On Friday 31 December 2004 10:19, Vickram Crishna wrote:

The service group is cybercafe operators.

Afaik a session was held in the past for assemblers and cybercafe owners.

Most of these outfits use Windows in various flavors - I hesitate to call it MS Windows, for the simple reason that most copies are in fact pirated and of poor quality (now, now, let's not get ;-) nasty everyone, about the quality of the native product).

Sheesh. There goes a chance for some sick jokes ;-).

they have a very easy and genuine excuse for harassment - illegal software. The current level of hafta is around one month's gross revenue for a small cafe,

How does the cop compute that??

So what's the solution, and how can we help?

Solution is 1) to use legal software 2) Do not get into a business on which u are clueless 3) Call the cops every time a cybercafe uses pirated stuff. A few hits with the hafta stick is a very good education.

Most of these businesses are really small, and are quite technically unequipped to deal with issues of software and hardware.

Yeah nice qualification to run a bussiness whose service is delivered on hardware and software.

Your intentions are laudable, but U cant help. As u stated in the rest of your mail It's not the owner / assembler but the customer who decides what os is on the pc. And given the level of zombieness around it will be sometime before things change, at that point things will resolve themselves. Availability of distros is not a problem. Availability of skill is only a little more of a problem. However to people who think nothing of piracy, paying money for skill is anthema. Go offer your service to a cybercafewalla and see. In fact offer him your services for free and see. All the piffle about poor and skill etc is rubbish. They are fully clued in on the piracy issue and have made a conscious decision to gyp someone (oh my heart bleeds for the OTHER CONVICTED PIRATE). It's the cops who have discovered a new avenue for revenue.

I use a knoppix cd when i am in a cyber cafe. Recently in Goa a cybercafe had dual boot machines with RH.

rgds jtd