On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Albert Cahalan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Seth Woodworth writes: > >> So as a fair practice I think it's clear that no special actions can >> ethically be made to prevent Windows or any other OS from running on >> the machine. So a Windows port for the XO isn't something that >> could have been preventative. > > Wrong. It's called tit-for-tat, otherwise known as fair-is-fair. > It's perfectly ethical to defend oneself against an adversary > who has no qualms about anything. > > Just look at the deal. Dual-boot costs $7 extra. Governments will > not pay the extra $7 to allow dual-boot.
No, Windows costs about $7 extra for the flash card plus $3 for the license. Countries wouldn't save anything by removing Linux + Sugar, which is all free. Dual-boot and Windows-only would have the same cost. > I do believe in fairness. The XO should run Windows about as well > as the Xbox 360 runs Linux. Note that the Xbox 360 has numerous > hardware features which were purposely designed to impede Linux. > Fairness mandates that we have hardware to lock out Windows. > > Hardware is costly of course. A slightly weaker solution would be > to have the firmware use SMM/SMI tricks to regularly get a bit of > CPU time to scan for Windows in memory. If the firmware finds that > Windows is running, then it silently corrupts RAM. The ideal would > be to make Windows survive about an hour before crashing. > (keep the feature secret of course, to make debugging painful) It would have been a lot simpler to have left OFW as it was, unable to support a Windows boot. But the point is now moot. > _______________________________________________ > Sugar mailing list > Sugar@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar > -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay _______________________________________________ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar