In January the Green Party and Greenpeace issued warnings about the tremendous threat posed to the environment by the disposable computer mentality promoted in Microsoft’s $500-million Windows Vista marketing campaign. Vista has steep hardware requirements which in turn means that to use it, most people will have to throw their current computer into a landfill and buy a new one.
Vista is essentially designed to monitor what people do, and in particular to limit what they can do with digital media files. These limits obstruct common and legally protected uses like sharing news story clips and copying text from government documents. Vista has been engineered from the ground up as a DRM and Treacherous Computing platform.
Vista has also been designed for easy updating from a central authority, so that new restrictions can always be imposed, disabling certain features or programs.
Fortunately, people do not have to accept these restrictions on their freedom. Instead, they can reject Microsoft Windows Vista in favour of a free software distribution of GNU/Linux.
The FSF has a petition for anyone who wishes to join them in speaking out against these restrictions, as organizations or individuals.