Unbelievable Truth~~ A Windows 98 below 50mb

Crakers here in China has found one thing for fun. And they played the game to the extreme. They are fond of modifing everything, Inside my computer, I have several modified version of software-- Powerword, a very well known computer dictionary, a modified RealPlayer which can run faster and smoothlier than the official release.

Yesterday when I was reading a chinese blogger's post in his blog, I realized that there is somewhere a Windows 98 modified version existing on the internet which is smaller in size than 50 mb. So I turned to Google and found a lot of stuff to download, I got a rar file less than 45 mb and then made it into kan iso image file and installed successfully in my virtual machine.

The speed of the system is very very fast, (without any doubt it should be this case, the system has nothing but the corn of the kernel of the M$ system). It reminds me of the age when I was using this once-monopolistic system. At that time I often met the blue screen that remind me politely that my system encountered a problem and I have no other way but to reboot the system. I really hate this system, but how do you think about a GUIed system with full capability to run the largest softwares in a size less than 50mb?

I can understand a modified Photoshop less than 100mb and I can understand a Office 2003 under 150mb(the installation pack) and I can even understand a Windows XP under the size of 200mb (the installation iso file) but how can you make a Windows 98 under 50mb?

Technically, I am all at sea about how the modified system was made.But I have something else to talk about:

I admit that I am a hardcore and even crazy fan of the opensource movement, I really hate M$'s monopoly in the biz of operating system ,but end users can not do this kind of things to answer his own desire to find free and tiny softwares to use, Million of users here in China are downloading softwares of this kind everyday, and posts in the major crack forum are all towards this kind of software-mods or crack version of applications. Users are destroying the game rules.Plus they are doing harm to themselves too, they are sacrisfing the services and good quality to get a free and instant access to the high cost commercial softwares.

The commercial softwares will be cornered, if it become a trend no one would spend $ to buy things anymore, and the more people use the mods of commercial softwares they will become more used to these softwares, and they would not rather change to other solutions because they are afraid of the complex transition. So that people will refuse to change to work with free software eventually.

All in all this is a bad thing not only to user himself but to the industry also.Beware! It's time to keep some of the crack techniques in labs only now!

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