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Microsoft: The Next Investigations
Runt-Abu writes: "Some of the UK's top companies (and some of the not-so-top as well but hey...) are questioning Microsoft's policy on pricing. In an open letter to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry several of the top companies voiced concern at the cost of an extra £880m over a typical four-year investment cycle.
No one from Microsoft has commented at this time, given the current state of affairs it's highly likely many companies will not upgrade or seek alternative cheaper solutions." Basically, a large trade group is asking the British Office of Fair Trading (akin to the FTC in the U.S.) to investigate Microsoft's price increases. And Gogl writes: "It appears the attorneys general of 6 more states have voiced concern over Microsoft, particularly regarding the upcoming release of Windows XP. Microsoft and their allies claim that AOL-Time Warner was behind this, which AOL of course denies," pointing also to this piece on Microsoft's changing licensing costs.
Onec again...you do NOT have to register. You DO have to activate the product. Both are completely seperate processes but only activation is necessary and only requires the user to input the WPA code. No personal information is sent along with this code. You could even choose to register your software as a completely fictional character if you chose and Windows XP would work just fine.
With MS now legally declared as a monopoly, they no longer have the right to set whatever price they want for their product, because a monopoly suggests that there are no market forces in place that will cause a supply-demand-like effect to take place. (Again, it's not illegal to hold a monopoly, only to abuse it's position). It's expected that the next legal phase of the MS/DOJ will include looking at the licensing costs; if it is determined that at the current costs, MS is earning more than a reasonable profit per copy sold, someone's going to have hell to pay.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If I remember right, the Windows Authorization crap has already been cracked (could be wrong).
However, Corporate edition does not need registration, only a serial. I can verify this, as I've tried it. Enter your serial, listen to the music during the configuration (yep...), and you're off. It does prompt you for registration, but it's not required, which makes sense for a "Corporate" environment.
But who's to stop a home user from using a copy made from work? I certainly couldn't tell that this was meant for the office; even when I knew it was labeled Corporate.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Though the corporate edition is probably going to be the edition that makes the rounds on the underground simply because it'll be easier than a code cracker.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
yep, the same argument was used by Rochefeller's goons.
"are we forcing you to buy are oil? no, we just have the best product to market as can be shown by how much people buy our product."
yeah right, what ever.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Because I'd assume the majority of Slashdot readers are the techies...not the PHBs that make decisions like that.
It costs very little to change from one suite/os/program to another, and only those that are in the business of lying to stock holders or management in order to keep their jobs would say that is has a high cost or price tag.
Spoken like someone who has never rolled out a new application to the lusers in marketing.
Time is worth something you know, and if the lusers are trying to figure out how to routine tasks with the new app, and calling the hell desk, they are not doing whatever it is that they are paid to do. Clearly there is a cost involved when you change the environment.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Actually, not to be nitpicky, but the plural of attourney general is attourneys general. Much like the plural of court marshall is courts marshall, rather than court marshalls.
(It makes sense. There's no army of generals, and John Ashcroft probably isn't General caliber. Rather, he is the 'general' attourney for the United States. We he and his friends from the states hang out, they are all attourneys, and all general. Thusly, they are attourneys general.)
Uh, no. Windows is *already* a fragmented platform. I know, I've had to write software that runs on "windows" and spent time debugging it on 98, Nt4 and Win2K.
XP signals the end of the 95->98 codebase, and will eventually bring everyone onto the NT/2000 codebase.
Believe me, this is a good thing (I've worked with my buggy programs on both. The NT platform is far more stable under condtions of stray pointers).
Linux, BSD, Atheos and other open OS's taking over the world would would be a better thing, but that doesn't make XP a bad thing, fragmentation-wise.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
You do not HAVE to upgrade in linux. I do periodically, less often than I used. The only upgrades that should be considered important and a no-pass are security upgrades.
On my home system, I am happy with a working kernel behind my firewall with which my radeon card works well on. I haven't upgraded for a number of kernel cycles because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I upgrade this or that for security reasons but that's about it. In any case, you can avoid the lib dependencies if you build your own kernel from source. It is not really difficult. Sure, it may SEEM intimidating the first time but once you do it a couple times (if you do it correctly, you are in no danger of screwing up your system or eliminating your current working kernel - and you can always go back to the working kernel at lilo...). Build it with what you have and it will work.
Windoze, on the other hand, will provide a constant stream of bug-fix, security fixes well after they should have. It is too late to patch for nimba after all the 'doze boxen have been nailed. The damage is done and the next bug is being exploited.
Also, with every single M$ package upgrade you do, you lose backwards compatiblity - for no good, valid reason whatsoever. There is NO reason to constantly dick with the word doc format except to FORCE users to upgrade (PAY$$$$). There is no point - you get the same functions that were working fine on the previous iterations plus a few dickwad things that NO ONE uses. But people get forced to upgrade because their colleagues did - or they bought a new broken system that has the latest version of microsnot crap on it and his/her apps are no longer compatible with yours which is merely the previous iteration. Now YOU feel compelled to upgrade ($$$$) so you can eliminate the problems of opening his/her documents broken with the latest gratuitous .doc alterations.
Linux is FAR easier to deal with in this regard and you do not HAVE to upgrade this or that just because it is the newest version. That is M$-think. You need linux-think. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.