win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?

[Christofer C. Bell]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> On Thursday 31 July 2008, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 2:35 AM, Jon Pruente <jdpruente at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > Wait, what?  I'm pretty sure it started with Leo mentioning a desire
> > > to give an HP printer away to one, but could not find drivers to use
> > > on their old P2 running Win98...
> >
> > The original post from Oren Beck:
>
> On Saturday 26 July 2008, Leo Mauler wrote:
> > I was going to donate a HP printer to the arts center I'm volunteering
> for,
> > but the computer they have right now is a PII-233Mhz machine running
> > Windows98.  This turns out to be a sticking point which prevents the
> > printer from being useful to them, as I don't have the original Windows
> > driver CD.


So when you said,

"Isn't that the original post of this thread? ;)"

You didn't actually mean the original post of the thread, you meant the post
somewhere in the middle of the thread as I pointed out here:

"No, actually, the original post was Oren comparing the discontinuance of
vendor support for decade old software with Digital Rights Management.  The
charity came in as a hypothetical somewhere... back there... *points up at
the thread*"

Is that right?

At least we now have it confirmed that the poor besotted charity in question
really is suffering from this DRM-like lockdown on 10 year old technology.
 Oh, the evils of corporatism.

While I appreciate that they're wanting to, I can only assume, save money by
not purchasing something made in the 21st century, this smells like
mismanagement to me.  If the technology choices they make prevent them from
doing their job, then they're not a charity I would want distributing my
money.

Perhaps you'd be willing to invest some of your time, charitably, of course,
in setting them up with a Linux system (or even a new Windows system) that
can help them effectively manage incoming contributions and distribute them
to those in need.

-- 
Chris
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