On Wednesday 03 July 2002 01:34, Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 04:17:04PM -0700, Tim Rowledge wrote:
> > Take a look at
> > http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/301-350/00320_global_civil_society.ht
> >ml and consider what we might be able to do with Squeak. But do it quickly
> > before it is unlawful...

>
> What we need is an alternative hardware platform.  Fortunately, it is
> likely that such a thing will still exist even if AMD and Intel bend
> over for MS.  China makes a lot of the motherboards nowadays, and they
> are properly distrustful of the NSA/CIA/FBI backdoors that are almost
> certainly built into Windows.  With over a billion people, they're a
> big enough market that VIA will probably produce a version of their
> x86 CPU without MS DRM built in.

> > PS No joke. If we can't do _something_ to stop this sort of utter evil
> > _we_ will be the piglet rotating on the spit. Forever.

Agreed. For a little horror lurking inside the EULA for Windows Media Player, 
see this only slightly hysterical article in the Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25956.html

More generally, I'm starting to think that M$ are going nuts. (Perhaps the 
"Linux is cancer, M$ is tertiary syphillis" tag wasn't far wrong?) Even given 
that they could convince Intel and AMD and Cyrix -- all the x86 manufacturers 
-- to shoot themselves in the foot, what's to stop Sun and Apple (and Jecel!) 
turning up the hardware production lines and offering a far better 
board/chipset to replace the whole Wintel PC concept? 

Of course, one thing is for sure -- such hardware will probably run just about 
any OS you like, providing it isn't Windows.

Cheers

John