Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Secrecy, Toyware, France
Can't you just see this happening at your workplace? snowbike writes: "The missing hard drives at Los Alamos have been found. Apparently they fell behind a copy machine. It will probably be attributed to the closure and evacuation associated with the fires. Read all about it at CNN. Looks like there is still plenty of heat to go around regarding this--now the UC contract to run the lab is in danger." OK. So a little bit of data went missing. Are you perfect? Are you saying you've never misplaced a floppy, or left a few nuclear secrets behind the copy machine? More coverage can be found at ABC News, at The L.A. Times and at The Washington Post .
This is for your own good. In regards to Xday's discussion of privacy violations in Mattel software, Moses Lawn writes: "I'm an ex-Broderbund programmer that wrote all of the code for this, and I just posted a comment about exactly what it does, how, and why. It's actually pretty benign. (Hopefully my comment wound up in the right place - first-time posting and all.)"
Not a single Earth-destroying collision yet! People are pretty excited at Brookhaven National Laboratory, as RHIC (the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) just saw its first collisions. There are pictures and a press release here. That page also has links to some animations and more info on how RHIC and its component systems work. RHIC is the new particle accelerator at Brookhaven. Its main goal (among many) is to look for a quark-gluon plasma. This is the result of about 18 years of work, and it will be the premiere facility for high-energy physics research until about 2008.
Tell me again how this makes things easier? snoogans writes "I just received this from my Dell account rep. As deep a hole as Microsoft has dug, do they really need to do this? How can they force all OEM's to implement this BIOS lock thing?
'The contents of the OS media kits that are shipped with Dell systems for Windows 95, Windows 98SE, and Windows NT4 will be changed as of June 1,2000 (New OS media kits are already shipping for Windows 2000 Professional) Systems impacted: All OptiPlex, Dimension, Precision, Latitude, and Inspiron systems. Implementation will be worldwide and include all languages. Why? The changes to the OS media kits are required by Microsoft in an effort to reduce software piracy What is changing (exactly) Dell-branded OS media replaces the Microsoft-generic OS media. Artwork on CD will change from "Microsoft Windows X" to "Dell Product Recovery CD -- Windows XX" In addition to a copy of the OS, the OS media will include a BIOS lock that prevents the OS media from being installed on a non-Dell system. Microsoft requires the BIOS lock to help prevent software piracy. The set-up diskettes have been removed because customers can now boot directly from the CD The functionality of the OS media remains the same -- whenever the user is asked to insert the "Microsoft Windows XX" CD, such as when they are reinstalling the OS or when they are changing the configuration of their system -- they will use the Dell Product Recovery CD The Certificate of Authentication (COA) will no longer be attached to the front of the Product documentation. Instead, it will be on a label affixed to the outside of the system chassis. The COA label should not be removed from the chassis -- the label will tear into small pieces if there is an attempt to remove it and it will become unusable. The product key located on the COA label is a mechanism used by Microsoft to ensure that the operating system loaded on the system is legal - the product key cannot be used by other users to compromise the security of the system. Your ability to re-install the OS from CD has not changed, the Dell Product Recovery CD replaces the functionality available in the Microsoft OS media kits'"
It would be great if hordes of programmers and interface designers worlwide would come up with a freely distributable alternative that was more stable than Windows and obviated the need for such presumption.;)
Blowing their nose in the general direction. MissKitty writes: "Even though I deplore Naziism and have got to wonder about the people who collect this stuff as memorabilia, I was amused that someone had the guts to tell the French Court to push off. Under French law it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones. They were wanting for Yahoo to filter France's access to these things (that came up on their auction site). "Asking us to filter access to our sites according to the nationality of Web surfers is very naive," Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! said. Score one for political incorrectness."
15 - 30 minutes to get back up and running when Windows gets wrecked. This makes life so much easier for consumers and for technicians.
I don't know about you, but back in the days that I actually did use Windows, it took me that time or less to get it back on without the recovery disk. It's really not as hard as you're making it out to be. In fact, you don't even need the Boot Disk at all. Just head into your BIOS settings and tell it to boot from the CD. That certainly worked well enough for me. The fact that it took "trained" technicians more than 30 minutes to reinstall Windows - What is the world coming to?
(Since this is slashdot, I also have to ask, why are you installing Windows on a computer you slaved hard at building??? You should now enough to run Linux (or *BSD)).
There is a good reason to throw Windows on your machine: Games. I'm sorry everybody, but once in a while theres a game that you just can't miss, and unfortunately, it's only for Windows. Just because you have built your own computer doesn't mean that you're not going to want to play games other than UT, Quake 3, or Railroad Tycoon. Not being able to freshly install with the OEM cd is a huge hindrance. I don't want to have to head out and buy a 90$ piece of crap when I'll only use it once a month.
- - - - - - - - -
If you buy another PC two years later, you should be able to install that same copy of Windows on it, because you paid for the license! You don't need to buy a new copy of the software for every machine you buy, just as you don't for any other piece of software.
Somehow, almost no consumer ever thinks of this. Maybe it's because the act of buying Windows is seldom a conscious decision; the tax is slipped in under their noses without giving them a chance to think about it.
If you buy a new PC to run Windows, save money by installing your old version of Windows on it.
Speaking of things oral - Woody Allen once told a joke that went something like this:
"I'd like to say a brief word now about oral contraception.
[pause]
I had an experience with oral contraception, just the other day...
[bigger pause]
I asked a woman to sleep with me - and she said no."
(badda-bing!)
Actually, it was quite risque for the early Sixties... And the album it's on, "Standup Comic" is a classic. Woody in his day practically invented the cerebral one liner.
Of course, your get rich quick method has probably been used to copy floppies more than once - or so the apocryphal tech support stories go.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
If I remember correctly, couldn't one just return the CD to Dell, saying that you disagreed with the EULA and demand a refund as one is entitled to if one disagreed with it.
Then, with that refund in hand, goto [insert major software chain] and purchase a retail version. The retail version couldn't possibly have the BIOS lock on it, & it would save circumventing the BIOS hack or CD copy everytime you reinstall windows.
I can remember this tactic being used with many Linux installs.
Just my $0.02
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
Stupid? You bet. Happilly Americans get to sit on the smiling side of this double standard, but don't expect that to last forever. Yeah but as long as the U.S. has the nukes and the military muscle, the rest of the world WILL put up with it (unless you really foresee a day when Americans will vote in a public representatives who would allow extradition of a business leader to another country to answer to contravening such a questionable law). I'm upset about what happened with iCrave especially (I am Canadian - [used without permission of Molsons]) but what can we do? Very few countries on this planet have any kind of ability to stand up to the U.S. on issues such as this, except as a concerted group, which this situation certainly doesn't warrant. I also agree with many of the other posters here who feel that France is desperately trying to hang on to a view of the world that just doesn't exist anymore (much like the Canadian province of Quebec). It's kinda quaint too though, but I'm concerned as to what might happen if the majority of the French don't wake up and smell the cafe (notice I have qualified the preceding statement -- I'm sure that some of the French citizenry do 'grok' the shape of things to come) soon.
----
Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
Unfortunately all of these computer builders have to compete on price. Their bargain models are bound to include cheap components and integrated proprietary software. I am sure that Dell, Gateway and others get a discount from the major suppliers when they use bios locked software like this.
I recently helped a friend of mine purchase a Dell. The cost competing model L had on board video, cheap components and proprietary software. For a hundred fifty dollars more she got a nice XPS model with top drawer video, and audio cards.
