[olug] What if USB no longer worked on Mac's or Linux?

[Daniel Linder]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


<quote who="John Dickson">
> To bring this out in such a forum is Linux poison.
[removed]
> Drivers were written by users in many cases, not hardware manufacturers.
>
>  I see this (the article and the mechanism/fish that gets hooked) as a
> piece of the MS machine working it's stuff!

I'll agree with John here but taking a slightly different tack.

Remeber the "DivX" DVD format?  In theory, this sounded great but the
market didn't like the purchase of buying a device with these imposing
strings attached.

I think what will happen in the next 5-10 years is others will try to do
something similar with the hardware on a PC.  Some technical/marketing
group will come up with a neat-o device but feel the need to control its
application at a fine level.  They will try to tie this device to either a
specific driver (and fail), then an OS (and fail), and finally a complete
solution containing the driver, OS, and 'secured' hardware.  The only way
this will succeed is if the whole package is so unique and so wildly
popular that people will sell their percieved rights to have access to
these features.  We put up with speed limits and other human imposed
limitationsto have the right to purchase (lease!?!) and drive a vehicle,
why not a computer?

No, I don't want to see my ability to hot-rod my computers impacted
adversly, but I believe that our hobby will be more regulated as the vast
majority takes them into every day use.

Dan

- - - - -
"I do not fear computer,
I fear the lack of them."
 -- Isaac Asimov

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBVv9PNiBNyqUzGb8RAguPAJ9kxA5OiDOyRagQDAQgCmyzMlWcvACfcSU6
nZWqfRXiRdivoXcxdklOqms=
=pAz3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----