Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 10:07:07 10/12/02
Go up one level in this thread
On October 12, 2002 at 11:48:07, Russell Reagan wrote:
>On October 11, 2002 at 22:54:38, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>There are still loads of free people that will happily go for a $300 Linux PC
>>instead of having to pay a yearly tax for a Windows PC.
>
>If Bill gets his way, it will be a monthly fee. That's where we're headed. Most
>people don't realize that things like this are where we are headed. I use
>windows for some things, I use linux for others. When MS starts charging monthly
>fees to use their products, goodbye windows. Hopefully by that time linux
>distrobutions will be user friendly enough to make the transition easy for the
>casual computer user. Unfortunately linux distrobutions are still quite user
>unfriendly. Even I, a "computer guy" (compared to to everyone else I know),
>don't find it particularly easy to get up and running. In Windows I can download
>video drivers, run the install program, and my graphics card works
>automagically. In linux, they have some video drivers ready to go, but if they
>don't (such is the case with nvidia and the newest Mandrake, version 9) then you
>have to recompile the drivers yourself and install them. I spent several hours
>doing this the other night. Of course it wouldn't compile because I hadn't
>installed the kernel source code, so I had to go back and reinstall that, then
>compile, then install. This wasn't particularly hard, but it was certainly
>annoying and wasted my entire evening. The casual computer user would be doing
>well to install video drivers on their windows machine, but linux isn't ready
>for the casual user yet, unfortunately.
>
>People like Peter think there is nothing to worry about. What's going to happen
>before too long is that the government is going to step in and start regulating
>the computer and the internet because of companies like Microsoft, and then
>there will be laws that will, fortunately, limit Microsoft, and unfortunately,
>limit other OS's like linux as well. With other things like all of the file
>sharing programs that allow people to illegaly steal software and other
>copyrighted material, you can bet the government is going to step in before too
>long. Microsoft is already going to do digital rights management that will allow
>them to look at whatever they want on your computer (as if they can't do that
>already). With linux you can at least compile it from the source code yourself,
>so you know what's on your machine. I think most people don't realize what a
>mess we're headed for.
>
>Russell
I don't believe that the US governement will manage to regulate Microsoft. They
have failed already, and they even have reasons not to do it (economy above
ethics).
Linux will regulate Microsoft.
Christophe
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