The Sound Blaster live install CD that came with the XPS system was seperate from the Dell recovery CD and was genuine Creative Labs, I doubt that it was BIOS locked but do correct me if I am wrong. When you have a choice don't go with the cheapest components they are bound to be junk.
True.
It would be very similar to installing linux one one system with a custom kernel, and then moving that drive to another system. There is a good chance it wont boot because all of the drivers are wrong.
Not true. Linux is very tolerant of changes in the platform. I do this all the time in the course of building systems for clients. Just avoid Kudzu.
To quote from CNN:
If NEST doesn't have *immediate* access to the information they need, bad things will happen, like cities being atomized or poisoned by plutonium. Encryption would add several failure points to the system, such as losing the key. Furthermore, a single bit error in encrypted data can render it all meaningless. When you're sitting next to an active nuke, "access denied" is *not* what you want to see.
On the other hand, secrecy isn't that important. The information probably didn't include full engineering drawings and instructions for building bombs, just diagrams and instructions needed for deactivating them. Besides which the open literature already tells you how to make a nuclear explosive -- obtaining the plutonium, and precision machining the fissionable core and explosive lenses are the hard parts (not to mention synchronized detonation of the conventional explosives and injection of neutrons).
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Is there any news on the Douglas Adams interview (not complaining, just intrested)?
I meant advocating the belief (i.e., attempt to convince others of the truth of the belief), not advocating the acts of the Holocaust.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Cities atomized? How?
The toxicity of plutonium is a myth. What's worse, it's also pseudoscientific nonsense perpetuated by muddy thinking. I hesitate to post a link for fear of tanking an innocent web server, but here it is. Here's another link with more numbers, and another.
It's not poisonous in the chemical sense. There are any number of common materials that are more toxic chemically than plutonium. The chemical tocxity, if there is any (it has not been observered) is completely insignificant compared to its radiation effects. It is most dangerous when inhaled, since it is an alpha emitter and can then raise the risk of lung cancer. Even so, there are no peer-reviewed studies showing that plutonium is extremely dangerous when inhaled. This is just one of those old canards that will probably never die.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
It would still be overpriced.
forth ?love if honk then
Beats me what requires me to do that - certainly nothing I agreed to! I stuck it on the manual, and would have preferred to stick it somewhere else, except he wasn't around.
I heard recently that it is actually illegal to believe that the jewish holocaust never happened, or other similar ideas, and in fact the law actually defines that history to be true. Is that true?
Given France's, er, generally wacky nature, it wouldn't surprise me, but I thought I would put it out for verification.
P.S. Yes, I believe the holocaust happened, etc, etc
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I was recently looking at an IBM Thinkpad model A20 (brand new - actually a demo system) and noticed that the windows serial number was on a sticker on the bottom of the machine. After seeing this posting it's pretty apparent that IBM is doing just what Dell is doing in the article. Then again, AFAIK, IBM has _always_ used product recovery cd's that are designed to work with a specific model (be it desktop, laptop, or whatever)... This is pretty much why I don't buy computers from these jerk-off companies.. If it comes time that I upgrade the system (keep the HD, maybe the floppy and cd drives, but replace the mobo - including the bios) I __have__ to buy Windows again, even if the old system ends up being un-useable (I have several ancient "part" machines, and imagine I'll have some more in the future).
Microsoft just gets suckier and suckier every day....
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Heres what I'm wondering.. Now that we're at the point where when you purchase a cd for, say win98, you do not actually own it. However.. you still own the physical media that the data is stamped on (at least, I hope). So, is it still piracy if I make a copy of that media and give it out to my friends? None of them would own it, but since I dont either, where is the problem? Microsoft didn't sell me the data on it, they sold me the right to use it. My friends may not have the right to use the data on the disc, but can't I still give them the cds, assuming they never actually use it?
Compaq Presarios suck. If you disagree, just spend some time fixing the damn things (not one or two for friends, but dozens in a professional setting). They come preloaded with too much crap, and the hardware tends to be too proprietary. But msconfig is a great utility for disabling all that crap and making things run better.
Granted, Compaq has been doing some stupid things with recovery partitions, but recovery CD's are really very nice. Again, if you don't like the recovery CD's, make a copy of the cab files in C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS and spend your six hours reinstalling everything.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
It seems to me this won't combat piracy much - in one particular crowd. The average home user. When they go to do a big hardware upgrade and their Windows (recovery) CD can't do crap for them, are they going to go to the store and spend $100 on a OS they already have and own? No, they're going to get really pissed off and borrow someone else's copy. Why pay twice for something you already have? If Microsoft/OEM can have no morals, why should they?
The real big time pirates, or whatever you call them, don't care. They just go down to the store to buy the first original copy anyways.
Microsoft and the OEMs sure are doing their part to make sure the end users are powerless. Why don't they just start calling them what the OEMs and MSoft really think they are... "maggots." I can see it now "Dear MAGGOT, thank you for buying a Dell computer w/Windows 2000....."
Here's what you do:
Buy two Dell computers under two different names.
Swap motherboards.
Attempt to reinstall Windows on machine #1 with machine #1's disk.
When it fails, contact Dell technical support and demand a CD that will work.
When it arrives, attempt to reinstall Windows on machine #2 with machine #2's disk.
Repeat until Dell is bankrupt, then purchase their systems at a huge discount.
--
I agree.
I have started looking around for a computer to replace my Sony VIAO P166.
I was looking at Dell. Now I will no longer consider their machines.
I saw some well priced machines at buypogo.com, but if they have MS bios traps in them I won't go that route either.
Looks like I will be visiting Linux Only retailers who sell clean bios PCs.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Other than that, it is nicer than the linux docs.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
The suggestion was good; I got a little carried away before. I'm glad you liked this one better! :)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
Alternatively, perhaps VMware can give people their choice of BIOS key. . .
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
Boris: Did you get the secret plans?
Natasha: Of course, comrade.
Boris: Let me see!
[Natasha hands a sheaf of splotchy blackened xerox paper to Boris.]
Boris: What is this?!
Natasha: I copied secret data from computer parts. They won't know.
Boris: Ayiiii! We burned the hillsides for THIS?!
[
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
One could just stop it from booting the time before it detects the PNP and other resources. So, the next time it boots it boots on the new machine and ...
Methinks.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
how do you lose a hard drive behind a copy machine??'sounds like a blonde joke waiting to happen. What happened to the blonde russian who tried to copy the hard drive? (insert punchline here) c'mon people, think.
Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul
Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul
carldrawings.dk3.com
It is more important, in the Microsoft culture, to bash their competitors and pirates than to actually serve their consummers. It is because it is not structured as a service company, but as a manufacturer.
In a somewhat related case that appeared in a renowned Brazilian newspaper, Microsoft is suing several companies stablished in Brazil, including Schering-Plough and Wella, that bought computers from IBM and Compaq with pre-installed MS software.
They have all the authencity certificates but MS decided to sue them anyway since the software wasn't specified in the bills of sale, even though local law is clear in stating any of these two documents is sufficient proof of legal ownership.
Looks like OS X will have a bright future.
AOL has submitted it's IMX draft to the IETF and it is available on the Internet at http://aim.aol.com/openim. Here's news of the story on C|Net.
