Slashdot Mirror
Financial Institutions Balk at MS Licensing
mmol_6453 writes "Now, not only are hospitals groaning under the combination of Microsoft and the HIPAA, but banks are having issues relating to federal privacy laws. Favorite line: 'Microsoft has told...that it plans eventually to eliminate users' ability to disable Microsoft's access to their systems.'"
The article says about SP1: Solely for the purpose of preventing unlicensed use of the applicable OS Software, the OS Components will include installation on your computer of technological measures that are designed to prevent unlicensed use, and Microsoft may use this technology to confirm that you have a licensed copy of the OS Software.
This is done through a product key that is sent to Microsoft over the Internet. That means Microsoft must send an authorization back to your system, says Warby, requiring it to have access to your system.
While I'm no Microsoft licensing fan, I would like to dispel some FUD presented here. The product activation has always been a part of XP, and your system sends the product key number to MS, and not MS going to your system first. After it's activated, MS is not contacted, unless your hardware changes significantly, or you use Windows Update (which does not enforce product key restructions, although the product key is being sent). But in any case, MS never initiates contact with any system.
For SP1 upgrade, the authorization merely checks to see if your product key is one of two that have been widely pirated. It doesn't contact any server at all for this step.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Don't take offense to this, but your comment sounds like someone who doesn't know alot about businesses that require specific apps to stay in business.
Our office does a ton of work for medical centers and family practices that use software to manage their patient flow and medical records. These programs will ONLY run on Windows using SQL. Sure, there are 2 or 3 out there that run off SCO but the quality of program is inferior to the Windows versions.
NextGen, Alteer, Practice Partner, and Medical Manager our all Windows only apps. These 4 are the the most widely used systems in family practice offices around our area. They don't run on a *nix platform, and they never will.
It's not a case of having to replace workstations, hell that's the easy part. It's a case of the software only running on a specific platform and the server requires it.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
your firewall only stops unrequested/uninitiated(from the inside)/uninvited traffic.
your microsoft operating system will invite intruders (microsoft) in...right past your firewall.
how do you think you view webpages?
you request them.
how do you think microsoft is going to scan your computer?
windows xp sp1 is going to request it.
himm... there is something I can't understand here. a contract is void by default if it violates a law, so doesn't this invalidate the appropiate part of the EULA, if the purchaser makes it clear that the software will be used in an environment where privacy is mandated by the law?
i wonder if some sort of equal oppurtunity law would mandate microsoft to provide the software and updates with a licence and a method suitable for banks, hospitals etc.
ato
Sadly though, this is also in windows2000 sp3. So, you'd have to move back to NT 4.0 to be completely safe.
While you may be correct in their intentions, the EULA doesn't specifically state this. Going by just the wording of the EULA, they can do whatever they want, if you have auto-update enabled or not. This is where the problem is. If they specified a clause that would state something to the effect of "unless the user turns off auto-update" or have this EULA addendum pop up when they user enables auto-update with a yes/no box, it would be much, much better. This wording of the EULA in current form of not mentioning any change based on auto-updates being enabled is what is keeping SP3 off of our rdesktop Terminal Server.
Another interesting note is that the EULA for SP3 with the bad text is only there when you install the update, the original Win2k eula.txt is still left unchanged on your hard drive. Makes it kind of confusing, if you ever want to review what you actually agreed to at a later date.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs
The way it worked was to make something that tasted sufficiently bad, compared to the original, that when they "switched back" to the old formula (actually, the old formula, minus sugar, plus corn syrup), they were sufficiently close to the old formula that people didn't complain about the switch .
Of course, the minor problem with this theory is that Coke was all corn syrup before the switch.
http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp
Not arguing with your conclusions, but just on a point of information: corn syrup replaced cane sugar in 1980-1. New Coke wasn't conceived until late 1984. (Source: Mark Pendergrast, For God, Country and Coca Cola, London: Orion 1993, pp. 331; 349.)
and Linux is knocking at the door of the MIS. That would mean rooms full of servers and thousands of NT desktops.
Tellers and staff run custom apps, don't have multi-media or ever web browsers on their machines and definitely aren't playing with their machines so M$ latest geegaws are of absolutely no interest.
A usage study has shown that only a small percentage of the features of the Office Suite are actually used and a great deal of the features that M$ wants to reverse engineer into their products (in direct violation of the DMCA they pushed for, which will come back and bite them some day) are already available in other products from vendors with better market focus.
In the second-rate, also-ran, pursuit of Apple's flash and style, M$ has lost focus of their customers, the same boring old desktops that didn't want a computer with a funny name back in 1980.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
An obvious solution - suggested in other comments - is to configure your firewall to prevent your computer from connecting to Microsoft. But Microsoft have a plan for that: UPnP. Universal Plug'n'Play is a protocol supported by an increasing number of "broadband routers" that allows applications to punch holes in your firewall by installing NAT rules. This is attractive for things like chat and video conferencing programs, but it will also allow Microsoft to override any rules you have to prevent unauthorized connections.
