The Future End of Classic Computing

On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 12:51:09PM +0000, Sellam Ismail wrote: <soapbox> And under this braindead law, the aforementioned someone has just earned himself up to 5 years in jail. Really clever idea - just put all those pesky hardware/software hackers in jail. This also nicely kill the opensource scene which is just threatening the profits of companies producing and selling commercial quality *cough* *cough* software. And when everybody had his computer forcibly exchanged for a click-and-drool webtv appliance, the vendor can activate the suicide timer which renders the box inoperable after one or two years, forcing the customer to get a recycled^Wnew one - for plenty of cash of course - in regular intervals. Solves the problem of those pesky non-cooperating users who insist on not buying the newest crap as soon as it hits the shelves. Of course, after a few years, the hot top of the line computer development will happen in China and not the US, but hey - the politicians who supported this law will then no longer be in the office, so why should they care? Unfortunately, this kind of short-sighted "lets secure our profits now and let others deal with the fall out" idiocy seems to be rather widespread :-( </soapbox> Regards, Alex. -- We're gonna be body guards for teen rock-stars. Wouldn't the cause of freedom be better served if we killed them instead? -- Schlock from the ''Schlock Mercenary'' comic strip