As for the MSFT BIOS lock deal with Dell i'm not exactly sure how new this is. My IBM Aptiva i bought in April last year did not come with Windows 98 but instead with an IBM Recovery disk that would only install on my Aptiva 9which i found out much to my chagrin after assembling a new machine and being forced to buy a copy of Windows for it). I am surprised this practice is just getting mention now. It is VERY old news to me and I'm sure it is to other IBM Aptiva users.
The notion that the US government would hand over a leading tech CEO to the French government for possible incarceration is laughable.
unless Yahoo! can guarantee that the offending content can not be accessed from France then that content will have to be pulled.
This is not a possible outcome either. If it were even possible for the French government to restrict French access to Yahoo (it isn't), French citizens would be in an uproar over the zealous censorship of the surfing.
Frankly, such restrictions don't hurt Yahoo, they hurt the French people.
France is already seen an an Internet laggard. The government won't be taking such Luddite steps anytime soon, although they'll learn a thing or two about the realities of filtering internet content along the way.
Notice that in none of the stories does it say photocopy machine. Consider that it may have been a hard drive copier.
One story today quotes Los Alamos residents as saying the incident was blown out of proportion... as if their opion matters and their wishing would make it so.
No, you're the incompetent stupid fuck. Not all recovery CDs work as Windows CDs. The recovery CD for my Vaio is just one big binary image.
Hm, the hard drives fell? Hope all those nuclear secrets weren't damaged in the fall :/
-- Dr. Eldarion --
MS's plans will be yet another nail in the coffin of the old practice of building your own systems. This of course just happens to be exactly what Dell and others want. It's no suprise this highly restrictive copy protection has gone through, it's in the interests of everyone involved except the consumers.
No, the reason microsoft implemented these
extensions was to carry information about what
groups and permissions a user has. The
reason the field they used was added to the
Kerberos protocol was for just such a purpose.
What was objectionable IMHO was making the
details of their extensions a trade secret.
Hey,
This has been discussed quite a lot recently. a Q&A section was recently run in PC Pro. Here's my parody:
Q: Will this stop piracy or simply increase Microsoft's profits?
A: By reducing piracy, additional revenue will be seen by us! Ker-ching Ker-ching! Woohoo! This in turn would lead to us paying higher taxes, but don't worry: Our lawyers are working 24/7 looking for tax loopholes so we can pay as little as possible!!
Q: If piracy is reduced, will we see cheaper licenses?
A: Of course not! Whilst we have just said "By reducing piracy, additional revenue will be seen throughout the industry", we won't pass this on to consumers. We'll carry on nailing you for the highest prices we can, just like always!
Q: Why are you adding another complication to an already complicated licencing system?
A: Our new media policy is genuinely intended to support the 5,500 OEMs who buy genuine products to compete on a level playing field. We are strong-arming them into this policy for their own good (And we wouldn't dream of disregarding their opinions), even if the only people who will see the 'additional revenue' which will be 'seen throughout the industry' will be us.
Q: Is Microsoft passing the buck to OEMs in terms of technical support?
A: We always have! Why should we change now?
Q: Will my OS work if I upgrade my PC?
A: Obviously, the BIOS key isn't overwritten when you flash your bios. We will, however, side-step the massive issue of people actually wanting to upgrade their motherboards but it won't matter! We think you're too dumb to notice!
Q: In the case of a backup partition on the hard disk, what happens if my disk fails or becomes infected with a virus?
A: Well, if you're within your warranty, you can send your system back for repair and wait weeks for it to be returned with all your files comprehensively erased. If you're out of warranty, you will have to go to a Microsoft-endorsed retailer who will nail you with massive charges to actually install what you have already paid for!
Q: Do your proprietary Kerbeos extensions have any purpose except to stop Windows 2000 being compatible with UNIX servers?
A: No, we're profiteering again! What's more, nobody will be able to do anything about it because the only people who have the power to threaten us are ignorant of the facts!
Q: Does Microsoft support the old adage 'The customer is always right'?
A: No, course not. Microsoft supports the adage 'The customer has money. Bill Gates must have this money'. Inkeeping with this adage, we will do whatever we have to to make more money, regardless of whether the end solution is as functional as the one it is replacing.
Q: Does Microsoft hate us all?
A: Only if you haven't got any money left to spend on our products.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
My fiancee (who is very tech savvy) has twice attempted to use her recovery CD. In both cases, she wound up calling me to bring a real Windows CD over so it would actually work.
And what happens when you buy a new modem or netcard?
There is a good reason to throw Windows on your machine: Games
But earlier I thought you said that you don't run Windows anymore.
I don't want to have to head out and buy a 90$ piece of crap when I'll only use it once a month.
And you didn't listen carefully. The Windows CD files are kept in C:\Windows\Options\Cabs. Burn them onto CD. Or stick the harddrive from your built system into the other one and copy the cab files over.
In fact, you don't even need the Boot Disk at all. Just head into your BIOS settings and tell it to boot from the CD.
I could be wrong, but I think only Win98 2nd edition is a bootable CD. 98 1st ed. and the 95's are not. And what about machines that don't have bootable CD's? Like older Compaqs for instance?
The fact that it took "trained" technicians more than 30 minutes to reinstall Windows - What is the world coming to?
Actually, my emphasis was on the fact that it makes life so much easier for consumers. But why would anyone (other than you) want to do a multi-step installation of windows when it could really just be a one-step process--boot to the restore CD (or companion diskette on older systems) and click restore. Done. No installing extra drivers or extra software. If the machine hasn't been modified, and the majority in the hands or retail consumers haven't been, this is a faster and easier process. We do seem to agree about the qualities of most technicians, though (dimmer than a dead lightbulb??).
Finally: disclaimer--if you just trolled me, good job. But you raised some interesting points to respond to anyway.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Umm, I must have hit the wrong button when I moderated this... maybe if I post here my moderation will be undone.
Sorry Booker.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Microsoft has traditionally been one of the least anti-piracy companies. After all, if users are running around installing bootleg Windows 98 (or whatever), it's only a matter of time until the IT department buckles under the pressure and buys the upgrade. Maybe they think they've finally reached market saturation, and it's time to crack down.
What sucks about these changes is that they are carefully crafted so that the burden doesn't fall on the corporate customers at all. Dell can do whatever, but I would imagine that a good number of their corporate customers reformat and install a disk image. Microsoft is still happily spamming my workplace with all sorts of MSDN CDs, all unlocked (you don't even need to enter a registration code), which we IT goons all happily burn copies and install at home. That's OK with them because we are in a position to influnce purchasing, but apparently someone reselling their OEM CD on eBay or at a computer show is a huge revenue loss.
Meanwhile, the small vendors, small business that buy things preinstalled, and home users are the ones getting the shaft. The question is how much pain users are willing to go through before the backlash starts. Only that MS has the lowend market locked up so tight, there's not much people will be able to do, short of real warezing (as opposed to casual piracy like borrowing someone's CD).
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
All Information classified secret or above requires "need to know" in order to access it. It is the second componet of clssification. Generally speaking however If you able to get into an area that contains x information, you are both cleared for that info, and considered to have a "need to know". The real bitch isn't unauthorised people getting access to information, it is the fact that sometimes the authorized people people become dishonest.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
While I don't think anyone is a stupid fsck, I would like to point out, as the original post does, that the pertinent contents of the Windows98 cd (drivers, installation files, etc.) can be found in "c:\windows\options\cabs" on most OEM installations.
It may, but noone tells the average consumer this (except perhaps buried deep within a manual that the salesdroid tells them they don't need to read), and, at least on this HP, the path to the "Windows CD" wasn't preset to the cab location (which happens if you actually install Windows from the HD).
