[sdiy] TCPA / Palladium -- more trouble for DIYers & hardware hackers

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Atom 'n' all.
         And thanks for posting that. We've been following this for a time 
now. The attack is on in full force. I've felt rather under-siege for some 
time with this stuff.

I'm just wondering though, how 'n' hell would people get on if their PCs 
weren't connected to the internet? Even in XP it assumes that you have a 
net connection. I guess if you're an individual and can't afford the 
ransom, you're stuffed?

That is of course, if you play the game. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking 
that if they make their systems unviable to use, then we just won't use 
them. We'll have to use something else if we use anything at all. This 
could be where the real battle ground is going to be.

Already I've run up against the M$ dot-net and passport strategies. I tried 
to create my mother a hotmail account. It wouldn't allow me to because I 
wasn't using an M$ browser. Tough shit! I'll go somewhere else. It's a long 
story but eventually I thought, stuff this shit, and set her up an account 
on my own mail server. At least if the stupid bastards she was in need of 
communicating with, ended up spamming her, I can shut off that account and 
give her another one instead.

I ban HTML in mail. If you insist on setting your microsoft mail programs 
to send/re-send mail with HTML, it goes straight in the trash. Sorry but 
90% of mail containing HTML is spam. And if you haven't worked out that 
HTML in mail is BAD netiquate then more fool you.

And spyware and other semi-DRM attempts are rendered impotent such that a 
whole truck load of viagra couldn't get them interested again because 
everything sits behind a firewall and blocks them all. Effectively, none of 
these machines are on the net even if they are. None of these pieces of 
crap can phone home. If they absolutely need to then bugger it, I'll use 
something else.

Why would I need Palladium or even XP for that matter? I can already do 
just about everything I need to. All I really need is to do it faster. 
There is absolutely nothing in XP that's even desirable. How much better 
can they make a reverb plug-in? How many more features can they add to a 
software flanger? By default, the latest software is slower and more 
bloated than the last and has just as many bugs. I still use my old 16 bit 
cakewalk 3.x sequencer because in all this time, TTS only added 2 more 
features to it and I don't need any of their audio crap.

Sure there's going to be more features in a broad range of software over 
time but usually they're not features I really need so why would I want to 
upgrade? And besides, I'm sick of working for the beast of Redmond. 
Expected to upgrade the OS every 18 months- 2 years and then spend the next 
2 years trying to get it to work like it use to.

So until some point is reached where computing changes completely, perhaps 
quantum computing or something, then I guess I don't care if someone can't 
send me a word document. It's their problem. If they want me to read it, 
send me ASCII. And if they can't do that then they're probably too stupid 
to be bothered with anyway.

Was it McNeily from SUN? Who said "ASCII is just too good for some people."

None of these things actually benefit anyone but M$ and their cronies. I 
already voted with my feet. By the time they roll this crap out I'll have 
rolled over into an entirely unix style environment. And unix is the 
language of the net so to speak and if there's anyone who can't speak to me 
then they're probably not worth speaking to.

I guess people don't realize that consumers are really the route cause of 
these problems. If people refused to buy anything that wasn't 
environmentally sound, then all these blood sucking dirt rapists would soon 
get the message. If people stopped buying commercial music rubbish, the 
suits with their snouts in the tough might start to wonder where all the 
cocaine's gone to. And if people stopped giving money to Microsoft, Bill 
and Steve and their shareholders might reflect upon how they've screwed people.

But I guess that as long as there's unwashed masses that believe everything 
they read, -if they can read at all- and buy crap because it's the latest 
and the pictures were pretty, then I guess this is just going to happen and 
there's nothing you or I can do about it.

But for some of us, we don't have the choice. I can no longer afford the 
ransom so you'll just have to kill the hostage.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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