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On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 10:49:35PM +0100, Theo Zourzouvillys wrote: > While my grandparents had a washing machine that lasted 25 years, my mother > gets through one every 2-3 years (5 kids!). I've only got through 2 kettles > this year alone - but i blame the amount of coffee i drink. my mother has > had just one kettle in 4 years... or at least one that looked the same last > time i was there. A domestic kettle shouldn't die in a few months, no matter how many times you boil it. Get you're money back. > Explain why computers are any different? People seem to forget that windows > 98 is now 8 years old, and ME is 7 [1]. A very long time in computer terms. > 6 years before that we were lucky to have DOS, let alone windows. Perhaps, but I'm of the opinion we throw away too much stuff already. People chuck perfectly good TV's because a capacitor goes. With mass production abroad, it's cheaper to buy a new appliance than to fix the old one, however it means full landfills, A computer that hasn't had any hardware failure will do the tasks today that it did 8 years ago. > Going back to the car analogy: i'd think you are a complete idiot for putting > the public at risk if you were driving around a car lacking basic safety > features. even more so if you were actually advising the use of dangerous > cars. again, exactly the same thing with computers. Cars kill people, computers don't, get some perspective. > I'm heavily up for computers requiring a certain "software safety standard" - > for both the software and the user [3] (the hardware already has in form of > CE in Europe) before being allowed to connect to the internet. Hopefully a > law will one day require this. Oh great, that means that anything you run will have to be certified, meaning spending money. So much for open source. If I patch some software I have to spend money on getting it "allowed"? Electrical devices are certified because they can kill people. Bad software on home PC's can't. > I'm sure the same bunch of you will be complaining then, too. "Oh no the > government are forcing us to use certain software/algorithms, ohh no! whine > whine whine, microsoft mumble mumble mumble!". So freedom is an alien concept to you? > it's exactly you people that will help cause the law in the first place (NO! > WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T UPGRADE!!!). My inlaws computer runs ME. It's dog slow (10 minute bootup) because of all the gunk they *have* to have installed on it, but it does what they want it to do. You'd rather they paid £400 and bought a new computer, or spend £200 on an XP upgrade, which wouldn't work. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html