The argument was that having recovery CDs were a benefit for the average consumer, and I was providing a real example (rather than a vague hypothetical) of how it isn't.
to ask. Q: What are the past and present 'inovations' MS keeps referring to?
A: Well there is embracing and extending proprietary file formats and protocalls, acquiring new technology through mergers, putting competition out of business by spreading FUD, and then there is our inovative licensing of our OSs.
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
I don't have a lot of time, so hear me out. There's something funny going on in the world today, and I've figured it out. But they're on to me, so I must be brief.
It all started when buggy Mattell software sold to children in France went haywire, ordering Nazi memorabilia by the metric ton. Meanwhile, in Los Alamos, secret goverment agents were attempting track where John Rocker's private stash is disappearing to, when--much to their dismay--all high-tech government computer equipment (Dell machines with Win2k, BIOS-locked, of course) became disrupted by high energy particle-collisions and set themselves on fire. The resulting panic brought several agents to their knees as they prayed... for the computer technicians to quickly remove the hard drives, thus saving complete system images of their OS, and copies every pr0nographic image ever made.
And you thought your week was hell.
-={(.Y.)}=-
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
Ok...While I don't think anyone is a stupid fsck, I would like to point out, as the original post does, that the pertinent contents of the Windows98 cd (drivers, installation files, etc.) can be found in "c:\windows\options\cabs" on most OEM installations. If they are not there, someone likely removed them to "save space". In todays world, I don't think it is too much to ask to use 100 MB of HDD space.
Anyway, I hope that helps your Grandma next time. Also, if she owns a copy of the software, fair use (regardless of DMCA, RIAA, MPAA) AND her license (go ahead...read it) allow her to maintain a copy of the software for backup purposes. So getting the CD from a friend, as long as you have your own valid reg key and License is perfectly okie dokey.
-fp
did a group of linux users try that a little while back? if I remember right they just got a a smile and a "no". I would still love to see it happen in mass. And BTW the price an OEM pays for windows is alot less then what we pay (if we pay at all) at the store. Just my $0.021
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Dell has been doing this since their first implementation of Windows 2000 on at least all their business systems. Heck, even before that they were affixing the OEM code to the outside of their boxes even if we ordered NT4 workstation on them (Yep... all windows NT shop - I'm attempting to get more linux/bsd servers in for web and database serving - MS-SQL on NT is just not a good thing, and IIS has been nothing but trouble. The NT boxes without either of them on them have had uptimes of over 200 days, the IIS/SQL boxes never over 20).
...
I don't see what the huge deal is over this - the Disc that comes with it with win2k should only need to be installed on Dell systems anyway. We have retail or quick license copies for the rest of them. We've been getting licenses for win2k way before they released it so that when we switch (sometime later this year) we wouldn't have to go buy upgrade licenses.
--onyx--
So, at best, it would be an expensive, possibly ineffective political statement. Who knows, those wacky kids at Yahoo! might try something like it.
and I meant to post that at 1. I think I need to stop using Slashdot in the morning...
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The "protection" was password-protected zip files. The setup program you run unzips them.
Opening the setup EXE in DOS edit allowed me to see what password they were using and unzip them myself, so that I could use it later.
Not only that, but running the setup myself kept it from installing all of the extra crap on the desktop that IBM snuck in there, as well as all the "family" programs I could care less about.
Let's hope the copy protection doesn't improve, and then it'll all be OK.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Who the hell leaves nuclear secretes on hard drives just lying around? Even if this is a secure area, why were they left out? Don't they normally put these things in secure volts? Also why would you take the HD's out of the computer in the first place, unless you were planning on moving the data? Personally I think this shows gov mentality at its best. But that is just my opinion.
Lets face it. Someone really screwed up. The data is probably copied. The damage is done. Who's the spy? Also what kind of secretes about nuclear tech can these drives have? Can't you find that stuff on the internet or in your local library?.. let see take some uranium, or is it pletonium.. hmmm
As for recovery CD.. I think that I can understand doing this if the cdrom is configured specifically for a computer. The BIOS may be used as as key, when the software detects thsi key it installs the necessary files to recovery this sytem. Hopefully this would include the proper sound drivers, cdrom drivers and all the other. If that is what they are planning then it is a good idea.
Something to consider is that most computer retail companies in the past were not giving any cdrom with the machines that they sold> If it does crash or something happens, the user would have to take it back to them. They were not giving them a cdrom nor were they giving them the software to reinstall from a crash. The manufactures (mostly small companies) were taking the cdroms and using them to install copies on dozons of computers. M$ sued some of these companies, over lost revenue. I am not sure that this is directed at the end user, but at computer companies. To prevent computer companies from taking one copy of M$ and installing it on dozons of computers. Personally I use RH Linux, so M$ can do what they want. I don't need their stuff at home. They way it is going, with OS X coming next year, M$ OS may be on its way out. If OS X is stable and works well, many people I know will be turning to Macs AT WORK TOO!
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
Ah, yes, a "hapless tourist" fell for that scheme, and definitely not you yourself, the teller of the tale. Just some "hapless tourist" who shall remain nameless (except that it's a /. editor whose name begins with "r").
</joke>
--
What is this thing going to do to people trying to run WinXX under VMware? The VMware stuff has it's own system bios (some form of Phoenix). From what that message is saying, if the CD can not detect a Dell BIOS, then it is not going to install... or did I read that wrong?
The license certificate is now a sticker on the PC case. It flakes apart if you try to remove it. This makes it impossible to return the software for refund, without returning the PC too.
Admittedly, only a few people ever got their money back by returning the bundled copy of windows. However, this completely prevents it.
Not to mention the possiblity that users within the juridiction of this French court ruling can access Yahoo from an ISP or other provider not in the .fr domain.
.fr . A lot of corporate users have .com domains, just like many ISPs. There is also a few .org's.
.fr, .com and .org addresses, just in case :-)
To back that up, note that many French already are in domains not in
Maybe Yahoo should block all
It boggles me that anyone would believe this egregious example of FUD tactics. How low will MicroShaft stoop?
This is the reason the new computer I am getting is being assembled component by component from the ground up and will be running Linux. Now, if I could just get my workplace to ditch the crappy NT shop that they run.
The other reason is that my current home system (an old P75 with 16Megs of ram) has a current uptime of over 40 days and the NT machine I am stuck with at work I have to reboot 2-3 times a week, sometimes 2-3 times a day.
OK, you win that one but I think the indexing is more a problem with their implementation than the actual idea (for example, the use of subsets could be greatly improved).
This is obviously flamebait, but still... actually it isn't France as a whole that thinks it is living in the pre-net world, it is the government, and the two plaintiffs in that lawsuit, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of French Jewish Students.
For the government, it simply does not understand what the Internet is all about. I don't think that's really specific to France. Any government will try to use its existing laws to "regulate" the Internet. In France's case there are laws that outlaw auctions against auctions of nazi memorabilia, so we get this lawsuit.
The Union of French Jewish Students clearly does know about the Internet pretty much like RIAA and MPAA do know about it. They have an already long history of suing websites they dont'like. Of course, when it's a hosted homepage, they'll go after the host rather than the individual who created the page.
Interestingly, a lot of their members seem to be law school students.
They're also tolerant people who will call you a nazi if you disagree with them. You might do a little babblefish on their website. Don't miss the forum, half of the messages are about how they censor it on a regular basis. Censored messages include one by another French anti-racist organization who was explaining his reasons for not joining in the Yahoo lawsuit...
