[ale] firewalls... illegal? Cany anyone read legalese?

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 09:33, Jason Day wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 07:32:56AM -0500, Jonathan Rickman wrote:
> > Ed points out that this boils down to 'use a firewall, go to jail,'
> > but we really think he's not being nearly ambitious enough here. It
> > strikes us that, as the proud owner of Internet Connection Sharing,
> > Bill Gates develops, distributes and licenses a communications device
> > which is used to conceal "the existence or place of origin or
> > destination of any communication." So we say, 'use a a firewall, go to
> > jail, but also send Bill Gates to jail.' Ah, decisions, decisions...
> 
> I was thinking about this in the shower this morning, when it hit me,
> that this might be a dream come true for Microsoft.  Why?
> 
> - They can leave NAT functionality out of the latest version of Windows.
> - All prior versions of Windows would become illegal, forcing users to
>   upgrade.
> - Since users will be legally forced to upgrade, Microsoft can impose
>   any kind of EULA they want, like Licensing 6 and Palladium.
> - No more linux, or any other pesky Free/Open Source software to worry
>   about.
> 
> Worried yet?

Ick! <frothing at the mouth>

-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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