Leythos said:
This entire threat has been valid in some cases and not in others.
The problem with NoStop is that he's not really aware of enough
technical aspects of Windows or Linux to be able to state what is real
and what is not in most cases.
Just like he tried to tell me I couldn't run Office XP on Linux, but the
fact is that with Cross-Over I've been able to run Office XP and now
2003 on Fedora Core 5 without any issues.
He made blanket statements that XP could not have network changes
without rebooting, but when proven wrong he came up with an example that
required a reboot, but he still ignored that a XP system can have
network changes without reboots, just not certain ones.
He's also sure that Linux is the solution to everything and that it's
going to be everyones solution once they get tired of WGA/WGAN, but it's
not the case in schools and the business world - sure, there are some
places making switches, but not enought to impact the world.
Well I am just now looking for pirate copies of Vista and finding them all
over the place, along with keys.
Given that the sort of people who are going to install this are not smart
enough to look for checksums (Which is essential to knowing that your source
and complied versions are the same) it would not matter at all frankly if MS
released Vista as open source. In fact that would only make it a bit easier
for some b* to hack it.
This is obviously losing revenue for MS but that (At least for me) is a
relatively minor problem. Not that I feel that MS is a bottomless pit of
money, no company is, but because these people sharing at least know they
are not getting a genuine copy. It is a far bigger problem that thousands
are (Or will be) buying a professionally pirated copy with who knows what in
it
I really don't care if some criticisms of Windows are erroneous, what
bothers me is that the social aspects of piracy with something like an OS
could be hugely damaging. At this point the vast majority of Linux users
behave very responsibly, and that is a good thing, however one has to thing
twice before giving guns to children and if everyone suddenly dropped
Windows and switched then we'd have the same irresponsible users and the
same problem, except then they'd be "Linuxtards".
Many of us in the past have contributed to trying to make Windows more
secure, and by default it now is more secure, and Microsoft have had to
listen, albeit slowly. Competition from Linux has undoubtedly had some
effect on attitudes and this has all been good. What we need to do to
protect "Our" internet is to work together aiming for security and
reliability.
Charlie