I have much more respect for the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism. They really stand for their beliefs and do a lot more to promote their ideas than just suing websites. The problem here IMHO seems to be that this organization is ruled by rather old people (at least, those that speak on tv are old) who might indeed think that they are still in the pre-internet days.
Well I got a bit carried away. My point is, you shouldn't tag a whole country as "bad", "defensive" or whatever because of the wrongdoings of some of its citizens. Or if you really want to do that, please don't forget that Mr Bill Gates is American.
I've never had problems finding Compaq drivers; granted I usally work on DeskPros, not Presarios. If you can get one, the Compaq Support CD is godsend. It has drivers ("SoftPaqs") for every imaginable model of desktop, laptop, and workstation.
You are absolutely right that reverse DNS will fail miserably. That is intended. The resource use would also be very large. Which gives them the opportunity to bring home to the court exactly what they mean when they say that blocking selectively for French users, "is not technically feasible."
IOW Yahoo can go out of the way to block all of France from the auction site, come up with some publicity, French people will still have no trouble reaching them, and they can then talk about how much they are spending and how ineffective it is.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
If they wern't misplaced, why were they looking for them?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I think this is a very good point. In the 19th century, military intelligence was limited to tactical information such as troop movement or enemy supply routes. There is very little benefit in expending a lot of effort preventing weapons secrets from falling into the wrong hands. Better to work out countermeasures as part of designing the thing in the first place. Assume that the enemy already has the same weapon and govern yourself accordingly. This way, a country doesn't get lulled into a false sense of security derived from the mistaken belief that mere technological superiority will win a war.
It's ridiculous to even have military secrecy, or even an intelligence service, during peacetime. Guard your borders. If you see someone coming and they're armed, shoot to kill. Ask questions later. But don't spend billions of dollars designing microphones that can be implanted in a condom and sending agents into risky undercover sitations in other countries. That's nonsense. Stop playing games and start concentrating on preserving what's left of civilization.
the OS media will include a BIOS lock that prevents the OS media from being installed on a non-Dell system
I'm just guessing from what I see at work, but it seems that a big part of piracy occurs in the workplace. We have all Dell machines (most companies probably buy from all machines from the same vendor), but only one copy of office 2000, windows 2000, etc. and install them on every machine with the same CD-key.
Instead, it will be on a label affixed to the outside of the system chassis. The COA label should not be removed from the chassis -- the label will tear into small pieces if there is an attempt to remove it and it will become unusable.
Shhh. No one tell them that you can write the numbers down - or better yet keep them in a text file called 'COA numbers' on one of the servers.
"Si vous voulez construire un navire, ne vous contentez pas de réunir du bois, de recruter des hommes, de les instruire et leur répartir leurs tâches, mais parlez-leur de la mer que sillonnera le bateau jusqu'à les en faire rêver."
SAINT-EXUPERY
The way Gateway used to, I assume with this they won't be doing it anymore, ship machines was ideal. They would send it out with a recovery CD *and* a full version OEM copy of winders whatever. Last time I worked on one I was working tech support for a ISP. The recovery CD was a good thing. When we really thought the customer should nuke the system (As a supervisor I could suggest it after a bunch of boilerplate my techs could pass one up to me) telling them how to back up and use the recovery CD made it very easy on us. At this same time my brother-in-law also had a Gateway and having the OEM cd made it possible for me to recover him without putting all of Gateway's crap back on (easy way to do a clean install of drivers etc.) But the customer should have both and should be able to use winders like a book in other words you can use it in one location at a time and only in that location. Taking away the right to use it on another machine is a bad thing.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Is Microsoft trying to piss the gov't off? They are being treatened with a split up so they decide to patent their file formats (ASF) and force programs to stop using them (VirtualDUB). Now they are placing incredible burdens on consumers to go along with the MS tax? What the hell are they thinking? Interesting side note: I heard on the radio an interview with a law professor who theorized that all of MS patents were basically useless now since there was no chance that MS would risk sueing anyone at this point. Knowing Gates' huge ego, I'm not sure if that's true.
It was already screwed up that when I bought a laptop a couple of years ago the only copy of Windows was 30 disk images on the HD, this was also the only source of drivers. Completely brilliant.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
BUT... for the average consumer this is a GOOD thing. Having to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows (which WILL happen eventually) is a real pain. Normally, the average consumer takes the computer in to the local shop (CompUSA, Micro Center, etc). And pays a fee to have Windows reinstalled.
Except what happens when your average consumer buys a printer, hooks it up, and Windows says "Insert your Windows CD"? That's what my grandmother ran into with her HP, because it dodn't come with a Windows CD, it came with a HP Recovery CD, and the recovery CD doesn't work as a Windows CD. She had two choices - put more $$ in MicroSoft's pocket, or get a pirated CD from a friend. Guess which one she went for?
Did Microsoft reimburse Dell for all the time they had to spend to implement these measures? They put an unnecessary strain on Dell's engineers to server the customer while at the same time abiding by the new MS licensing garbage. If I were Dell, I'd be pissed about it.
As another note, if I buy a computer with Windows on it (like I have many choices), I shouldn't have to run that copy on that machine. I could wipe it out, put Linux on it, and decide to use Windows on another machine. That is my right, as I own one copy of the software.
Microsoft doesn't care if all us "IT goons happily burn copies of". On the back of the insert on my April 2000 MSDN package, it says that following, illustrating my point:
"Microsoft has amended its MSDN library Subscription licensing terms. The new terms allow all employess within a customer's organization to frelly install, access, and use the contents of the MSDN Library Subscription. There is no restriction on the number of end users installing, accessing, or using the Library or the number of computers (including servers) running the MSDN Library Subscription. This change applies only to the contents of MSDN Library."
So now we get Windows NTNT instead of Windows NT. I think this is a ploy by Microsoft to ride the popularity of Little Ceasar's "pizza pizza".
Two for the price of one is always better!!!
--
May the source be with you!
--
May the source be with you!
Jason Zwolak
Blocked all *.fr addresses, directing them to a page saying something like Nos excuses. Ces pages sont actuel bloquées des utilisateurs français pour nous introduire dans la conformité à une décision récente de cour.
Then they could honestly tell the French court that they were making a sincere attempt to comply with the ruling...
Hmm...perhaps they should also include contact information for the case, and a link to an explanation of what their position was.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Hehe given the propensity for Dell to have lawyers I would believe they have already covered this facet of the situation
Microsoft has traditionally been one of the least anti-piracy companies.
Perhaps, but Bill Gates of Micro-Soft is the original anti-piracy zealot.
In Britain I remember hearing about someone suing Gateway 2000 for shipping a copy of M$ Office 97 Small Business Edition that would only install on a specially installed Win95 (that was done by an OEM). If the owner were to reinstall the OS himself (or move to a different computer), the CD would not work.
Windows HATES it when you swap hardware like that. Chances are it'd eat itself so bad you'd have to reinstall from scratch.
Amen to that, brother! I moved a hard drive from a system with Cyrix 266 to one with a Celeron 300 and tried to change the video card at the same time. It took SIX hours over two days (with multiple reboots) to get it to work right. That particular Windows installation is over two years old and I was desperately trying to not to reinstall.
My Mandrake Linux partition only took 10 minutes to set up (I had to load a new X server and configure X) before I was off to the races...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Let's begin with facts, if you please. A local French court has issued a questionable judgment. The matter has not even been to appeal, nor has any official (cabinet minister, for instance) declared he supported the decision.
