[ILUG] This just keeps getting stupider by the word.

[Brian O'Donoghue]

Exactly in the early days of .NET vaunting I had heard that the hard drive
was going to be axed by Redmond and instead of owning software, you would
lease it over some sort of internet service.

Thus no linux for the end luser, because.. you guessed it, without your own
hard disk, how would you run Linux, how would you reasonably own mp3's for
that matter, when a court order in jurisdiction (n) might be given to
examine your 'leased' disk space on some nameless .NET server.

More than likely that is just paranoia, but the notion of m$ only hardware
smacks of the winmodem.... 
[quote]
Eventually, as Palladium contagion spreads, the home Linux box will need
certified open-source apps to run DR-managed content. Here goes the GPL
again. So I've got this certified app. Fine. I've got the sources. Fine.
What happens if I decide to build my own binaries? They won't be certified.
They won't work. So what does the GPL mean to me then? It means I can build,
or modify and build, an application which will lack the digital cert which
it needs in order to run the content it was designed to run. Only the
binaries will be certified (as a moment's reflection will make obvious).
This is a nail in the GPL's coffin. Yes, I can improve the app and give away
or maybe even sell my improved version; but first I have to prove that it
qualifies for certification, and second I have to pay for the cert.[/quote]

Exactly who do I pay for this cert? Microsoft? So perhaps the intel x86 arch
machine should be renamed the m$ x86 arch, because if I'm understanding the
above then in order to make the hello world program on my Linux box running
on Palladium hardware I will need what... to pay m$ for the priviledge to do
that?

I think it's back to the Amiga for me.