On 2 Jul 2002, Lee wrote:
> Don't under estimate the power of the dark side.....
Well.. it would need the dark side to acquire a pretty hefty chunk of
capital first. I doubt even MS could afford to purchase Cisco, Juniper,
Nortel, 3Com, Extreme, Alteon, F5 and so on and force them all to stop
using their own <ahem> "proprietary" protocols and start to use MS
standards ;-)
Plus I've never seem Windows running on a MIPS chip, nor on a PPC. And as
that's what the vast bulk of installed routers[0] are running on, it would
require a massive rewrite.
[0] probably.
Oh, hang on, they could simply port .NET, right? And then we'll all be
subsumed anyway.
Seriously for a moment: although this Pandemonium gadger will eventually
turn up, I really don't think it's going to be the big issue it's being
made out to be at the minute. Think "modchip". Think "workaround". More
importantly, think "bollocks to 'em, I'll run something else instead."
Let's face it - this is essentially a pre-market marketing ploy by all the
companies involved to see what the reaction is. If enough people in the
industry raise a stink, changes will happen. And that's what we'll see;
there are far too many 'essential' tools out there written by third
parties who would in no way want to get involved here.
Of more concern to me personally is the fact that the EULA for a recent MS
media player patch *actually gives MS admin rights on your machine*. It
essentially gives the billdroids the right to install or remove whatever
software they like from your machine, without requiring your consent or
knowledge, and with no comeback if anything then breaks. Sounds good,
don't it?
Graeme
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