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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.
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?
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