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On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 08:38:58AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote: > This is very true. BTW: Dvorak (on PC Mag) is making a proposal that all > PCs be licensed: > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1224343,00.asp > > Personally, I think Dvorak is an idiot, but he makes a good case for it. I agree that Dvorak is an idiot, but that's as far as I'll go... He compares licensing PC users to licensing automobile drivers, and I think that's a good analogy. Most people start using computers as teenagers (or earlier, these days), much as with cars. How many teenagers pick up a copy of the rules of the road, learn them for the written permit test, and then forget everything they learned five minutes after they pass it? How many actually FAIL the test, maybe even multiple times, because they can't be bothered to look at the book? Licensing computer users will be no different, and will solve nothing. The average person will do the bare minimum required for them to pass the test, and then not give it another thought. As is often the case in our society, no one is looking at the real problem. Virtually all e-mail viruses/worms target one family of programs: Microsoft Outlook. Why is Outlook so aggressively targeted? Because it's crap, and because its perveyors have a monopoly, engendering rather a lot of hate. If you want to avoid these worms, you need only not use Outlook. No other program is so aggressively targeted. Similarly, non-email viruses/worms most popularly target Microsoft systems. Even with the dramatic increase of the popularity of Linux, there just aren't that many Linux viruses/worms out there. So I really don't think it's a simple matter of virus writers targeting the most popular platform; I think a lot of it is about genuine hatred. But even if it were simple economics, there's no better argument for more competition in the market... Why is no one looking at Outlook? For the same reason Microsoft has a monopoly in the first place: people who use it often feel compelled to use it, for one reason or another. Rather than admit their choice was wrong, they seek more amenable scapegoats. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.blu.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20030820/6b9cdc52/attachment.sig>
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