signed by a trusted authority. Otherwise any joker can distribute any copyright infringing material on the system, and no one will know who did it or be able to stop him. This is DRM 101. Maybe this requirement won't be in the first generation systems, but "pirates" will abuse the system. The "copyright holders" will cry, and refuse to use it unless publishing is restricted in this way.
As to being able to reject specific files, see this post.
If you are questioning my comments about the bots: first of all, have you heard of any of the companies sending false DMCA complaints being punished? I never heard any follow up stories about the BSA being punished for saying "under penalty of perjury" that OpenOffice is really MS Office, and the mirror sites were infringing on MS's copyright. This would certainly be front page news.
The bots will be used with DRM, except the they will be sending rejection certificates for files and publishing keys instead of legal complaints. The entertainment cartel will demand all trusted authorities enable this, lest they be left out of the loop and the cartel won't use their system.
The whole thing fueling the DRM crap is the fact Hollywood says they'll start releasing movies for digial download if they are able to control distribution of their content. If you read in between the lines, you'll see they also want to control distribution of other's content as well. They keep saying if lawmakers / tech companies do X (like the DMCA), then we'll make our content available on the internet. They do X, but the cartel never follows through and demands more. The cartel won't stop until they have total control over the internet.
You are the one who has no understanding. If you build and run the system, you can do this. All you have to do is make each system generate a secure hash (ever hear of MD5?), and send rejection certificates for the files you want to censor. How do you send the certificates? The easiest way would be to have the computer periodically call in to a central server. Ever hear of Microsoft? Their OS already does this for a variety of reasons. Why should checking "bad" hashes be any different?
They may not put this feature in the first generation of DRM systems, but after a bunch of "pirate" movies and music show up in DRM format, what do you think will happen?
Plenty of things will go under the umbrella of Digital "Rights" Management, not just a little flag which says don't copy or can copy--if this were true, they wouldn't be bothering with encryption at all. The system will always have holes, so they'll put in more armor to "protect" it. No matter what they do with their system, someone will find a way around it. Even if it means buying a "pirate" camcorder on the black market, and video taping the screen.
Maybe, but one of the reasons P2P hasn't been used for more legitimate purposes is because the networks are spammed with the RIAA's crap. Much of it is stupid people putting up the real music, but the RIAA flooding makes it worse.
Say you want to find a picture of the madonna. Even if you type "virgin madonna"--guess what will pop up? A thousand entries for "Madonna-Like a Virgin.mp3". Yeah, maybe you can add jpg to the search, but you'll lose the pngs, gifs, etc. If you want to find a audio discussion, forget it.
Let's not forget that our major problem with the RIAA is the fact that they are enacting laws and introducing DRM technologies that destroy our fair use as consumers.
Too many people don't get it. They are doing far more than just "destroying fair use." If they gain control with these laws and technologies, they will destroy free speech as we know it. If they can use a censorship system to stop someone from redistributing their copyrighted data, they can also stop someone from redistributing independently produced and legal to send data.
The "trusted" certificate authority organization(s) can use the crypto key registration / rejection system to censor naysayers and competitors. The "copyright holders" can use bots w/o human intervention and widen the search criteria to catch many innocent people in their trap, then claim it was an "accident" if caught. This has already been done with the DMCA. The BSA / OpenOffice incident is a good example. Microsoft's implementation will ensure only they can approve drivers and DRM programs.
In fact, I have heard talk of adding a system to reject specific files / communications so the "copyright holders" can eliminate "pirate material" after the fact. Obviously the dupes who believe DRM is designed to protect copyright will see these measures as a "legitimate" attempt to stop illegal activity.
Much more is at stake than just being able to listen to the RIAA's crappy music.
The Unix system is useful. The difference between GoboLinux/Windows and Unix is more like the difference between polar and cartesian coordinates. The Unix layout isn't scattered, it is arranged in a very specific way, and does have good reasons for this layout.
If you run a huge enterprise network, Unix makes more sense. On a home computer, putting all the config, binary, and library files for a program in one directory may work fine, but for administrating large numbers of computers, it doesn't work as well. It would take a lengthy discussion for all the reasons as to why. To be brief: with configuration, assigning partitions/remote filesystems, security, backups...the Unix way just works better.
