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Is Onlive Pirating Windows and Will It Cost Them?
An anonymous reader writes "When Onlive, the network gaming company, started offering not just Microsoft Windows but Microsoft Office for free on the iPad, and now on Android, it certainly seemed too good to be true. Speculation abounded on what type of license they could be using to accomplish this magical feat. From sifting through Microsoft's licenses and speaking with sources very familiar with them, the ugly truth may be that they can't."
Is it their fault that Microsoft didn't think they were literal when they wrote the planet Earth in as their location?
They are probably using the SPLA for this. That allows you to license software for your service on a monthly basis.
(i know, i know.. i will punish myself later)
i read this as being: onlive is not presently legit but microsoft is playing nice (i.e. squeezing them for every last nickel without involving more than a few lawyers) for now -- until they lose patience (or feel threatened by being beating to market by an upstart.. not once but twice) and bring the sledgehammer down on onlive's entire business model -- windows and office desktop and gaming platform (xbox and windows games, at least)
, the ugly truth may be that they can't.
Well, no, not in your crappy backwater country, and not with some locked down hardware like an ipad. But in more sensible and advanced societies like, er, China, these kinds of things are readily available, and cheaper too.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
If Amazon EC2 can license Windows, surely OnLive can. Microsoft won't turn down an opportunity to make more money.
Seriously with Ubuntu Linux finally showing some decent polish and usability (yes yes I am referring to Unity which I have gotten used to) and OSX also available who really shives a git about Microsoft?
Anyone who needs to run Windows-exclusive apps.
In other words, most businesses and their employees.
Yes, many MS products can be licensed on a per processor basis under SPLA. Microsoft Office is not one of these. SPLA is actually the easiest of MS's licensing offerings to understand and comply with. A pity they didn't check the article content with anyone who knows anything about it.
TFA title: Question? Assume-Answer-Is-Affirmative-And-Speculate-On-Negative-Consequences-And-Ignore-Possiblity-That-Question-Might-Be-Answered-Negatively.
Well, everyone is different. I can't stand OSX and Ubuntu. So what!
As a contractor, I have to work in all of them - they are all as bad (or good) as each other. Just different.
Also, the users bitch about each of them equally.
Would this mean a Cyber Cafe is also in violation? Is the license saying you can't rent out Window 7 machines? Or just that you can't rent out Window 7 machines over a network?
Microsoft licensing can be complex, but a service that offers office for free for end users? How long did these guys think they would get away with this? They are lucky that Microsoft is lenient with true-up licensing. However, how much are they going to have to fork out for all the current users of the product who haven't given them a dime. There is no way this service will continue without costing end users the same as it would for any other service. That's if they don't go bankrupt first.
The same thing would be happen if somebody setup a service hosting OS X and iLife.
It's fun but not really all the useful. I'm sure whatever Microsoft does specifically for the iPad will be much better plus this gets people used to MS Office on the iPad and kinda sets up the market for the real stuff coming up. So MS is probably just letting it happen and watching intently.
Might just be that Microsoft is waiting for someone else to do a real touch pad office, then buy the suckers out and kill the Android version. If you have ever used office word and excel on WinMobile 6.1 or 7 then you know how crappy they do touch. You still have to enable the phone optical mouse if you want to do anything at all, they just cannot get it into their heads that a gazillion tiny buttons that you have to work a stylus to use and has the same functions as a pc desk top sucks big ones on a touch screen! Windows style coding and small devices just do not mix and the sales gurus and especially their chair throwing corporate gorilla just don't get it.
Anyone who needs to run Windows-exclusive apps.
In other words, most businesses and their employees.
I would argue quite the opposite, most business and employees actually only need a small subset of the features that Microsoft's products have, and most of these features have been replicated or improved upon by free software.
Especially where Office is concerned.
I wish I had a moderation point called '-1 Moron'.
If it's not already clear, darn tootin' the next version of the volume license agreement will contain the "OnLive" clause that expressly forbids it...
Yeah keep deluding yourself with that.
Hardly. There are lots of other productivity suites that are good in the baseline features, but those are almost certainly going to be MORE suitable for home than business users.
No open source software that I've seen handles docx halfway as well as Word 2007 and Word 2010. "Good enough", as in "this wordprocessing software is good enough for almost all needs" is a given, but that's not really the question. You're talking about sixteen or seventeen years of Office dominance here, coupled with Exchange. Do you understand the manpower that would be required to convert a large company from Office-Exchange to something else (assuming that something else was in fact an improvement in any real sense).
I'll concede right now that I loath Exchange. I hate it. I hate everything about. I hate how brittle aspects of it are, the bizarre dependencies with other systems like IIS which means if .NET/ASP takes a nosedive, your clients suddenly find out they've lost a whole lot of functionality. Believe me, I've had many sleepless nights over Windows because it's seemingly easy configurations are filled with pitfalls. I love the *nix world where you can got "cp worldsmostimportant.conf worldsmostimportant.conf.bak" and muck around to my hearts content with the config, knowing I can pretty much wipe out any changes by inverting the command and restarting the daemon. At heart, I'm a *nix man and have been for over two decades. I fit *nix and open source solutions in wherever I can.
But at the end of the day, my boss and my coworkers are expecting to walk in, log on to their Windows workstation, start up Outlook, work on their budget in Excel and read the latest business requirements documentation in Word. I hand them Zimbra and LibreOffice, and it's going to be nasty. Eventually I might calm the waters, but then someone is inevitably going to get some Word 2010 document with wild formatting and it's going to open up in LibreOffice like the dog just puked on the screen, and then I'm going to get demands for solutions, and the only solution is going to be "I guess we should have Word on there."
In the long term, Microsoft's dominance even in the business world will begin to wane, no doubt about it. As more tablets and smartphones make their way in, and the requirements of more open document standards and protocols become clear, things will change. But until then, and as ugly as it sometimes is, in the big world, Exchange-Office are still way ahead.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
TFA:
> The Windows 7 desktop just plain can’t be rented
I guess it's not precisely Windows 7, but I seem to be able to rent full Windows instances from EC2 for .12 / hour.
who really shives a git about Microsoft?
Most of the business work. The PC gaming world.
A lot of people.
Great! I'm sure Microsoft would be pleased to have another user!
They once said if someone pirates software, they want it to be their software that is pirated. You're just furthering their control.
Well, looking at all the software I have installed at work, 100% of it either has shitty or no open source and/or Linux equivalent (exempting Windows itself from this assertion).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
And that's not even taking into account the fact that they might want to PRINT the document.
Printing on Linux is easy if you happen to have one of the supported printers and the driver is decent.
If your printer is older and works fine in Windows or Mac, or newer, but for whatever reason there's no linux driver for it, you're pretty much SOL.
Same goes for scanners.
This space available.
Seriously with Ubuntu Linux finally showing some decent polish and usability (yes yes I am referring to Unity which I have gotten used to) and OSX also available who really shives a git about Microsoft?
Anyone who needs to run Windows-exclusive apps.
In other words, most businesses and their employees.
Don't forget anyone who wants to play recent video games.
Very true. Most of our staff of 80 people get by with Chrome and LibreOffice. This excludes developers (Visual Studio) and Production folk (Adobe Creative Suite). The developers are all using Visual Studio through Win2k8 Remote Desktop services on their Macbooks, and we're working towards having them develop completely in browser-based IDEs. We eventually plan on having only Windows on the server side (SQL server, CruiseControl CI autobuild environment).
Yeah, you're going to be able to phase Microsoft out of your business unless a) you're depending on them for your server-side applications or b) you're tied to them because of some 3rd party/VAR application. The future is web-based apps and mobile, and frankly we're pretty much there.
If they don't know it's dead, it isn't dead.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I migrated 80 people from Exchange to Google Apps, Office to LibreOffice, etc. It can be done, you just need support from management.
Outlook? Web-based Google Apps mail. Calendar? Same thing. Office? LibreOffice. The only internal servers we have left are 2 AD servers and a fileserver; I plan on moving that to Box.net/Dropbox/Gdrive at some point.
office printers typically support PCL
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Fair question which merits discussion. First, sreaming Crysis ... now pirating Office?
I hate to troll, but still think this company is trying to peddle technology that just isn't in demand, and when it is will be done by Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Sony.
In other words your pushing it out on to the cloud, which is fine when the solution is available. It's not in our case due to legal considerations, and beyond that Google Apps has a long ways to go before it's reasonably decent at handling complex documents.
