[sugar] Microsoft

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Albert Cahalan <acahalan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seth Woodworth writes:
>
>> So as a fair practice I think it's clear that no special actions can
>> ethically be made to prevent Windows or any other OS from running on
>> the machine.  So a Windows port for the XO isn't something that
>> could have been preventative.
>
> Wrong. It's called tit-for-tat, otherwise known as fair-is-fair.
> It's perfectly ethical to defend oneself against an adversary
> who has no qualms about anything.
>
> Just look at the deal. Dual-boot costs $7 extra. Governments will
> not pay the extra $7 to allow dual-boot.

No, Windows costs about $7 extra for the flash card plus $3 for the
license. Countries wouldn't save anything by removing Linux + Sugar,
which is all free. Dual-boot and Windows-only would have the same
cost.

> I do believe in fairness. The XO should run Windows about as well
> as the Xbox 360 runs Linux. Note that the Xbox 360 has numerous
> hardware features which were purposely designed to impede Linux.
> Fairness mandates that we have hardware to lock out Windows.
>
> Hardware is costly of course. A slightly weaker solution would be
> to have the firmware use SMM/SMI tricks to regularly get a bit of
> CPU time to scan for Windows in memory. If the firmware finds that
> Windows is running, then it silently corrupts RAM. The ideal would
> be to make Windows survive about an hour before crashing.
> (keep the feature secret of course, to make debugging painful)

It would have been a lot simpler to have left OFW as it was, unable to
support a Windows boot. But the point is now moot.
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar mailing list
> Sugar at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
>



-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay