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New Dell Clickthrough Software License
Petrol writes "I just read that Dell is installing a new mandatory click-through software license at first boot. From the article, Dude, you're getting screwed:
'Kat and I just received the Dell Inspiron 5100 notebook we ordered from Dell Canada. We quickly ran across problems.'"
So, I don't see what the big deal is.
The big deal is that there's no good news to post... so michael posts crap all day long.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
Which means, as noted here in a bunch of other msgs, it's a slow news days and there is nothing of real news to post.
If Dell were somehow blocking using the machine without accepting the license and/or using software, that might be an issue worth commenting on.
This is not news, and not even an issue worth mentioning at dinner.
"You're either outstanding, or outprocessing"
I recently picked up a dell laptop, and I remember being allowed to go into the bios, so I'm pretty sure that the license they are claiming was in the bios was probably actually loaded out of the boot sector on the hard drive.
However, if it truely was something that you had to agree to in order to get into the bios, that's pretty messed up.
It's worse than just staffers, what about programs the company installs by default? Especially when these programs have vulnerabilities, and no auto update feature. This can leave quite a few computers wide open to exploitation.
My roommate's Compaq came preloaded with some support program. I checked on the internet to find out what it was, and it turns out that not only does it give Compaq complete control over his computer, there was an exploit for the thing too, so script kiddies could take over his computer too.
Maybe it's nice for lusers to have this (and he is one) so tech support can fix his computer, but it's a major security risk. What if he had some important and confidential documents/ programs/ whatever on his computer? I wouldn't want my important files messed with or downloaded at by some random punk or even supposedly "trusted" tech support people.
He didn't even know what the program was, so obviously he wasn't going to patch it, and you'd have to assume he knew how to find and apply the patches in the first place. I didn't want to dick around with his computer trying to look for some stupid patch, so I just turned it off.
I suppose it doesn't matter on his computer anyway. When he's asked me to fix his computer, I've found all sorts of trojan programs (like the pr0n dialers and crap) installed on his compter. He's too much of a luser to buy a virus scanner for his Windows 98 computer, so I had to show him Housecall. Though I'm sure it doesn't stop all virii (using this plural form to piss off grammar nazis. Anyway "viruseses" sucks)--it just sits on top of Windows.
I don't think this is the same vulnerablility. I don't feel like searching for it. This was a long time ago, but I think the problem was a default password and the thing left a port wide open to the internet.