I suspect your requirements are very modest indeed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Linux printing is easy and has been for some time. Ditto scanning. There are a few unsupported printers, but they're the real cheap pieces of shit.
I'm honestly curious as to what experiences you've had with Zimbra not working well as an Exchange replacement. The OSS edition is fine as a web-based mail client, but the Enterprise edition with all the Outlook connectors and seamless integration with IOS/Android is mightily impressive.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
if you're pushing them to Google apps, why even push LibreOffice at all instead of Google docs?
(not trolling, legitimately curious)
.... You don't care about being able to use the CLI.... You have Windows and Apple's OS.
Er... Apple's OS has a very nice CLI, actually, it's called Bash. Windows shell is a bit weak, but there are pretty popular work-arounds (cygwin).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I find Google Docs to be no where near as good as LibreOffice. I can show employees LibreOffice, and almost all are up and running as if it was Office same day. Google Docs simply lacks a large amount of functionality in comparison to Office and LibreOffice.
You'd think Google would've spent more time refining Docs to be a more worthy Office competitor.
Powershell runs circles around bash.
We're talking here about OnLive. In addition to Windows and Office they also stream recent PC games to your iOS or Android device.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Those who ignore Unix are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Legal considerations" as in major contract strictly prohibits using Google, and while .doc support is at a reasonable level, .docx support just plain sucks.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Powershell runs circles around bash.
Please provide detailed examples of various problem sets that support this claim. I am genuinely intrigued, and would be delighted to analyze your response and potentially provide counterexamples. Please keep in mind the Unix philosophy of breaking tasks into smaller units (with strong integration of inputs and outputs from other units), as opposed to the typical Microsoft mentality of attempting to do everything in one place or very few places.
I've got some buddies who were once quite active in the shell demo scene that would take particular issue with your claim; they're the sort of dudes that will whip up insane stuff in bash just to prove a point. I'm the sort of dude who used to write usable applications in MS-DOS batch, half the time just to prove it could be done.
Incidentally, it's PowerShell, not Powershell.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Ok, so you have a contract with someone who specifically prohibits using Google. Most other businesses are not this short sighted.
Though MM may in fact use *nix solutions as stated, I find the opening line of that post is disingenuous as worded, so I've edited it here to make it more obvious what is being said:
No open source software that I've seen handles the Microsoft proprietary format docx halfway as well as the Microsoft native applications for the format, Word 2007 and Word 2010.
Bolding mine, to point out the obvious deficiencies of that argument.
User eldorel is right, even if the pro-MS crowd doesn't like to admit it.
most business and employees actually only need a small subset of the features that Microsoft's products have, and most of these features have been replicated or improved upon by free software.
Especially where Office is concerned.
It has been widely touted that Office 07 and 10 both have support for ODF, though from what I've read in articles I understand it to be better implemented in 10. As a true cross-platform, cross-app standard, perhaps a "professional" IT person relied upon by otherwise unknowing end users might suggest that their company begin using *that* as the way in which to author and save their documents. Doing so just might create a result better than "the dog just puked on the screen" when a document happens to be opened by someone using a different brand of the same type of application. That's the whole point of the thing, really, isn't it? So why should we not support that, for the sake of our end users? In order to promote/prop up the MS hegemony? Not a good idea, from where I sit.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
The developers are all using Visual Studio through Win2k8 Remote Desktop services on their Macbooks, and we're working towards having them develop completely in browser-based IDEs. We eventually plan on having only Windows on the server side (SQL server, CruiseControl CI autobuild environment).
Mind explaining why? Serious question... because it sounds like you're deliberately setting yourselves up to ensure that you have the worst of all possible worlds. Buying employees MacBooks so they can access Windows-only software through Remote Desktop, just by itself, sounds like madness. And yet if you really don't want to have a Windows-centric environment, one would think the servers would be the first thing to go off Windows. Is there anything in your whole environment that you haven't managed to kluge, hobble, or overspend on?
Breakfast served all day!
Note to mods: Please mod parent +1 Insightful. If you feel so inclined, please mod my own post -1 Redundant, since people really should have learned better by now (especially people with a UID as low as the GP).
Write failed: Broken pipe
Though MM may in fact use *nix solutions as stated, I find the opening line of that post is disingenuous as worded, so I've edited it here to make it more obvious what is being said:
No open source software that I've seen handles the Microsoft proprietary format docx halfway as well as the Microsoft native applications for the format, Word 2007 and Word 2010.