Where the hell are you people getting this BS about it being in the windows directory?!
Probably because that's where it used to be. Back when I was using Windows, programs would either put config files in the windows directory, or their program directory. All of the system config files were in the windows directory too.
Where is your config file for samba? Well, I don't quite know. It's somewhere in the/etc directory I'm sure. Is it in it's own subdirectory?
I don't know about samba specifically, but to follow good conventions, it should be called/etc/samba.conf or for multiple files be under the/etc/samba directory. Problem is, too many programs don't follow good conventions. This happens with MS Windows too.
if I had to come up with where KDE stores it's default menu, I would have no f*cking clue. Somewhere in/usr I guess? Might depend on the distro..
I suppose it depends whether the programmers think of it as a config file (/etc) or data file (/usr/share). Then again, considering we are talking about KDE/GNOME programmers, who knows. I don't think they get *nix type systems in the first place.
The Linux tree makes more sense to me. If all the programs would follow the conventions, then backing up/etc,/usr/etc, and/usr/local/etc saves all the global config info./home contains all user files and config info./var/log contains the logs (Can be skipped if you're not paranoid). If you're running a server, parts of/var/spool may need to be backed up, but probably not for a desktop machine. Everything else can be ignored. bin, lib, share are already saved with your software disks. When backup time comes, this tree is quite easy, and has been standard for quite some time.
The main problems occur when programs don't follow the conventions. Lynx puts the config file/usr/lib/lynx--probably because the project started on a different system (DOS I think). I think Apache used to put all their stuff in/var.
The worst offenders seem to be developers who just came from a home computer background (MS DOS/Win, Amiga, Atari, whatever). They don't get the directory structure, so things go in the wrong places. When I first started with Linux, I had the same problem. I was so bad, I even wrote my own search program because I didn't know about grep.
No, it's more like your friend Larry made some rope and has extra, so he gives it to you. You decide to go mountain climbing with the rope. Larry never said it was safe for anything, let alone using it to suspend yourself over a 200 meter high cliff. If the rope breaks and you fall, then should you (or your surviving family) really feel justified in suing Larry?
No, it's more like if Ford made a defect in the locking system where there is another hole right below the keyhole, and if you stick a pencil in it, the door pops open. No key needed. Who is more stupid? The company who made a car with such a stupid design flaw, the idiot who bought a car with stupid defects and stupid design flaws, or the idiot who thinks it's fun to abuse the situation and go joyriding in everyone's cars?
Towards that end, locking things down can be a good thing, preventing users from clogging up PC's with dancing gorillas and other crap.
You are confusing two very important points here. MS is locking the computer into their software--which is a bad thing. The parent poster wasn't talking about locking down the machines so only the sys admins / managment can install software--tonnes of systems already do this--FreeBSD, Linux, etc.
Unless you really think it's good that management and the system administrators won't be able to use the applications and system software they think are best because MS locked out other developers.
M$ Palladium. Everyone needs a certificate to publish. Anyone who steps out of line (including by criticizing MS) will never be allowed on a computer again!
I see your point about wasting resources. When I first loaded GNOME, my computer started smoking. Then my CPU, kernel, and init daemon leaped out covered in flames. They ran around the room yelling and screaming until they fell down as charred bits of black soot. I still have nightmares to this day.;-)
But why can't you order hardware on the internet? Don't they have "ecommerce" in the Netherlands? Do they have weird import restrictions where you can't buy computer hardware from foreign sources? Computer magazines and retail stores usually don't have the best prices.
Slashdot Mirror
What about P.N.03. Was there any mention of it? I've been waffling whether or not to buy a GameCube, but when this game comes out, I will probably buy it.
I don't think Sony is better. It's just Microsoft is positioning themselves to remove generic non-MS computers from the markets where I live. First they got rid of any for-profit Operating System developers (unless you count Linux Distros), now they may get rid of computers which will run the non-profit ones too.
