[kwlug-disc] Video killed the radio star/netbook battle

[Johnny Ferguson]

If someone calls me a criminal for believing that I should be able to do 
whatever I like with my own property so long as I don't infringe on the 
rights and properties of others, I'll either:

a) move to an offshore oilrig and declare it the independent nation of 
Tuxia, or

b) be very sad to be canadian

And because I'm curious and haven't been able to to sift through the 
political kruft of this country lately, could you tell me how FLOSS 
media players will become illegal? Something tells me it will involve 
"Intellectual Property"(tm) lawyers, and god do I ever hate them.

On 06/23/2010 11:12 PM, Paul Nijjar wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 08:17:53PM -0700, John Kerr wrote:
>> Here is a posting from the Rochester LUG:
>>
>> At a meeting I attended last night a friend and I were really bored.
>
> I hope our LUG meetings aren't that boring. (Don't answer that.)
>
> This race is all well and good, but as far as I can tell we really
> have lost the netbook battle. We were all crowing over Linux being
> installed in EEE PCs a few years ago:
>
> http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/03/03/bestsellers
>
> and now they come with WinXP Home or (more likely) the crippled
> Windows 7 Starter Edition.
>
> Anecdotes:
>
> - Tiger Direct has categories for "Windows-based" netbooks and
>    "Linux-based" ones. There are 8 Windows-based ones and 1 Linux-based
>    one.
>
> - The Future Shop website is hideous to search in, but so far I have
>    not found a single netbook that is not preinstalled with Windows.
>
> - The Asus site (http://ca.asus.com) prominently displays the message:
>    "Windows. Life without Walls. ASUS recommends Windows 7."
>
> - Go to newegg.ca . Search for netbooks. End up in the "Home ->  PCs
>    and Laptops ->  Laptops, Notebooks, and Netbooks ->  Netbooks"
>    category. On the left hand bar search for "More Options" and look at
>    the "OS Provided" links. They are all Windows. Search for "linux"
>    while you are at it.
>
>
> Back in 2008 we were all breathing sighs of relief because Linux was
> *finally* being preinstalled on computers for a non-niche market. Now
> we are back to blowing away Windows partitions and trying to convince
> people to try free software on their netbooks. In other words, we lost
> big.
>
> Both me and the original poster would probably appreciate any
> anecdotes or data to the contrary, because it would mean we would be
> able to buy modern netbooks on our system that run free software from
> start to finish.
>
> Of course, now that FLOSS media players are (for all intents and
> purposes) going to be criminalized in this country, the task of
> getting people to try Linux gets even harder. The speed tests are
> irrelevant if people aren't willing to try your product.
>
> What can we do? Become criminals, I guess. We're already radicals.
>
> - Paul
>
>