Today, the local newspapers carried an advertisement from the Ministry of Telecommunications prohibiting the use of counterfeit or pirated material including computer programs that are either sold, lent, given, shared, or otherwise.
Given the seriousness of this issue in the current time and stage that we all now live in, and being a child of the 21st century technological revolution. It seems quite disappointing that the Ministry in name has started its said 'war against piracy' now without giving the consumers that do have such programs in their systems an alternative.
Most legal computer programs that are developed for retail usage are sold at very expensive prices here in the Sultanate of Oman. So I wonder, how is it that the Ministry justifies this move without raveling about with the companies that sell such programs at hard prices. As not everyone can afford them.
Ten years from now, Microsoft will say that it will no longer provide support for its Windows XP system, pushing users, such as I to pay the a sum of no less than 200 Omani Rials for its new Vista system that has just been launched very recently.
Should the consumer force be pushing the developer and not the other way around? And when has it become the job of an I.T. organization to limit the use of an individual of their system?
There should be a drive to have this kind of a Q&A sit-down during this COMEX. Unfortunately, it seems that all this country is interested in is in making money nowadays without putting customer care at their priority.
When will this ever change?
Monday, March 26, 2007
are you going to stand for it?
Posted by Sleepless In Muscat at 00:46
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5 comments:
There are many legal alternatives for accomplishing tasks required by casual computer users, eg. office tools, cd burning tools, sound converters, and even whole operating systems. In 10 years time the majority of the people would have replaced their machines and anybody that buys a branded computer would usually have a copy of the Windows OS bundled with the machine anyway.
blue chi:
welcome back to the blog, my friend. It's good to see you alive. :o)
What kind of legal alternatives are you talking about in terms of software/hardware you had mentioned?
Yeah, I'm still alive. :P
I am talking about open-source applications which are legally free and are of excellent quality, at times, better than anything commercially available on the market.
For examples, check http://www.openoffice.org for a legally free efficient office suite (word processor, spreadsheets, etc.)
You can use Thunderbird instead of Outlook for email
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
And if you really want to try something new, you can use Linux instead of Windows for your operating system.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
You can find legally free applications to do all sorts of tasks, they are not hard to find at all.
I am aware of the other open source softwares and linux is very complicated to me because it requires that you have a background on programming and scripting for the most of it, something I am not aquainted to.
But I am talking about the software that should be available at affordable prices. It isn't.
Therefore, and anyone can quote me on this, I will always download the programs unless a cost effective method is adopted by the developers for the popular software.
Linux was an example an example on a free OS, and no it does not require you to have programming skills, etc.
OpenOffice, Thunderbird, and other programs are available for all major OSes legally for free. I do not understand what other kinds of software that you are trying to find at affordable prices and still couldn't.
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