Given those facts, it seems that some people are overreacting a bit. Every time some wacko US court issues some wacko decision about the Internet (look at the DeCSS cases), we do not see messages such as "The US is stupid, the US government is a bunch of morons, they do not get the future of the Internet, they are still in the 50's where there was director Hoover of the FBI.". When I read that some southern US lawmakers were proposing laws that would make it an offence to question publicly the quality of food produced in their state, I did not run a story saying "US government imposes censorship on their citizens, chances of a military dictatorship soon!".
What is the current situation of France with respect to the Internet is as follows:
As for free speech, basically everything is permitted (in any language, contrary to what some punchdrunk US journalists may have written) as long as:
- you are not libelling (like accusing somebody of a crime without any clue or proof)
- you are not advocating crimes (you can't do a public call to murder)
- you are not advocating racial or religious hatred;
- you are not putting into doubt the nazi crimes.
I admit the latter is a bit stupid. If you do not agree with it, please do not flame the French in general but the lobbyists that caused this law to be voted and sued Yahoo (that's the French association of Jewish students).Actually, make that around 18 bucks, which is reportedly what Dell pays for them. Of course, these licenses would not come with the legendary Microsoft end-user support :-)
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
You missed a LOT of important points here. I don't really give a crap about home users, it's the thousands of PCs I have to support at work that concern me.
Think about it, if each one has it's own recovery CD that can only be used with it, I'm screwed. We build our own rebuild CDs, with the PCs configured the way we want, with the drivers we want, the software we want, the services running (or stopped) per our desires. I could never use an OEM, off the shelf recovery CD for work without quadrupling my tech's workload when prepping new PCs or re-distributing PCs.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Nah, that costs more and entails getting to listen to some other lucky bastard getting some. :)
Personally, I prefer to just throw in a name-brand NIC and hook up to my network when i install windows on clients' computers. Installing drivers from a network folder and/or the internet over a fat pipe is much easier than asking a client to bring every cd for their computer, or digging through a shoebox full of disks. This also has the advantage of updating the computer to the latest drivers available, averting some problems. I also go ahead and run the windows update for my customers, to save them time and frustration. -Jeff
What information about nuclear bombs could be deemed so secret that it would create such a scandal? You can read about the inner workings of nuclear weapons in any library and on the internet. Besides, with Bill Clinton being best buddies with the PRC who needs nuclear spies anyway?
(Shouldn't have hit return that first time.. *sheesh*)
(Rant%)
IF you buy a computer that uses a recovery cd.. I have one piece
of advice... make ABSOLUTELY sure that it has everything
in it that could ever possibly want.
Installing aftermarket stuff ijust asking for trouble.
I'm not saying it's impossible... heck, it will even work
pretty good for one added component... but not usually
not 2 or more... and sometimes even that first one
doesn't wanna work right.
So... they're gonna change the cd's.. eh? Meaning that
if I buy a computer that has a lot of stuff in it,
cheap cruddy hardware.. but a lot of it...
and go to swap out their castrated m/b with a good one
and a real cpu... I won't be able to use their cd?
Fine... Just one more reason for me to build my own like I've been doing
for the last 6 years anyway.
I work on computers for a living and I can't stand
walking into someone's house and seeing a damn Compaq presario
or a friggin Dell in there... haven't seen to many
Gateway's lately.. but if their bioses are
as castrated as dell or compaq.. I don't want
anything to do with them......
You want a good computer? I mean.. a really good
stable computer? You have 2 options.
1) Build it yourself.
2) Have someone build it for you.
Oh yeah... one more thing... DON'T USE CHEAP PARTS!!! *shrug*
People who know me call me instead of their faceless corporation,
even when their "Insert name-brand computer here" is
still under warranty...
They know I can fix it in less than half an hour
instead of calling up their "faceless corporation
technical support" who will only tell them to
Use their recovery cd (thereby wiping out every
single modification since they started using their
computer the day they purchased it) formatting and
re-installing.
May a pox be on them if they ever have any hardware
failures... It can take 3 weeks of formats and
re-installs before tech support will "Allow" them
to turn in the computer for actual servicing..
(/Rant)
Ok... ok... enough ranting... but seriously...
these big corporations are really churning out
some disgusting computers these days...
Almost makes me physically ill when I come
across a newbie computer user that got hosed
buying a "trusted" name... *shrug*
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Thanks for putting content in the lead -- it's a lot more readable.
This also will not let you install your licensed copy of Windows under VMware. This happened to me, I got a "Windows Recovery CD" with my new Fujitsu notebook. I run Linux on the machine, but one day I decided to use VMware and install Windows as a guest OS. Of course, the setup program aborted with an error message saying that it couldn't be installed on this computer. I was able to get around it though, by actually installing Windows on a different hard disk, creating a boot floppy, and burning all the .cabs from the hard disk on to a CDROM. What a pain.
So use a hardware-based solution, installed in a few laptops with transmitters that alert security if they leave the building, so that sec staff can check it out. And make sure these platforms don't have non-encrypted writeable removable media.
It's a lot harder to hide an entire laptop than, say, a laptop drive.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I respect France's intent and the right to protect their laws. If France wants to protect their laws, perhaps law should read that it is illegal for French citizens to buy or sell Nazi memoribilia. Then they could try to police the French purchasers/sellers. It can't be any more difficult than trying to police a US based Yahoo.
Can I bum a sig?
Not everybody gets upgrades as part of a package deal -- for instance, there are a LOT of Win9X and WinNT machines out there belonging to people who haven't been shipped Win2K CDs, and probably won't be shipped WinME CDs either.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
For God's sake stop giving the MPAA ideas! They'd love to do this.
Go down to Best Buy, pick up a new DVD player, and find out you have to replace all of your existing DVDs. The DVD's you own are only licensed to be used on the first DVD drive you play them on.
< scooby > rrromander raco?</scooby>
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
According to my local paper, there's a lot of suspicion surrounding the recovery of the drives since the area was already searched thoroughly twice, once by the FBI.
What many don't realize is that if Univ. of California management is removed from Los Alamos, then this will pose an even bigger threat to national security than the missing hard drives: Without the U.C. management, the laboratory will have difficulty attracting the best and brightest to its site. Without top people, the lab can't hope to accomplish its mission.
The U.C. benefits package is exceptionally good, and it is one of the reasons that many who choose to work at the lab do so. It certainly isn't the pay--though LANL scientists are paid reasonably well, most would receive at least double the compensation if they went to private industry. And, while science used to be a central objective of the laboratory, this is becoming considerably more difficult since Congress lacks the will and the foresight to give LANL the resources to accomplish the scientific part of its mission.
If you really want the Windows installation files, buy a burner and copy them from C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS\, right where they've always been on OEM installations of Win9x. Nothing too tough there, is there?
I'd imagine that with the new "locked" CDs the Cab files will not be available this way.
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
Why do people pirate software? From my own experience, it is a combination of two things:
- Price
- Availability
with #1 usually being the deciding factor. By making it increasingly difficult to pay for Windows, and then dicking around with what you can do with your copy once you buy it, Microsoft is all but ensuring that it will be pirated.If MS really wanted to end (or almost end) piracy of its software, it would make its software available for so little cost (and in so may locations) that it would not be economical to pirate it.
Think about it: what if you could run down to your local 7-11 store and pick up a copy of Windows 2000 at the check-out line for $14.99? Or maybe just $4.99?
