Hacker News Reader

Comment by johansch | Hacker News Reader

They could run Linux. Or buy a mac. Or buy a windows license from abroad.

Seems like plenty of choices to me.

You forgot to add "Write their own OS" to your really good suggestions here.

Yeah, but keep in mind that not everyone's computer-savvy enough to do that. Often people will go the path of least resistance... and if it means your laptop/computer ships with illegal copies of Windows, that's what you're going to use.

I think Macbooks are pretty expensive in China (last I checked, this was a few years ago, so this might have changed), which is why people are gonna leap for the cheaper alternatives.

No idea why this is being downvoted. Pretty sure it's legal to run FreeBSD and Linux in China, if you can't afford an Apple. Convenience isn't an excuse for copyright violation.

The average poster on HN would be okay with doing this, but broader society would not. My mother, bless her heart, struggles with email. When she needs something, she goes to Best Buy and gets whatever the salesman tells her to get. Telling her "Oh, Best Buy is breaking the law, but you can install FreeBSD, and you'll be fine" is a little out of her comfort zone.

Actually, I'd say "go buy a laptop from the shop in Melbourne that sells systems with Linux pre-loaded, they'll look after you".

Not only is that a viable approach, I'd take any bet you'd like that she'd get better support from them than any 'big brand' supplier of Windoze boxen.

(Actually, I'd probably say "holy shit I thought you were dead", but that's specific to my mother).

The problem is that most of the software that Chinese people use from day to day are typically only available on Windows.

So? That sounds like a bad decision on their part.

The decision to try to use FreeBSD or Linux would probably leave them unable to type in their own language.

I have tried what passes for an IME for Linux desktop applications (formerly SCIM, now IBus). It doesn't work with some applications. It crashes some applications sporadically. And one technology was replaced by another that doesn't work the same way without a smooth upgrade path.

If you are a power user who has been using *nix for years and reading lots of documentation in English, you can come up with the right configuration and workarounds for occasional typing in CJK. That's no way to actually use a computer to do things if your primary language is Chinese.

The IME situation in modern X frankly sucks. Back in the day I regularly contributed to the relevant projects, but our efforts were continually thwarted by people who had no idea about CJK requirements and worse, won't listen to us ("why do you need to pass keystrokes to a separate process?", "users don't need a choice of IMEs per language", etc). It got so tiring that eventually most of the regular contributors moved on.

And now I have no idea what's going to happen with Wayland.

>Convenience isn't an excuse for copyright violation.

Why does one need an excuse for copyright violation?

Heh. I'm a little sympathetic to that view, myself:

http://praxeology.net/anticopyright.htm

Still an area I'm mulling over.

I'm opposed to it beacuse it is censorship, while I reject private property altogether. Different ways of reaching the same conclusion, I suppose :)

Indeed. I think private property is one of the foundations of civilisation, but I'm not entirely convinced that IP is a legitimate form of property.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com