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[FYI] The open PC is dead - start praying, says HD guru



[Man sollte das durchaus ernst nehmen, IMHO.                ---AHH]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/17419.html

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The open PC is dead - start praying, says HD guru  

By: Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco  

Posted: 07/03/2001 at 20:01 GMT  

Apologies in advance if the following mailing list posting ruins your 
next meal. It ruined ours too, but since we believe in equality of 
indigestion here, we feel obliged to share it with you.  

Hale Landis maintains the ata-atapi.com website, and has been working 
for open standards for twenty five years. He has been a participant 
in the ANSI X3/NCITS Technical Committees that developed the ATA and 
ATA/ATAPI standards since 1990, and works as a consultant and 
provider of test software.  

His chilling, deeply pessimistic view is that the good times are 
over. The fight for an open hardware platform is very real, and the 
power has swung from the PC leaders to the entertainment industry. 
It's a valuable strategic view from the trenches of the T.13 
committee, where the fight over copy control mechanisms continues. It 
was posted to the private T.13 mailing list, and we cite it here with 
permission.  


Missing the BIG picture  

I think many of you discussing CPRM and similar things are missing 
the BIG picture.  

[...]

Basically your "general purpose personal computer", aka "home 
computer", is history. This should not surprise anyone since 
Microsoft has done everything in its power to convert the home 
computer into an Internet appliance. And Intel still thinks it can 
convert home computer into the central house and consumer electronics 
"control center". But I think both Intel and Microsoft will find they 
can't fight the entertainment industry either. They too will end up 
doing anything so they can continue to sell hardware and software to 
the "home computer" market. But we probably should start talking 
about the "computer enhanced consumer electronics" market.  

[...]

In my opinion if you are someone, like myself, that needs and uses 
low cost general purpose computers then you should start praying that 
there will be some hardware vendor left selling such a computer and 
that you will be able to run some general purpose OS and adequate 
applications software. And I would say it will be unlikely that such 
a computer will have an Intel processor or that any of that 
application software will come from Microsoft. This possible future 
must be driving product planners at Intel and Microsoft crazy.  

[...]

-- Hale Landis  

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