Righto, I will email Senator Richard 'ludite' Alston and ask him to clarify
the Australian Governments position this matter.
Are there any questions you would like me to ask him, or information, or
urls I should bring to his attention ?
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: David Pastern [mailto:david@scsenterprises.com.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 5 November 2002 1:14 PM
To: 'debian-user '
Subject: RE: Microsoft's plans to kill open source: TCPA
Matthew Joyce said on 11/5/02 10:09 AM
Perhaps people will start to use the existing cpus for longer, and
recycle older ones, distributed processing etc, instead of
feeling they
must
upgrade their hardware because there is an upgrade available.
However, emailing all my friends and family and trying to
explain TCPA
to them and ask them to push for a referendum (as was
suggested in one
post (rant)), smacks of fanaticism.
OK, sit on your bums, wait for the US to fully gratify this,
the rest of the world will follow like sheep and we'll end up
being screwed by governments that don't give a fuck about the
normal everyday person. 20 years down the track you'll be
bitching about "that damn tcpa and palladium" when you can't
do jack shit on your computer. My point is if you sit back
it'll get changed whether you like it or not. By the time
you realise that it's too late to do anything in most cases.
ie. be pro-active.
How easy will it be for Microsoft to insert into the .doc
standard "can only be opened by genuine ms word". I'd say
not very hard, and it will happen. One reason:
Market dominance
Microsoft owns the trademark on that and can legally do so.
It can't be judged as anti comptetitive either as they
legally own the trademark patent on the algorisms. Think
about that.
Older PCs and hardware will become less and less effective.
Remember most current items of software are designed on
"minimum hardware requirements". So your old p2 333 won't
work very well with software that was designed for a P6 5ghz.
This is the natural cycle of hardware/software that has been
going on for 20 odd years now in the personal computer
industry. Dont' believe me? Have a look at older software
and what the hardware requirements were. Now try and get a
386 to run Windows XP etc. I bet it won't.
As to open source software - it'll be useless - people won't
use it because it won't/can't interact with tcpa enabled
items. And I can guarantee that Intel et al won't allow it
to be user adjustable either. If you believe that you must
still believe in Santa Claus.
Yes my comments were a rant if you want to look at that (hell
I think I actually said that in the post in jest). If you
want to call it fanatacism so be it. It's people that sit on
their bums and cop it sweet and don't complain that ruin it
for the rest of us that oppose unfair changes. Unfortunately
humans are lazy, and most don't give a rats arse about
anything other than themselves.
Dave
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