Posted by
MN Sailor on Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:30:21 AM
I remember when Napster first came on the scene. FTP was the greatest thing to the college bound thieves. I know because I was in the dorm with most of them. In the aftermath of Napster came Kazza. It was another similar program, though it came in two forms a pay for use and a free for use version. The pay for use was quasi legitimate but with its association to the illegal version I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
About 4 years ago I got tuned into blogging and have attempted to blog with some success in different arenas I have a few that I recently
quit contributing to or started up but did nothing with over at blogger. www.blackandwhitesquares.blogspot.com being my most active role. At the same time I started toying with blogging another interesting thing caught my eye, Linux.
Why did this catch my eye, well my senior year in High School I took a class on computer networking, and I had been taught the basics of Cysco Networking and how to wire a home, office etc for simple networks. At the time I discovered linux I was looking for an affordable way to set up my own home network and insert a media center into the home for music, video and phone all through one interface.
What most people don't realize is that in order to do this it does not need to cost in realm of tens of thousands of dollars. Most companies that are out there now all started shortly after I explored and set up my first home prototype. Many Linux users actually were doing it long before I even got the idea, as were many rich MAC users and Microsoft Users.
I was looking for an affordable solution, I found this in Linspire. At the time it was, and in my opinion it still is the most user friendly version of Linux available. I was attracted to this particular flavor of Linux, because it was the only version at the time that provided a means of legally obtaining proprietary Code to use DVD software. Over the past few years Linspire has been a leader in open source projects. They blend the concept of shared software and of proprietary projects.
They took advantage of the very same technology that others were using to steal intellectual property and turned it into a way to sell their own intellectual property via mirror sites and more importantly Bit Torrent. More importantly their leadership is set on competing with the leaders of the Operating System world MAC and Microsoft, not through lawsuits like their competitors.
Sure Linspire filed some counter suits here and there competitively, but they have been far more concerned with competition and offering a viable product than anything else. Microsoft threatened to put them out of business at the very time I became aware of them. It was the 17th identical law suit against Linspire by Microsoft that caused Linspire to undergo a name change. 17 lawsuits in 17 countries all claiming the same thing in order to put a competitor out of business. Microsoft judge shopped not across the United States but instead across the world.
If you are truly interested in supporting good business innovation and competition give Linspire a look. The low cost and compatibility will astound you. If you don't want to pay for the Operating System don't worry they have recently put together a completely Open Source version known as Freespire. You don't even need to install, download it and put it on CD it will run entirely within your CD drive without over writing a single bit of your saved information or programs.