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
I ran into the same situation with a customer's Presario 305 a while back, only I knew from past experience that CPQ would be less than helpful with providing drivers. The only devices not picked up by the Win98 install were the modem, display, and sound. Modem and display drivers were available from Lucent and ATI, respectively, and went on with no fuss. Tracking down the sound driver was made more difficult by ESS not having the driver on its website (I knew what driver I needed by booting an LRP floppy and looking at /proc/pci, though you can get similar information under Win9x with regedit by looking under MyComputer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI). A few searches through WinDrivers, AltaVista, etc. eventually located the driver on Toshiba's website (they use the same chip in one of their notebooks). It took a while, but that notebook is 100% functional and running much better than it did with all of Compaq's preloaded crap.
Of course, it'd be much better if they just put the drivers up on their website. IBM, OTOH, is pretty good about making drivers available. Even Packard Bell usually provided drivers for the bizarro hardware they used.
_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Average consumer or not average consumer... I'm sure that there are many experienced Windows users out there that would like to repartition their drive, or whatever, before installing Windows, and it should be their right to do that. You have to cater for everybody here, not whoever you consider to be "average".
As mentioned by someone else, Gateway got the right idea: use a disk-image recovery CD AND give the customer the original CD so they can install it as they wish if they had the experience.
Well as a former memeber of the Army Intelligence Corp I can tell you that this isn't as big of a deal as you think it is. Remember that most likely this whole building is secure. To even get in you will need either a Secret or most likely a Top Secret clearance. And once you are in, you would probably be able to access just about anything in the building with a badge. Its not like X-Files where every door is locked :) I am not defending them for losing it, cause they shouldn't have lost the stuff, but, I think it is being made a bigger deal than it is. The media is probably trying to make money off of this since the russians dont have it. They have to earn a buck too ;) Plus, I mean, think about it, how many floppy diskes do you have laying around that you missplaced. I think the media is overplaying this situation WAY too much.
huh?
...
Got Warez?
doe the Chinese intelligance have Presidential clearance? ;-)
I can see it now...
Lab Attendant #1: Oh no! The wildfires are coming closer! We have to evacuate!
Lab Attendant #2: What about the Nuclear Secrets? Shouldn't we take those along?
Lab Attendant #1: Yes, we should definitely save them... But who knows, they might burn up in the fire. Take them out of the secret, underground, highly protected fire-proof room they are in and put them behind the copy machine in the first floor employee lounge!
Lab Attendant #2: My God, that's genius!
Siiigh.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Can you shove you hard drive into a dell machine and then install windows on it. After it is installed can you simply yank the hd and stick it into a non-dell system? Just try not to loose the hard drive behind a copier machine in the mean time. Does it check the bios when it installs or each time it boots? The article implied it only checks when it is installing. Am I missing something here?
:)
If this works, you must use this trick for good and not evil
I figured that even if the drives were stolen, surely the data was protected with strong encryption... wouldn't that be smart? Was all the data on the drives "in the clear?" Besides, you could prosecute the thief under espionage laws AND under the DMCA, if he actually got to the data. :)
---
On the other hand, there is international law covering copyrighted materials, and both the US and Canada are signatory parties to this legislation. This is why Canadian officials complied - they are simply complying with legislation they consented to previously.
I'm thinking of a class action lawsuit against both Microsoft/Dell for forcing this on users who are being told by production specifications: Pentium XX, XX mem, and Windows 2000/whatever. Aren't there truth in advertising laws? When a company implies that I am going to get a copy of software, shouldn't I by god get it?
When I am told by a company that I am purchasing a computer bundled with Windows, I expect a copy of Windows, that I can use wherever I want, assuming I follow its license. I should be able to transfer the license, without the hardware, run it on another machine in my home(assuming I remove it from the Dell), upgrade the Dell's motherboard as I see fit , or play frisbee with the CD. This is akin to DVD manufactures saying, you get 5 free DVDs with your player, but they will be locked into that DVD player, and you can't sell them without the player, and you can't upgrade your player, and play your dvds on that. Would consumers even remotely agree with that type of bull-shit? Yet, Microsoft gets away with it because, "We are preventing piracy, which costs us money".
I think a class-action lawsuit should definately be filed for this type of behaviour, and the major media organizations should be dropped a note.
Small Disclaimer: I just recommended a friend of mine buy a certain type of computer, and they got stuck with some real similar crap. (So maybe I'm just a bit mad still, you can't recommend to Grandma type users that they build their own you know...)
Nice try, troll.
Wow! After reading today's SlashBack I am suddenly inspired to start selling copies of CDs online at very low prices. Example:
*YOUR CHOICE ONLY $2.99*
Copy of MS Office CD
Copy of Red Hat 6.2 CD
Copy of Corel Draw CD
Copy of Metallica's latest CD
Copy of MS Win2000 CD
- hundreds of other popular titles available!
(Plus $5 shipping and handling per order, of course.)
Who wants to partner up with me on this thing? I'll supply the Xerox color copier. You make the Web site. We'll send out millions and millions of emails to lucky "pretargeted" Internet users! We'll get rich!
</joke>
This scam-thought is partially inspired by the many nude enounter parlors that dotted San Francisco when I lived there years ago. They all had signs that claimed they offered "Oral Sex." After a hapless tourist bit on the come-on and forked over his cash, he was informed that oral sex meant
- Robin
From the people I've talked to who work at LLNL, the drives were in a vault, which is located behind a copying machine, and is in the secure area. They were in a black suite case, and not been noticed. Of course, they didn't know if the drives were in the correct vault, but they were always safe. Its not quite as news-worthy to state that administration went a bit bonkers and that the drives were safe all along in a vault, instead we must insinuate they fell behind a copy-machine because employees were to busy making photocopies of various body parts.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Bill Craig, the owner and CEO of iCrave, is a US citizen, and a longtime resident of Pittsburgh, PA. iCrave is a Pennsylvania corporation and its domain name is registered to a Pittsburgh address. This is why neither Craig nor iCrave disputed the jurisdiction of a US federal court in Pittsburgh.
I have to agree, the concept of the 'simple restore' is great for the average consumer. but therein also lies another problem. I work at my local Best Buy as a tech, and we have 99% of the people who come in there either a) have no idea een how to follow those simple insert and reboot direction (you'd be surprised...) or b) want to do a simple windows restore. Well, you can reinstall just Windows without wiping the HD in the process with the Toshiba restore Cd's... but no others. Basically their choices are wipe completely or be screwed. And to ask the average person to do a data backup? "Umm, this file won't fit on a disk. how can I make it fit??" for their 7 meg Powerpoint presentation. Basically, average Joe and Jane user STILL get bogged down with restore CD's, and aren't able to make use of them either.
Waiting for a time when I can finally say, this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way -Phish
I have to give them credit - the French really made a good go of trying to perfect the 50s version of the nation-state - isolationist, protectionist, and propped up by a utopian social system. Too bad the world has passed them by.
The bottom line is this - around three hundred years ago, the world passed through a formative period of history whereby conflicts were brewing that would determine if most of the white people outside of Europe would end up adopting English culture or French culture. English won. The French have never really recovered.
Well, you could do that. But what if it checks with the BIOS lock every time you try to install anything from the CD, not just the whole OS?
Windows will inevitably fuck itself up, and then you will need the CD for something. Windows tends to ask for the CD for changing even trivial things, and if it really fucks up (It does that about twice a year...), you'll have to install reinstall the whole OS.
