Going To University Leave Linux Home! It's Not Supported! 4559

When I was in school working on my mechanical engineering degree, my personal computer was a Texas Instruments TI-58 programmable hand calculator with print cradle. Not having the patience to wait in line to use the punch card machine, then have the IBM-370 mainframe kick my program out because of a single syntax error, I used the computer of choice: A Vector MZ CP-M-80 computer with hard sector 5-1-4" floppies and FORTRAN compiler. My TI-58 came in handy for programming buttignments in my Numeric Methods and Advanced Numeric Methods clbuttes. (Do I hear Monty Python? ;-)

Windows XP will probably be my last MS operating system. I used a dual boot system with Windows 98 and SuSE 6.4 for many years, but the latest software would not run in 98. I found MS's EULA scheme a bit frustrating and restrictive. Basically I saw it as the same corporate highjacking practice MS did to Compac and IBM, requiring purchase of a license irregardless of whether system shipped with that operating system or not, now MS was limiting me to one motherboard and few peripheral, memory and processor upgrades. With MS-Dos, Windows 3.1, and Windows 98, I had went through about 8 motherboards. Those were my operating systems, I had paid my own hard cash for them, I could upgrade as I saw fit.

Then tonight I was looking at hardware settings (why does the CD-DVD-Rom unit now start to cache, taking forever to do?), I found that if you change the country settings for DVD, you are only allowed to do it a limited number of times (only 4 left and I haven't changed since installation) until the system locks the choice in forever. Why?

MS is a person of innovation, person of experimentation, and a strictly for profit enbreasty whose motivation is not to produce a bug-free, secure OS (yes, and I remember all the crashes in Win 3.1 and 98, even with the patches and still the requirement for an antivirus program and personal firewall because of the lack of integral OS security in current version), but to make money and lots of it. Anything to ensure survival to their empire will be employed to lock people into their OS. They don't want you to HAVE IT YOUR WAY, they want you to have it their way. This means following along blindly as one of the sheeple.

I was also surprised (but should I be?) of MS threatening retoric to China and Singapore, for abandoning their costly licensing and going to Linux as their mainstream Government system.

(Okay, I'll get off my stool and let the usual rants continue ....)

-- HPT