On Oct 7, 2011, at 3:25 PM, nathan tankus wrote: > i can't believe i'm reading an ardent defender of intellectual > property rights on Pen-l.
I guess you must be talking about me. Well, to tell you the truth I am not a defender of intellectual property rights. I am a defender of no BS intellectual exchange. What we are talking about here is a specific HW maker's business practices and I am seriously inquiring about what makes its practices so specific that they need to be singled out. _If_ the discussion were about how HW/SW makers and the "IP" industry in general are screwing the hell out of us on a daily basis, I'd certainly agree with you and howl with the wolves when the moon is full etc. But that is not the discussion we are having. I am truly surprised to see here all the clichés that you can find in the "technical" (it hurts me to call it that way) press: "monopoly", "more expensive", "more open is better", "walled garden" etc. Everything the pundits, who have proved many times over that they did not know crap about the "industry", say is repeated here without any attempt at actually sorting crap from reality. I don't care about Apple. I have not shed a tear about Jobs passing away. As every other human being I am sad because I know that death is usually not something that comes without pain and suffering for the person and for his/her relatives, but that's it. I happen to use computers for work. I make a living by sitting at my desk 10h a day and typing stuff away. And I worry about being stuck without access to my data, just like any other list member. And honestly, as a professional who's worked with computers for about 20 years, and played with them for 30 (I know some of you here have a much longer history of computing), the only advice I can give people is if you don't want the computer to mess with your data and your nerves, the surest option today is to get a Mac. Now if I happened to learn that Macs need a dose of Nigerian babies' blood to look that sleek, I'd sure reconsider my advice. But that's not the case and as far as I know Apple's not worse than any other player in the industry. And for a _HW maker_, it is not hard to prove Apple better than the rest of the lot, for now. So, yes Michael, if you want to definitely get rid of all those nasty Windows bugs that are wasting your time, get a Mac. Microsoft Office is just as crapy there than on Windows though, go figure. Eventually you'll move to LibreOffice. Jean-Christophe Helary _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
