Microsoft XP License Prohibits VNC

jhml writes: "Looks like the monopoly muscles are flexing. According to this article in Infoworld, the XP license prohibits products other than from Microsoft's from being used to remotely control an XP workstation. So ... guess they were having a little trouble with VNC being widely used?"

Comments

Re:My Experience With Linux

[Tyreth]

That is complete FUD. Linux is very usable in it's current form.

You say 8 half-working text editors? vi and other console editors are not half-working, and are very useful when you can't afford a remote graphical session, or any other situation where a GUI is not possible or unecessary. As for GUI text editors, gedit, kedit and kwrite all beat notepad hands down. I don't see notepad with features for highlighting based on the language you are saving the text document as. How can you possibly say that notepad beats these common text editors in linux?

You obviously haven't tried linux properly at all. Consider this hypothetical situation - someone is brought up for 20 years using only linux (never heard of windows) in it's current form (KDE 2.2.2, etc). Then they hear about this whizbang operating system called Windows. They decide to give it a whirl as you just did. I'm sure that 15 minutes into the session they would be frustrated when they:

• Can't tweak the settings of the system
• Can't flick into a console during a game or some other full-screen application to change options
• Can't run it on a really old system at a decent speed without a GUI
• Can't install software they need without having to fork out another $50 for each package
• Can't enjoy the features of a full text editor like vi, gedit or kwrite.
• Can't set up an account for their pesky brother or friend who knows just enough to be dangerous, and limit their ability to modify/delete vital system files. Or prevent them from overwriting your personal settings
• Can't, if capable, create complex shell scripts to perform manipulations on files that GUI's can only dream of.
• Can't customise much of their GUI at all (eg, can't remove start bar, can't add menu's or applets to the start bar, etc)
• ...and so on.

Can you see what is wrong in this example? First of all, this hypothetical person used it for only 15 minutes, not enough time for a full evaluation. Also, this person had grown up using something different, so they favored all the pet features and benefits of their own operating system, while completely missing the good features of the rival operating system. Since they had grown up with this operating system, it's in their mind of how computers should work.

So, until you give it a proper try, it will remain obvious that you don't know what you are talking about.

Netscape

[Deanasc]

Why didn't they just ban Netscape Navigator in the lisence agreement. Then they wouldn't have had to write IE. What other competing software don't they want people to use? Put that into the lisence too.

I'd like to refine my point a bit...

[NanoGator]

Heh talk about Karma roller coaster. Somebody actually tried to get my post modded down. I guess it worked because somebody modded me down as a troll. Can you believe that? I provide an alternative point of view, and I'm a troll?

I'd like to thank Drunken_Jackass for bringing nothing to this discussion. I never said it wasn't possible to do so (although I don't think Terminal Services quite works that way, but that's a seperate discussion...) today. I said that MS doesn't want people to use one license of their OS with 25 people using it. That's what 2000 Enterprise Edition 25-licenses is for. I would like to thank Drunken Jackass for oversimplifying my point and getting me modded down.

My point still stands, and my feelings aren't hurt by being modded down. If my point is overrated or irrelevant, that's fine. It'd be nice if I were being modded appropriately, though.

"Is this possible? With XP can multiple users run multiple programs at the same time in a usable manner? Sure you can start up office; start typing a letter, leave office running and log in as a different user without shutting down office, but can two users log in and run it at the same time without interfering with each other. When I run PC Anywhere on my win98 box; i can't connect more than once; the two users would interfere with each other. Does XP resolve this??? excuse my ignorance; but I haven't seen XP yet (nor do I intend to)"

XP doesn't resolve this without the client/host software being modified. However, the ability to run seperate programs as seperate users means that the hard part is already done. We're not talking about multiple instances of the same program, we're talking about multiple instances with different users. Office thrives on different users.

So the answer is "no, not yet. But it woudln't be that hard."