On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Scott Guthery wrote:
Sorry to have to inject a note of reality into this otherwise very interesting but ultimately fruitless discussion of who thinks they control what...
P.S. Who do you think controls the software in your [...]
Don't have one. Don't have one. Don't have one. don't have one.
> don't have one. > don't have one.
Do you have a telephone with a DTMF pad on it? Do you have a monitor or LCD panel for your computer? Do you have a modem of some sort to connect to the Internet? Do you have a microwave oven? Do you have a DVD player, VCR, CD player, clock radio, digital watch, TV remote control, digital camera?
Have you ever flown in a jet airplane? How do you know that there isn't a hidden trojan in the airlines' ticketing system that can connect to an Airbus fule control computer and disable it when too many Linux hackers board the plane to fly to the next Linux convention?
Unless you are talking about a game console, in which case it is Sony (who will allow me to load Linux on it).
OK, but let's be serious - sure, you can load Linux on your game console but then it's not a game console anymore, it's a chunk of hardware that's running Linux (or whatever it is that you want ot load in it) and which is then fundamentally no different than a "white box" PC that you buy or build yourself.
Or your printer?
Adobe, though I've been thinking of replacing it with a Linux based one.
Uh huh, but Linux will not be running the low-level control operations like stepper motor control, ink jet or laser operations and so on, that's still going to be done with firmware that *someone* (probably not your or I) will write, control, or ever see the source code of. The only thing that Linux will do in a "Linux printer" is to render the data that is then sent to the printer guts that are controlled by firmware written by some anonymous engineer or engineering team that has probably long since moved on to some other project by the time the printer hits the store shelves.
Or your router?
Me (because I compiled it - open source, also assembled the hardware).
And you wrote the microcode in the Ethernet controller chips and created the HDL that was used to actually mask the chip and manufacture it at the silicon foundry where it was changed from grains of sand and lumps of glass to a network controller? No. So, how do you know what the Verilog or microcode or firmware in that network interface *really* does? You don't, an no amount of Linux or Open Source or GPL or Richard Stallman jumping up and down will change that.
And the wireless access point is Linux based.
Not completely. There is VHDL, microcode and firmware (all below the level of any Linux or other OS that may be in the box) that is doing the bidding of the Linux OS.
And, who controls the *other end* of your connection?
You lost this war before you realized there was one.
I haven't lost it to MS.
There is a lot of strength in diversity. It also helps bring the overall price down through competetion.
It's also good to realize that just saying "but I can load Linux on it!" doesn't mean that you control whatever the "it" is.
mike
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Michael Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Never Give Up! Never Surrender!
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