Confused
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Tracer Apr 11, 2006 10:30 AM EDT |
This was a fascinating post, although I was a bit confused at first. Here's what I think the author meant to say. First, the author doing the investigation is reacting to: http://jobs.statesman.com/JOBSWeb/common/viewContent.do?cont... (Scroll to the bottom.) In there, he basically learns that someone (no trail yet who) convinced Lenovo to stop shipping plain-jane PCs with no OS and to pre-ship them with Windows. And why? The article insists that this was the reason why piracy was so high in China -- because people got a plain-jane PC and would rather install a pirated version of Windows than to have to pay for it extra. Someone convinced Lenovo to stop that practice and pre-ship Windows with their PCs. Therefore, Lenovo was convinced to jump on the Microsoft Tax bandwagon. The market analyst called by the reporter for the article, or whom was given the tip, turns out to have ties with the uber-nasty, Trusted Computing and DRM, Microsoft's big flagship interest. -------- Perhaps Microsoft has hired him to be their China lapdog. No one knows. Sounds like a case for another set of Halloween documents ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents ), which is why I find this so interesting. Meanwhile, you have to wonder about the logic going on at Lenovo. This makes absolutely no sense unless Microsoft is doing some pretty crafty work in China, trying to kill Linux adoption. Perhaps they're paying Lenovo, or using the Chinese Government against them, to try and get more support for Windows. If indeed this will have a humongous effect on killing Linux adoption in China, then you might see a lot of people get really mad and want to chase the paper trail here. Like I said before, it's funny how in one breath Microsoft is extending an olive branch with Linux and FLOSS by starting the Port 25 Blog Project, but then turning around and sticking it to Linux in China in a massive way. |
| helios Apr 11, 2006 11:38 AM EDT |
Perhaps they're paying Lenovo, or using the Chinese Government against them... While it has been difficult to find out exactly how much, Leveno is partially owned by the Chinese government. No, I am playing with the idea that with Microsoft computers, the Chinese government can more closely monitor dissidents. Linux machines are harder to hack. MS Windows machines are accessable to Microsoft any time they want to have a peek inside your box. It would 'splain most of it...however, realizing that MS has this much power, be it economical or political is frightening. |
| number6x Apr 11, 2006 12:23 PM EDT |
helios, there used to be a lot of apocryphal tales from the garment industry about factories licensed to produce western goods. The stories are typically that a factory licensed to produce, say, Levi's brand jeans would dutifully count every pair of jeans produced in the shift from 8:00am to 4:00pm, stitching on all the labels and buttons, and paying the proper license for each one. The first shift would go home and the 4:00pm to mid-night shift would take over producing jeans with the same patterns, cloth, and hardware, but sans any identifying labels. The same for the mid-night to 8:00am shift. These uncompleted jeans would be shipped to the US, for "final assembly" in sweat shops in New York and L.A.. The cheaper unfinished jeans had a much lower price tag, and were charged a lower tariff than designer label clothes. Perhaps Lenovo will work extra shifts. One producing Microsoft equipped machines to keep that dog at bay, and to show the world how good China is as a business partner, and two more shifts to produce cheap white boxes sans the Lenovo label to appease China's huge demand for computers. Just a thought really. |
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