Hi guys, Those of us committed to the preservation of technology, and free access to it, may have our work cut out for us. In an earlier post, I mentioned that CPRM for ATA (vendor activated copy protection for IDE hard drives) might curtail the availability of the "open PC," that is, the general-purpose, do-whatever-you-want-with-it computer. My knee-jerk reaction is "no way!" However, I have a history of getting it wrong in a social context. I have this odd idea that the merits of a technology ought to define its longevity. Sure. I have a long list of things I "just knew" based on my appreciation of the merits of a given technology. Like what, you may ask. I just knew MS-DOS was inferior: I was using a more sophisticated OS (HDOS) on a more primitive machine. Well, MS-DOS never did attain the maturity of HDOS, but it swept all competitors from the field. I just knew that Windows was a fad. Yeah, right. And I just know that the Computer Literate public would not tolerate the disappearance of the Open PC. Right? I mean, sheep would never allow themselves to be led to slaughter, would they? Well, whether it's in the cards or not, it seems that not everyone is optimistic. Here's an article that rattled my cage. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/17419.html Maybe I'm taking it all too seriously, but I really want to make sure that I continue to have access to general-purpose hardware and software. Wouldn't it be ironic if *ALL* PCs became "legacy" systems? That's enough trouble-making for now. Regards, Garry [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
