Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice...

All live on the Win32 platform now; users are no longer constrained to Linux for Open Source software.

(I don't have to knowledge base to address the Mac world's situation in this case.)

@ Dan: all three of those are available for Mac. And the guts of Safari (WebKit and JSKit) are Open Source.

I've been pondering writing something about this for a while. So I finally did. There's three laws of robotics. I added a robotics bill of rights.

First ammendment: A robot will act as an agent representing it's owner's best interests.

Well, they're not constrained to Linux if they want to open-source (though some of the problems there, such as the Sony Rootkit debacle, point out that your OS might be working against you too), but it certainly makes the job more complete.

...and if someone does want to move the: The Equivalents List is getting better (non-exhaustive). Fedora Core 5 is almost ready for "Aunt Minnie", and certainly is if we 'support' her already on her Windows box.

the problem isn't strictly limited to the computer hardware on your desk and the software it runs. Part of it is the services provided by third parties between you and another person. search engines having secret tilts added to their results, undisclosed entangling alliances between the middlemen and whoever has the most money.

Open source won't solve the whole problem. It is a start, though.

Of the 3 computers I own, the desktop and the server run linux, and the laptop runs Windows, with Firefox, Open Office, Apache & MySQL. The only reason the laptop runs Windows rather than linux is that many of the hotels I stay in when travelling require IE to initially access their "free wireless internet". And the only reason Mom's laptop runs Windows is that her sewing software requires it.

It does help that a close friend knows Windows & security very well, has shown me how to uninstall various Windows components, and has hooked me up with a better anti-virus.

To second Greg: Pick a pair of keywords and pull a search with Google under IE and then the same pair with Yahoo under Firefox. YMMV, but it's indicative of the reality...

Sylvia --

About those hotel wireless ports: Can't you just change your browser's user agent to fool the scripts?

To me, the most interesting aspect of this debate is the legality of these pieces of software. A "clickthrough" or "shrink wrap" license is of questionable legality as a "contract" -- one of the features of a "real" contract is the ability of both sides to negotiate. This is obviously impossible with software. Microsoft negotiate ten million different contracts? No way!

Most people don't even read the "clickthrough" license. Presumably, we're supposed to run these things past a lawyer. With shrink wrap licenses, you can't even do that without opening the package.

Read the "terms of service" or whatever they call it for your bank, your stockbroker, your ISP. You may get some rude surprises.

I think the way to deal with this is a "customer's bill of rights" that spells out exactly what we can expect from software. With the current political climate, I suspect that trying to pas a law like this would do more harm than good.

A.J. wrote:
About those hotel wireless ports: Can't you just change your browser's user agent to fool the scripts?

I will have to try that next time. Usually when I first get to the hotel, I'm too tired from travelling to think of clever things like that.

Also, re software licenses, the few I've bothered to read seem to have some clause that says subject to change without notice, which makes them useless for us end users.

I'm sure the government owns my computer. I just got rid of a virus that was designed to steal my passwords. Great. Perhaps the Bush administration got the NSA to design that one to make it easier to spy.

I've never had a hotel not let me through with Opera.

Not all contracts are negotiable, unless you count "take it or leave it" as negotiation. Have you tried negotiating with a web store?

I think MS's vulnerabilities are there partly because they're designing the software for use in large corporate intranets, and automatic downloading of applications and remote administration are pretty common in that situation. In that environment, in fact, they work very well. The way they've done this, though, makes the systems terribly vulnerable outside of that environment (or any non-firewalled environment) and corporate intranets are terribly vulnerable to viruses and other malware.

By the way, the NYT has an article on a different aspect of this problem; a patent on a technology that would refuse to let you change channels during a commercial.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/business/yourmoney/07digi.html

(I am very glad I do not own a television...)

Patenting that is an iffy proposition, because it's an old idea . . . at least to me. Oracle video servers, circa 1997, could tag content in a way to prevent fast forward / rewind / etc.

Randolph Fritz: a patent on a technology that would refuse to let you change channels during a commercial.

The American public will calmly bear the systematic destruction of their liberties, but this would cause them to rise up from their La-Z-Boy recliners to riot in the streets.

It's a good thing to be suspicious, but this feels a bit too much like "Loose Change" to me. Conspiracy gullibility. About that patent thing: it's not in any television yet, and it seems is the same tech that would let you *skip* commercials...

Dan: I'm not entirely sure what doing that would actually get you. If you'd kept either the search engine or the browser the same and found different results, fine, but getting different results from two engines is to be expected. Did I miss something?

I'm a little confused myself.

Yahoo and Google use different searching technologies, and started with different principles. I vaguely remember that in the early days of Yahoo, it chose who to link to- that is, the default for a webpage was to be NOT listed.

Why would you expect the same results from Yahoo and Google anyway?

I've gotten different results from the same search on Google on two different Windows computers. I don't understand that one!

drowning in coupons.