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Re: If you could design a $300 homecomputer today, what would you choose?



In article <3B60803D.MD-1.4.15.unsatisfactory@bigfoot.com>, 
unsatisfactory@bigfoot.com says...
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 06:20:29 GMT, David Ogg (of comp.sys.sinclair "fame")
> wibbled on for an age:
> 
> > Well see what the justice department says about the future of the 
> > platform :)
> 
> Last I heard, they were threatening to not let MS release XP...

That would just suck. (not that I'm a huge fan of Microsoft)

How will we ever find out if we can make an OS that's better than 
Windows if the government steps in?

I think this should be handled differently. Did Microsoft illegally
kill DR-Dos? the court thinks so? ok, then award damages, move on.

Did they kill Netscape, the court thinks so? award damages.

are they crippling Kerberos? the court thinks so? make them open the 
documentation to the proprietary extensions, move on.

Can the US government keep M$ from selling XP overseas? now that would 
be interesting if M$ just said, "OK", and then kept selling 2k to the US 
and XP to the rest of the world.

The only thing worse than Microsoft dictating what software we have 
available to use, is the government doing it.

This hurts the Linux crowd too, if you think about it. We're working our
asses off to get the government to understand that source code is a form 
of speech protected by the first ammendment, hoping to overturn the 
DMCA, and this just works against it.

There are alternatives to Microsoft, Microsoft is not a monopoly, 
everyone just uses windows, there's a slight difference. We could use 
linux couldn't we? What about the Mac?

It's not Microsoft's fault everyone isn't using something else instead, 
so far Windows has no competition only because noone is competing. There 
are alternatives, and they're developing. let the market work it out for 
itself. Maybe Linux will catch up and bury Microsoft. I'd rather see 
this happen than see XP banned, or Microsoft split up.

What would the government do to Linux if Linux had "embraced and 
extended" or anything else Microsoft has done? I wonder. Could they do 
anything, even?