So, your solution would work, but every time you want to change anything, you'll have to rip out your hard drive and put it back in the dell. So you'd have to keep a functional dell box sitting around.
This is actually the reason I switched over to linux, because I got tired of this kind of shit from MS. Linux's technical suppurioty isn't as great as people make it sound (Although it is nice to have an OS that doesn't piss all it's memory away...). And since I've been using it, I've really come to appriciate the idea of free-software (Stallman is right, damn it, free software is inherntly supirior _because_ it's free, not because of fewer bugs/better code, that's just a bonus). But I probably wouldn't have switched over to it in the first place if MS weren't a bunch of dick heads.
Dionysus vs, Socrates! The greatest battle of all time!
UEJF, one of the two groups who filed the suit against Yahoo, is a jewish students' association. I asked a few jewish friends of mine, and they shared my opinion on them: that they're a bunch of crybabies who is using their heritage in a sad, sad way -- to boost their future carrier probably, as most of them are law students, actually.
When I first learnt about the lawsuit being filed, I jumped to their website and expressed my disapproval and my concerns in a rather polite manner. In less than an hour, I was called a nazi, a collaborationist and fascist ... Really nice people.
So I suggest that you all go to their forum and voice your opinion on this, here.
No, they're going to get really pissed off and borrow someone else's copy.
The idea is to dry up the supply of the 'real' CDs. If all your friends only have Recovery CDs, and you don't have access to someone with IT connections, you are up the creek.
What's intersting about this policy is that in the past, Microsoft has been horrible about updating their retail products. Until 1998, if you wanted to buy Windows 95, you had to buy the ancient 9/95 version. Meanwhile, the only practical way to get the 1997 "OEM 2.5" version was with an OEM system. This new policy is going to go to hell if they aren't better about updating their retail products.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
BUT... for the average consumer this is a GOOD thing. Having to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows (which WILL happen eventually) is a real pain. Normally, the average consumer takes the computer in to the local shop (CompUSA, Micro Center, etc). And pays a fee to have Windows reinstalled.
Ah, you say. Installing Windows is easy! Well... not really. You boot to the boot disk (do you have one that has CDROM support, if not, too bad) and type D:\setup. This installs windows, no problem. But what about the drivers? When Windows restarts it asks you for the drivers for the sound, video, and modem cards, which are usually included on batch made CD's with multiple drivers. Find the CD for the video card. Navigate to the directory where the driver is, because windows isn't smart enough to scan the whole CD for the correct driver. Load it. Repeat with the other devices, etc. But hope that Windows detects support for your CDROM drive before it detects your other devices, otherwise you won't be able to load the drivers--something that happens pretty often.
When I worked as a technician for a major computer retailer--our house brand did not include recovery CD's, but just Windows and individual driver disks. I am pretty sure that this is because we could charge $50 a pop for reinstalling Windows properly. (As technicians, WE had the recovery CD's) Lots of revenue there.
Giving the customer a recovery CD which reinstalls everything properly in one step is a Very Good Thing.
I cannot stress this enough. 15 - 30 minutes to get back up and running when Windows gets wrecked. This makes life so much easier for consumers and for technicians.
The main complaint I hear is that you can't then take the OEM Windows CD and install it on a computer you build. But how big a percentage of the population is this anyway? (Since this is slashdot, I also have to ask, why are you installing Windows on a computer you slaved hard at building??? You should now enough to run Linux (or *BSD)).
If you really want the Windows installation files, buy a burner and copy them from C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS\, right where they've always been on OEM installations of Win9x. Nothing too tough there, is there?
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Compaq has been doing this for at least 3 years.
And I have been merrily copying the cab files from the cd
to do manual installs the whole while. I ripped out the mobo
and just about everything else, and so of course Micropaq
deemed my purchase of a Windows liscence invalidated. Yeah, ok.
-- "It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries." - Thursday Next
I've had experience with these little gems, and they are an absolute bitch to try to use. Actually, let me rephrase -- they're easy enough to utilize (stick in in the cd-rom drive and boot up the computer). But if you want any control over your system at all -- components installed, configuration, etc. -- then you're pretty much out of luck.
One of my friends was having trouble with her Compaq laptop, and I basically decided to do a fresh install of Windows 98. Since I couldn't find a Windows 98 CD among the materials that came with her computer (because -- surprise, surprise -- there wasn't one!) I had her buy the academic edition through our school.
Over, hmm, the six or so hours that I wrestled with that installation, I slowly got Windows working with all of the proprietary hardware on the Compaq. However, I just could not find drivers for the sound card. I finally broke down and called Compaq, and they told me that no drivers were available, to use the helpfully marked recovery CD, blah blah, etc.
Well, I used the recovery CD, and like I said, it was simple enough (a 20 automated minute install vs. the six hours I had spent) but there was no way to stop it from installing all the additional crap that had been bogging her system down in the first place. I tried manually uninstalling all the programs that a.) run in the background and b.) have no apparent function, but there was only so much I could do.
Honestly, I get the feeling that this particular step taken to combat piracy has just gone too far. Personally, I could probably accept a computer with a machine- or brand-specific bundled OS. I mean, the next computer I buy will probably include an OS one way or another, so I can live with that. It's not particularly fair, it's an example of unreasonable software licenses, but it could also be worse. However, when the step so fundamentally cripples the installation process, you know there's a problem.
I only had a vague awareness of this case until I recently went to see Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., which started out as an interesting movie about a man who designed electric chairs and other devices for state prisons. But the second half of the film took a sudden turn when Zundel called Leuchter as an expert witness in denouncing the holocaust. Bizarre.
"I have a cunning plan..."
Lets be honest if your capable of installing windows from scratch your probable in the group that wipe the OS anyway. Pity microsoft get a cut of the purchase price but that is the computer manufactures problem, they have to compete in a market were OS free machines are now available.
It'll really suck when MS starts shipping another one of those "second edition" or "95B" OSs that really and truly is different than the commercial purchasable version but isn't readily purchasable.
/just/ restored Windows and the on-board hardware drivers, and not a zillion systray icons and other worthless preinstalled software -- it would be kind of a timesaver. But as long as they continue to INSIST we use all the other buggy stuff too, I think the restore CDs suck.
98SE is purchasable (I think, or is it 98 + SE as seperate CDs?) but 95B wasn't unless you bought a new HD or mainboard. We got copies with new PCs and used 95B instead of 95A when we did our periodic updating of our Ghost images. I'm sure this violated some subtle license, but in terms of stability and usability it made the difference to us.
As long as MS is willing to make available full-install versions of all revs of its OSs, this won't bother me as a corporate customer too much.
I wouldn't even mind the restore CDs if they
We put a Win2K box in a student lab. 2 days later some bright student, obviously bored, scribbles all over it in pen. A week later someone rips half it off. May the lawyer twit who came up with this idea be mauled by a rabbit ferret.
Sure, there's some piracy that goes on, I've witnessed people installing windows on used 486's and such, but how is this a big revenue loss for Microsoft. It seems to me that the people who have the most need for a Windows cd are the one's who legitimately paid for it in the first place and just want to re-install it on the same computer or possibly on a second computer they've bought which for some reason does not have windows already.
Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot here. As if they're not already in danger from the growing use of linux,BSD, etc.., now they are giving people even more reason to stop using their software altogether. They should be trying to give their users more freedom not less. Personaly though, I'm glad their doing this. I don't use windows except for at work and I hope this will convince more people to switch to one of the free nixes.
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