Bolding mine, to point out the obvious deficiencies of that argument.
I agree that your alteration makes his point clearer (although I'm unsure it was really necessary), but I'm not sure it's as much to the argument's detriment as you think. I'm probably going to come off as a Microsoft fanboy here, but so be it.
The reminder must be made that companies both create a legacy of existing files, and must use files by other companies. If you were to flick a magic switch, today, and have all your users understand a new suite of office applications and religiously save into an open format, you would in no way have solved your problems. Their blissful glee at being able to do what they were already doing but in a slightly different way would last until the moment they tried to open an existing file, or one from an external source, that "doesn't look right". And yes, I know I'm going over the same old points that get made, but I'd argue that 1) they're unfortunately still relevant, and 2) with respect, your own points aren't new either.
One additional aspect that usually gets skipped over is Microsoft Access. Yes yes, toy database, shouldn't be used in business etc etc, but we all know it does. I don't believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't checked in a year or two, that any of the open source suites can attempt to open .mdb files. There are now open source Access-like systems to create databases, but again, what do you do about the legacy information? With databases, it's even more likely that these may be currently used, critical files.
As you've said, the starting point is probably to begin using the open document formats in Microsoft products, until all the documents made with older formats are simply not relevant anymore; for my part, our company has only migrated a few users to a version of Office new enough to *have* those formats, so I'm stuck with .doc whether I like it or not. In the end though, it's rather amusing to consider that if, one day, we find ourselves in a situation where the majority of files are created in an open format and switching to an open office suite is easy, it's likely because Microsoft bridged the gap this way.
Regarding Zimbra - What's wrong with the product that would cause 'nasty'?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
There's no need for users to "understand a new suite of office applications" - simply for them to make "Save as ODF" their new default. Within a year, or at most 2-3 years, I'd doubt you would be running into any other format, even in your 'legacy' documents, because in a business most things written don't have a lifespan even that long. And you would still have the capability to open those much older formats, if the need arose. WRT databases, I agree that they would be a bigger issue.
.doc to .docx.
:)
As far as then having compatibility differences with documents from other companies, that is understandable/not unreasonable to expect. Some sort of educational campaign would come in handy to make this an eventual non-issue; like along the lines of what Firefox did with a full-page ad in the NYT back in '04. I don't know by what metric you could determine how much an effect that ad had in FFox eventually shouldering aside IE, but I am fairly certain that it did help in a major way, if only to shine a very public light for a day on FFox as an alternative to the lack of concern MS evinced with updating their browser. If a campaign of education and information were to come about so that the document compatibility issue became - for a short while at least - a topic of broad discussion, perhaps the cross-x concern would be lessened. I don't see how cross-company, cross-platform, cross-app compatibility could be viewed as a "bad thing" to implement by anyone, especially not when it is as simple as changing a single default setting in your already-existing software. Yes, there will be a transitional period, but there always is, even from
Your last point is a good one, and ironically amusing. Thanks for the civil discourse.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
So he should berate his customer for their internal policies? You must be a marketing manager..
In light of the negative media coverage relating to Google privacy concerns, whether relevant or not, a policy that excludes Google services makes perfect sense to businesses who have sensitive data.
Ah, so you're a Fedora man then!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
How about a contract that specifically prohibits entrusting all your sensitive information to a third party whos primary business is advertising and owes you nothing?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find a doc LibreOffice can't open that Office 2003/2007/2010 created.
I have. And it really bugs me.
I use LO where possible for my business stuff, which is to say almost all of it. Occasionally, I receive a contract as a word doc with auto-numbering which LO doesn't open properly (the numbering is wrong). So, keep a VM around just for a rarely used copy of word.
I keep meaning to send a minimal example in as a bug report.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Powershell runs circles around bash.
Incidentally, it's PowerShell, not Powershell.
I think the intended punctuation was "Power's Hell".
It's a reference to a book about the US response to genocide in the 20th century by Samantha Power, "A Problem From Hell", not that weird Microsoft thing you linked.
Powershell runs circles around bash.
I love this: a bald statement of opinion offering no insight whatsoever gets modded to +4 insightful.
PS and BASH are different. They share some common ground. The objects in PS make it more robust in a number of ways, but that comes at the expense of having to deal with the objects properly. What people often forget in these comparisons is that the shells are also a user interface, not just a scripting system.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
....and malware developers.
