 - Last login: 2 hours agoZalmoxsis
- Just Bill is a single guy from The Antipodes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
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- Member since Oct 05, 2006
Jacob Boehme relates that Lucifer was once asked why God so hated him, enough to cast down from heaven this greatest of angels; to which the Devil replied, 'I wished to be an author.'
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Desktop Linux is Windows piracy aide - Software - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com
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May 1, 7:26am
1 review
•http://software.silicon.com/os/0,3902...
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LINUX PROMOTES SOFTWARE PIRACY!
Readers, please note: Really I ought to give this page a 'thumbs-down', as there are more holes here than warehouse full of Swiss cheese. But I don't get credit for the discovery otherwise, and cannot review the page.
Lies that Big Business and Government Tell You
"PCs running Linux are growing in popularity in part because they can be loaded
with a pirated copy of Windows, according to a study from analyst Gartner.
"The consulting firm has issued a report stating that about 40 per cent of Linux
PCs will be modified to run an illegal copy of Windows, a bait-and-switch
manoeuvre that lowers the cost of obtaining a Windows PC."
This is just another way of saying that Linux promotes piracy. Maybe this trick will be used in some cases (the motive being, he says, just to save money); but in truth, the vast majority of Linux users want nothing to do with Microsoft; moreover, they aren't crazy about Macs, either.
Any actual Linux user can see through his line of crap; his entire article rests on the assumption that Linux is just 'too hard' for the average person to figure out. If you are intending to build your own custom operating system, maybe; otherwise, it's easier and faster to get started in Linux than reinstalling either Windows or Mac. There are at least four or five distros out there that are fairly user-friendly, and you could be up and running in about 20 minutes. And finally, you need only one CD. When I was running Windows, at the end I had literally hundreds of CDs full of software.
Note, also, that he misuses the term 'bait-and-switch': this refers to a retailer advertising a product at a special low price, usually tagged with the phrase 'while supplies last'; but when the prospective customer comes in, suddenly that item is 'out-of-stock'. Then the sales person instead offers an inferior product at the same price; or, more usually, tries to up-sell', luring the customer toward a higher-priced item.
If, as the writer says, this is 'bait-and-switch', then he has unwittingly implied that Linux is the low-priced 'advertised special' (in fact, it's free); therefore it follows that Windows is the inferior, overpriced substitute. Otherwise, his whole train of thought is illogical. Moreover, bait-and-switch' tactics are used by unscrupulous business people to cheat the uninformed general public; whereas everybody knows that Linux is a group project, created by thousands of users-turned-designers, all over the world. I am left with one of two possible conclusions to draw: either the writer is deliberately trying to deceive his readers, to spread false information about Linux; or, he is illiterate, as he doesn't even understand the correct usage, in the business world, of this common phrase. I leave you to make up your own minds.
Maybe, just maybe, he is trying to say, very ineptly, that to buy and use bootleg Windows software is getting cheated? If so, then he ought to say it in plain English. But many computer shops do exactly that, and get away with it, and the legal system ignores them. Later, when we try to get security fixes and updates on Microsoft.com, we are informed that our copy of Windows is not valid.
Let's suppose one does intend to run a bootleg Windows OS. Then why bother installing Linux first?
Between just you and me, we know that pirated Windows software is easy enough to find. Everybody knows somebody who knows 'a guy': and that guy can get you pirated copies of just about anything you want; and it runs just as well as the original (which isn't very well), and comes with a working serial number.
That is the real reality, not some Microsoft fairy-tale world: with a few phone calls, and spending just a few bucks, you can get any bootleg software you want. Outside the U.S., U.K. Canada, the E.E.C., etc. -- i.e., in the so-called Third World, or in places like Iran, Russia, and so on -- our copyright laws either do not apply or are practically never enforced, so obtaining bootleg software is no problem at all, but is sold very openly everywhere.
Here's a clue: the fact that Microsoft products can be so easily hacked is not a selling point. And the reason I run Linux is because it just runs, and does exactly what I want.
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