Hi, On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
kevin.taylor@powerconv.alstom.com said:
Someone at my last LUG meeting suggesting raiding skips for thrown out boxes, popping Linux on them, and giving them out to LUG members for experiments (a bit extreme, but I am sure something could come of it).
It's a good idea, but unfortunately is technically illegal AFAIK. If companies were to give kit away are they legally liable in any way for it? I mean I presume that companies don't sell old kit because the administration involved makes it easier to just throw it away rather than sell it? And not only that, are they legally liable for the kit at all, say someone gets electricuted as soon as they plug it in at home.
kit was going to a good cause and you could guarentee that any data on the systems was entirely wiped I'm sure they could see it as a way of getting cheap publicity.
Any sensible organisation would presumably wipe the data itself, and in my limited experience a degausser capable of that would render the hard disk as good as unusable. And giving away PCs that require hard disks isn't such a PR coup. -- Nick Drage, helping fill up the internet since 1993. If a `religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one. - - John Barrow