Maybe Sony is doing something similar in Japan, but I don't live in Japan. So I don't know, and it won't affect me. Not that it would be right for Sony to take over Japan or anything, I just have other priorities...
So you're saying we can't even put up webpages about them? Haven't you heard of freedom of speech? So if I have a page with a url "http://mysite.fake/artistname" titled "Artist's Name", put in a summary meta tag which says: "page about Artist's Name", and the body says: "Artist sucks!", then I am breaking the law? What about my friend Britney's picture of her spearing the team mascot? I can't put the caption "Britney spears team mascot"?
IANAL either, but trademark infringement would be if someone (not Madonna) made a music CD, and sold it under the name Madonna. Dilution of trademark would be if someone used the name Usher as a generic term for a style of music. Such as saying: "the song Foo Bas Bar sounds really Usher." Putting up a bunch of pages voicing my opinion about various celebrities isn't against the law. Suggesting others do the same isn't either. ...well unless you live under a communist / taliban regime, but if so, you probably have bigger fish to fry.
When did I say to tell lies about them?
You mean like pulling together an "industry" and suing a web site (mp3.com), then a company in the "industry" "mysteriously" purchases the site (Universal Music)? Yeah, I call that unfair competition!
I doubt any judge would confuse free speach--such as hosting a RIAA (or whoever) sucks site--with unfair competition. That would be just as stupid as if Sun Microsystem's Java trademark could be enforced against coffee web sites.
When did I even come close to mentioning violating their copyrights? Do you even know what a copyright is? If someone took a CD, encoded it to mp3, and put it on thier website without the copyright owner's permission, that's "illegal use of copyrighted material." Same thing for pictures. Which search engine will search for the audio traces of a specific persons voice--besides the NSA? None. Which search engine will search image files for visual look alikes for a person's facial features? None.
I doubt even the RIAA would be stupid enough to try claim copyright on a page which says "[artist name here] sucks!"
Yeah, exactly the problem with the world today. Give in to any company's or any person's demands (even before they make one) because they might sue. You might like living under a rock, but I don't.
There are far worse ways to be screwed over than a frivolous lawsuit by some company. How about elimination of free speech?
So according to you, you are breaking the law here? Well, unless you are an employee representing them. I think you interpet the law too broadly. Next you'll be saying it's jaywalking if I walk across my driveway.
Yeah, like pornos.
I'm not sure that would work. They'd probably just send DMCA complaints anyway, and if you have a stupid hosting company, your site would be shut down.
A much better idea: make fake fan sites where the title, summary, and url look real, so anyone searching will have trouble finding the "artist's" page. Get together with a bunch of people and link the pages together, so Google will give the fake sites high PageRanks. Let's see Britney fans find her page. We can play the spamming game too. ;-)
Then again, putting the names of these organized crime supporting celebs somewhere in all your pages may mess searches up just as much.
Have you tried increasing the nice value? Wait a minute...were you playing around with real time schedule policies? No wonder your system locked up!
Seriously, get an OS with a real scheduler, and you won't need SMP. At least not because of stupid problems like this.
It's funny. The activities of Microsoft, the RIAA, and the MPAA can easily be considered racketeering, but the DoJ does nothing, but if some small time prostitute wants to spread some love, they're all over it. Gotta love the Christian Taliban.
As an aside, screwing with font sizes in the main text of a page should be made illegal too. ;-) I end up with either ridiculously small text which is unreadable, or (like the "media release") I get ridiculously huge text which fits only five words on the screen.
I bought a used PSX. It appears to be in good condition, but it sucks. Half my games won't play at any given time. I bought some used, but even the new ones with no scratches have problems. I'd like to be able to play the game I want when I want.
Are all the PSX systems like this? I'm sure their black CD surface "copy protection" doesn't help. I'd rather go back to the days of DOS where you have to configure the game for all your hardware and cross your fingers--assuming the game even supports your hardware at all...
Except M$ is trying to apply that same "copy protection" (meaning keeping out competitiors and open source developers) crap on generic computers! I don't want to be forced to use only M$ software on my computer.
