It is also important at this time that non-wintel platforms have good, easily accessible from most of the UK, national shows.
A letter to the VNU
Computers need to be made more environmentally friendly and safer. Issues in this area include having energy labels on computers just like fridges,washing machines etc. Moving to the use of flat panel displays, as they save electricity, produce less radiation, and use less raw materials. They also have the advantage that they are completely flat and are light weight. Keyboards should improved to reduce RSI and boost speed.
Reboot wants to see a serious television program on computers, transmitted regularly all year round, year after year. The smaller interest of astronomy has had Sky At Night for decades, while what do we have? Past experience with Micro Live has demonstrated what an important roll such a program could fulfil.
A letter to the BBC
I can remember a time when you did not have to press the Accept button when you installed new commercial software on your computer, in fact with some software you still do not need to. To make matter worse the conditions are generally displayed in a small box that cannot be resized. A member of the Reboot Movement looked at the source of such an agreement (on a webpage) and found that it was over 25 screen fulls of plain text (at 800x600 in fixed font). The licences contain things that the company should not be asking for, e.g. denying people the right to print results achieved on benchmarks of the software. Not all conditions apply in the UK, but it is not made clear which do. Often the agreement says that the company will take not responsibility for any problem their product causes, even if it is caused by a bug. Reboot wants to see an end to user licences. If you buy a product, you should own it. When you buy a music CD in a shop you do not sign a large piece of paper covered in small print, likewise when you buy computer hardware. The law states what you can do legally with the software etc. At least the window could be bigger and resizeable, some of the inappropriate conditions could be removed, the information should be more UK specific, and a printed copy available as part of the manual. Otherwise, what happens if you need to find out if you can do something when using the product.
Intel and Microsoft are not the only companies to monopolise parts of the IT industry, and use anti-competitive practices. Other companies includes IBM, in mainframes. Reboot wants to end these monopolies and stop new ones forming. Monopolies can spread from one part of the industry to others, so all must go.
Games console companies charge games companies a fixed charge per CD/ROM-cartridge they sell. This artificially raises the cost of console games. The way they do this is by using secret systems built into the console that tell if the CD/cartridge is an official one. If not, it rejects it, and will not run the software. If games companies hack the system to find the secret codes and avoid paying there is a possibility the code may be changed by the console manufacture. Console companies not only have used their power to put a tax on games (of several UK pounds) but also tell games companies how many games they can produce for their system, this may be zero. This is an abuse of power and could stop good games from being developed. If you are limited in the number of games you can produce, you may take the safe option over the original more often. Taxing games, regional codes and controlling games developers should be stopped. Chipping is OK if it is to work around these problems.
The British Library tries to keeps a copy of every book, magazine and newspaper ever published in the UK. Publisher have to by law send a copy of work they produce to the British Library. For music there is the BBC Music library and other libraries. We need a comparable software library to safe guard our software heritage.
Printer manufacturers should be banned from putting devices on print cartridges to stop the use of other makes of cartridge, refilling of cartridges and stopping cartridges for different printers of same make being interchangeable, a practise know as chipping. Chipping cartridges puts up the price and is against the environment. The British Standards Institute (BSI) should draw up an inkjet cartridge standard that does not include the print head and is designed for refilling. These boxes of ink will so cheap that 95%+ of the inkjet cartridge shops will close. They will probably be three sizes, small (for portable printers), medium (most of the market), and large (A3 and heavy usage network printers). With separate colour tanks for medium and large which are physically the same so can be interchanged. The large size colour tank could be used for the medium black tank and a bigger tank for large sized printers. This standard should be ratified by other standard organisations e.g. ISO etc. Remember no matter what shops tell you, cartridge resetters are legal. Cartridges could be made of bio-degradable plastic.
Many computer owners are annoyed by AOL (and ISP) CD-ROMs being given to them with computer equipment, magazines and by post which have no use except as coffee mats. AOL (etc) should be stopped from doing this by a)forcing them to use CD-RW or DVD+-RW b)putting interesting things on the remainder of the CD, free software or audio content c)not using a separate CD on a computer magazine d)only giving the CD to people that request it e)total ban.
Microsoft LAN software Netbios (port 137) is responsible for a large number of port scans. Spyware should be illegal and stopped. There should a list of domain names that are banned which all ISP should follow plus blocks at intercountry connections. Root servers should remove the domain names and only static IPs address allowed by computers. All ISPs should follow an official black list of banned uses and add users to the list when needed, ISP should be banned if they fail to agree. Ultimately if a large number of ISPs do not agree the system should be changed so that only Telcos (and large OLS) should be ISPs as they can cut the customers phone line, and there would be so few companies it would make things manageable. BT should not be solely blamed for redialers, as Microsoft and users lack of security is also to blame e.g. redialers do not work on broadband. Each Usenet newsgroup should have a person or organisation responsible for it as Usenet 2 has. Moderated groups should have better protection systems than the Approved: header line. Usenet access of trolls etc could be suspended or banned in part (by newsgroup and by being read only) or full. A corrupt ecosystem has built up on the Internet which needs to be ended.
If you were a member you could help decide the other issues in the IT industry that need tackling. Just because an issue is not mentioned on the site does not mean that Reboot does not believe in it.