Though UPnP works by sending SOAP messages to a small web-server in the router (also used for user configuration), on my router (Alcatel ST510 v4) it bypasses the password protection that you can set for user access to the web server.
Case in point: Commuter Fare Hikes.
When the NJ/NY PATH recently proposed a 100% fare hike, the public screamed bloody murder. "No way we are going to take this!" Average Citizens on the evening news declared. Then, a month or two later, when the fare hike was reduced to 50%, the public gave a collective sigh of relief. "At least it isn't DOUBLE," grateful Citizens declared.
It works EVERY time.
"The claim that Microsoft intends to require the ability to modify the machine in the future is pure speculation and contrary to any business logic for Microsoft.
From the article:
"And Warby says Microsoft has told him that it plans eventually to eliminate users' ability to disable Microsoft's access to their systems."
That's not speculation, it's one person relating what he's been told by MS. If it were speculation, it would read something like:
"And Warby says he expects Microsoft to eventually disable users' ability to disable Microsoft's access to their systems."
Also, blocking access to the windows update site would work for manual updates. Not giving users admin access to their Win2000 workstations would (I think) achieve the same thing. I don't know which resource auto update connects to, but I don't think it's prudent to assume it connects to the windowsupdate site.
> What are the differences betweeen WinXP (home) and Win98?
- -- >
> Don't even tell me it's more stable - its still Windows
Actually, it isn't the same Windows. Windows XP is NT. I know
the version numbers are confusing, but you can visualise the two
distinct product lines like this:
---WinNT3.5-----WinNT4.0-----Win2000-----WinXP-
-----Win95---OSR2----Win98---Win98SE---WinMe
The first line can be collectively called "Windows NT" or simply
"NT" if you like to abbreviate. Microsoft is working on the next
major release (codenamed longhorn), but given the timeframe they've
set for that, I expect to see at least one incremental release
based on XP before that. This product line has an underlying
architecture based partly on XENIX, with concepts borrowed from
other systems (including VMS). The GUI is an implementation of
the Win32 API.
Note that the second line stops with WinMe. There will be no
more versions of that product. This line can be collectively
called "Consumer Windows" or "Win9x" but is usually just called
"Windows" for simplicity. This product had an architecture based
mostly on a re-implementation of DOS with some important changes,
most notably multitasking, introduced to bring it into the 90s.
(Some claim that Win9x actually _contains_ DOS under the hood,
but this is dubious in a technological sense; the "DOS" that is
under the hood (MS-DOS 7.0) in Win9x is _a_ DOS but is a
reimplementation rather than an incorporation or direct upgrade
of the earlier product and so is not 100% compatible with DOS 6.
In particular, it is less compatible with DOS 6 than DOS 6 is
with DOS 3.) The GUI is an implementation of the Win32 API.
In summary, Win98 and WinXP have two major things in common:
* They are made by the same company. (So are OpenVMS and
digital Unix, for that matter.)
* They both implement the Win32 API. (Yet both BeOS
and Linux implement the POSIX API, and nobody in his
right mind would call them the same OS.)
Oh, and they're both available for x86 hardware. Whoopee, so is
NetBSD, and you don't see anyone saying _that's_ the same as Win98.
They look a little bit similar (well, they can if WinXP is set up
with the "classic" look and feel), but KDE looks like Win98 too,
if it's configured that way. They have binary compatibility, but
FreeBSD has binary compatibility with SCO and Linux, without being
accused of being the same OS as either of them.
The thing is, Microsoft _wants_ you (well, not you individually
but everyone in general) to view Windows XP as the successor
to Windows 98. Because Windows 98 was their most popular product.
Their marketing department will do _anything_ to get you to think
that Windows XP is the next version of Windows 98. They tried
that with Windows 2000 (by naming it that), and it didn't fly,
but Windows XP is doing somewhat better by most accounts.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Alas, that's only in Excel 97. Don't work in 2K.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Yes, I do that for a living. My code has to run on a PC (where some bits are emulated, but provides easier debugging) and on small, custom, embedded hardware. I also typically need very little knowledge of the custom hardware - in some cases I don't even know what CPU it uses.
How? Stick to standards, and separate interface from function.
needlessly spending money on portability would make you uncompetitive.
I'm talking about basic portability. For example, test and deploy the full GUI app for Windows, but be able to build command line tools from the same source that would run and work somewhat on Linux and OS X. Even if they are relatively untested, they remain an option to you in the future.
Another obvious solution: Java.
So your solution to running Windows software on the Mac is to load it up with an X server and use a Linux box as well?
No, I don't have a solution to running Windows software on the Mac. If I did, I'd sell it to Steve Jobs and retire. I was talking specifically about CrossOver Office Server, and how a Mac can probably work with it.