This is crap. They have blocked a "common platform" from being adopted. They create proprietary APIs so developers have a difficult time creating cross-platform products. Posix, ANSI C, X11, and even Java have allowed interoperability in software, which allows more freedom and innovation. MS has suppressed innovation to keep their monopoly.
I wasn't saying they can't take common names. My point was by crap flooding the network, they will make it just as difficult for finding legitimate files. Especially on a system like Gnutella where your search query has a limited "time to live."
I could find the article about the madonna because there were only legitimate search terms. Imagine if the RIAA had filled Google's database with crap sites, and the first hundred search hits were spam.
Even with the popularity of the singer, the first search page contains 3 non music pages out of ten--some sort of equation solver, a university, and a nice place to sleep. I wouldn't have bothered looking if I had to look through ten pages of spam first.
Which part? All of it? How do you know what all of the "currently mooted DRM technologies" do? Many of the companies have been working on DRM in secret.
Do you even know how key management and trusted authorities work? To be able to publish, you will be required to have your key signed by a trusted authority. Otherwise any joker can distribute any copyright infringing material on the system, and no one will know who did it or be able to stop him. This is DRM 101. Maybe this requirement won't be in the first generation systems, but "pirates" will abuse the system. The "copyright holders" will cry, and refuse to use it unless publishing is restricted in this way.
As to being able to reject specific files, see this post.
If you are questioning my comments about the bots: first of all, have you heard of any of the companies sending false DMCA complaints being punished? I never heard any follow up stories about the BSA being punished for saying "under penalty of perjury" that OpenOffice is really MS Office, and the mirror sites were infringing on MS's copyright. This would certainly be front page news.
The bots will be used with DRM, except the they will be sending rejection certificates for files and publishing keys instead of legal complaints. The entertainment cartel will demand all trusted authorities enable this, lest they be left out of the loop and the cartel won't use their system.
The whole thing fueling the DRM crap is the fact Hollywood says they'll start releasing movies for digial download if they are able to control distribution of their content. If you read in between the lines, you'll see they also want to control distribution of other's content as well. They keep saying if lawmakers / tech companies do X (like the DMCA), then we'll make our content available on the internet. They do X, but the cartel never follows through and demands more. The cartel won't stop until they have total control over the internet.
You are the one who has no understanding. If you build and run the system, you can do this. All you have to do is make each system generate a secure hash (ever hear of MD5?), and send rejection certificates for the files you want to censor. How do you send the certificates? The easiest way would be to have the computer periodically call in to a central server. Ever hear of Microsoft? Their OS already does this for a variety of reasons. Why should checking "bad" hashes be any different?
They may not put this feature in the first generation of DRM systems, but after a bunch of "pirate" movies and music show up in DRM format, what do you think will happen?
Plenty of things will go under the umbrella of Digital "Rights" Management, not just a little flag which says don't copy or can copy--if this were true, they wouldn't be bothering with encryption at all. The system will always have holes, so they'll put in more armor to "protect" it. No matter what they do with their system, someone will find a way around it. Even if it means buying a "pirate" camcorder on the black market, and video taping the screen.
Maybe, but one of the reasons P2P hasn't been used for more legitimate purposes is because the networks are spammed with the RIAA's crap. Much of it is stupid people putting up the real music, but the RIAA flooding makes it worse.
Say you want to find a picture of the madonna. Even if you type "virgin madonna"--guess what will pop up? A thousand entries for "Madonna-Like a Virgin.mp3". Yeah, maybe you can add jpg to the search, but you'll lose the pngs, gifs, etc. If you want to find a audio discussion, forget it.
Too many people don't get it. They are doing far more than just "destroying fair use." If they gain control with these laws and technologies, they will destroy free speech as we know it. If they can use a censorship system to stop someone from redistributing their copyrighted data, they can also stop someone from redistributing independently produced and legal to send data.
The "trusted" certificate authority organization(s) can use the crypto key registration / rejection system to censor naysayers and competitors. The "copyright holders" can use bots w/o human intervention and widen the search criteria to catch many innocent people in their trap, then claim it was an "accident" if caught. This has already been done with the DMCA. The BSA / OpenOffice incident is a good example. Microsoft's implementation will ensure only they can approve drivers and DRM programs.
