An update on ASUStek's eeePC - they have just released an eeePC with Microsoft Windows.

Yes -I think this is one reason why one has to be very careful when pursuing simplistic but "noble" aims. For example, the "One lap-top per Child" project sounds very laudable. It is based on Linux -and so cannot be accused of (directly) spreading digital feudalism by promoting commercial monopoly systems.

However, as the new MS eeePC release shows, MS have worked very hard to produce a "small" version of their system that operates in such machines as the eeePC or the "One lap-top per Child" project..... So, unless one is very careful, providing poor kids with cheap lap-tops could easily turn them into captive MS users -via all the usual tricks.

Indeed, the Xandros operating system only seems to work with graphic icons -and not with typed commands. This means that although the hardware is not (yet) locked in to any particular operating system -the software system is locked in to a limited range of hardware..... In other words -if one wants to add in a non-standard hard disk or perhaps an external modem -this will not be supported unless one replaces the Xandros operating system with a "real" linux system that allows the complete range of system commands to be used (including the required drivers for the hard-disk and the modem).

So all those who promote the "consumer" approach to digital technology are actually encouraging digital feudalism -because they are ignoring the way the commercial companies are slowly but surely eroding the initial freedom perhaps inherent in these systems -by presenting consumers (who know no better) with an extremely limited range of options.

So long the consumers are happy to treated like sheep -then perhaps they deserved to be farmed like animals.

However, what is particularly pernicious is the way some people (iether deliberately or unintentionally) promote "freedom" in ways that ultimately lead to enslavement: In a complex and hostile world -knowledge and understanding of the environment is the only way to survive. This is just as true in a conceptual environment as a physical one.

Commercial companies and artist's networks that promote (mutant) ignorance -through the suggestion that one can survive through ignorance and "symbolic" understanding are (in my view) committing crimes against humanity: Because those involved are reducing the complexity and diversity of the human experience to a monolithic mutant zero.

In the meantime, I'd be very interested to know more about the perversion of the concept of "trust" by the American commercial system..... Having lived in Holland for so long, it is easy to see from practical experience of Dutch society that there is indeed "no profit like no-profit". Perhaps it was all those Frisian cows that made everything look so black and white when seeing so many people milking the system....