In fact, I have heard talk of adding a system to reject specific files / communications so the "copyright holders" can eliminate "pirate material" after the fact. Obviously the dupes who believe DRM is designed to protect copyright will see these measures as a "legitimate" attempt to stop illegal activity.
Much more is at stake than just being able to listen to the RIAA's crappy music.
The Unix system is useful. The difference between GoboLinux/Windows and Unix is more like the difference between polar and cartesian coordinates. The Unix layout isn't scattered, it is arranged in a very specific way, and does have good reasons for this layout.
If you run a huge enterprise network, Unix makes more sense. On a home computer, putting all the config, binary, and library files for a program in one directory may work fine, but for administrating large numbers of computers, it doesn't work as well. It would take a lengthy discussion for all the reasons as to why. To be brief: with configuration, assigning partitions/remote filesystems, security, backups...the Unix way just works better.
Probably because that's where it used to be. Back when I was using Windows, programs would either put config files in the windows directory, or their program directory. All of the system config files were in the windows directory too.
I don't know about samba specifically, but to follow good conventions, it should be called /etc/samba.conf or for multiple files be under the /etc/samba directory. Problem is, too many programs don't follow good conventions. This happens with MS Windows too.
I suppose it depends whether the programmers think of it as a config file (/etc) or data file (/usr/share). Then again, considering we are talking about KDE/GNOME programmers, who knows. I don't think they get *nix type systems in the first place.
The Linux tree makes more sense to me. If all the programs would follow the conventions, then backing up /etc, /usr/etc, and /usr/local/etc saves all the global config info. /home contains all user files and config info. /var/log contains the logs (Can be skipped if you're not paranoid). If you're running a server, parts of /var/spool may need to be backed up, but probably not for a desktop machine. Everything else can be ignored. bin, lib, share are already saved with your software disks. When backup time comes, this tree is quite easy, and has been standard for quite some time.
The main problems occur when programs don't follow the conventions. Lynx puts the config file /usr/lib/lynx--probably because the project started on a different system (DOS I think). I think Apache used to put all their stuff in /var.
The worst offenders seem to be developers who just came from a home computer background (MS DOS/Win, Amiga, Atari, whatever). They don't get the directory structure, so things go in the wrong places. When I first started with Linux, I had the same problem. I was so bad, I even wrote my own search program because I didn't know about grep.
No, he gets to use his fucking computer because he and others write the drivers. Get a fucking clue!
Yeah, I thought that statement was stupid. Dracocat is clueless.
I think you missed part of the thread. I was talking about free/open source software.
No, it's more like your friend Larry made some rope and has extra, so he gives it to you. You decide to go mountain climbing with the rope. Larry never said it was safe for anything, let alone using it to suspend yourself over a 200 meter high cliff. If the rope breaks and you fall, then should you (or your surviving family) really feel justified in suing Larry?
No, it's more like if Ford made a defect in the locking system where there is another hole right below the keyhole, and if you stick a pencil in it, the door pops open. No key needed. Who is more stupid? The company who made a car with such a stupid design flaw, the idiot who bought a car with stupid defects and stupid design flaws, or the idiot who thinks it's fun to abuse the situation and go joyriding in everyone's cars?
You are confusing two very important points here. MS is locking the computer into their software--which is a bad thing. The parent poster wasn't talking about locking down the machines so only the sys admins / managment can install software--tonnes of systems already do this--FreeBSD, Linux, etc.
Unless you really think it's good that management and the system administrators won't be able to use the applications and system software they think are best because MS locked out other developers.
I see your point about wasting resources. When I first loaded GNOME, my computer started smoking. Then my CPU, kernel, and init daemon leaped out covered in flames. They ran around the room yelling and screaming until they fell down as charred bits of black soot. I still have nightmares to this day. ;-)
But why can't you order hardware on the internet? Don't they have "ecommerce" in the Netherlands? Do they have weird import restrictions where you can't buy computer hardware from foreign sources? Computer magazines and retail stores usually don't have the best prices.