I still don't quite understand OnLive's business model, or why anyone would go for it. I know how it works, they render everything server-side and send you compressed video - fine. The roundtrip latency is probably not all that bad, as long as you have a short route to the server. I'm fine with the technical aspects, but what about the money ? It seems to me like the only way they can make a buck is via mass pirating.
Those servers can't be cheap, each one is basically a mid-range gaming rig with a hardware video encoder, and can only serve one user at a time. Each needs a copy of the OS and games. You're basically renting access to a $1000+ gaming rig, plus bandwidth. Sure, the benefit is that just about any internet-connected device can now "play" PC games, but how does OnLive turn a profit ? Do they pool the game licenses so they only need as many paid keys as there are simultaneous players ? Or is this like all those ridiculous startups from the dot-com bust, where they spend fucktons of VC money and die a horribly quick death ?
Don't get me wrong, I like the technical merits of OnLive. Even as we said "this will never work", well surprise: it works amazingly well for many people. I just can't see how they can deliver this without charging fucktons of money for the privilege.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
You mean like ANY HP printer, which is mostly what is in all offices.
HP laser printers dominate the office. and if the IT department was not ran by morons, the other wierd off brands will have a Postscript option. Like the Xerox copiers you can print to.
Only low end garbage inkjets have problems printing. I can even print to Designjet's on C size paper.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most of the "you are not allowed to rent some software" licenses are invalid in many countries. So if they are hosting outside of US, it may be just okay.
Iterestingly ODT suport in word seems to have gone backwards, in 2007 they mostly open fine but in 2010 any document created in LibreOffice is treated as corupt (literally any, it could be blank). Although once it "repairs" it, it renders complety fine.
Saddly it will be a while before we get rid of docx, not because libreoffice writer isn't ready (with odt documents it is) but because docx is the standard format for the majority and whilst the alternatives can't support it, it is basicly imposible to transition. (Rember in buisness people will be reciving documents from other companies, government organisations, home computers, etc)
On the point of drivers with the exception of cannon network printers (which are completly unsuported) and nvidia drivers when installing updates (the drivers work fine, they just get unistall/misconfigured by upgrades very easily) I fine linux to be supperior to windows in driver support, because it dosen't speed 30mins searching and installing a flash drive driver (they just work) and you don't have to trawl the web for a wireless card driver (Something I had to do in Win 7 for a certain netgear N wirless dongle but not in ubuntu where it worked out of the box).
null
Don't confuse needless complexity with complexity. I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find a doc LibreOffice can't open that Office 2003/2007/2010 created
^Any docx (default office 2010, 2007 format) document with images (all in the wrong place) in it or that uses complex styles.
I would note that 90% of the time LibreOffice can open odt documents saved in office correctly though.
null
Damn, my moderator points expired yesterday. Spot on, and true.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
I know what a PITA my most fav program is
here's a quote I found in about 4 seconds via google and site:libreoffice.org
"Opening MS Publisher files: Probably will never be implemented - not even other products by MS can open them. "
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Please provide detailed examples of various problem sets that support this claim.
Haha... are you insane?
Here is some helpful meta-information from the dude who designed it.
http://stackoverflow.com/a/573861
Yes, maybe your client may say Google is okay if you asked, but that's gonna make the procedure god damn complicated because the client is also going to ask their lawyers, management, and whomever that needs to be alerted that the data will be shared with somebody else even if it is Google or whomever. The problem isn't that you can't trust Google - it is because adding another party into the contract will increase the complexity of any contract. (e.g., if Google somehow gets screwed and leaks the data, who will be responsible? it's possible that these things must be written into the contract)
I work for a semiconductor company, and since we need to handle a lot of customers' designs, our whole IT infrastructure is in-house, even though it is the crappiest service that I ever experienced.
...have you tried running games in Wine on Nix? Somethings they say because it's true. You can color it however you want with flowery language, but that wont stop my game from crashing every 10 minutes.
My thoughts exactly the minute I heard this. I hope they stomp onlive into the ground.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Pass that shit you're smoking on, man. Other people want to get high too.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
This is Microsoft we're talking about.
Of course it's going to cost 'em!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
and will you swallow? YES and YES!
Not sure why parent was modded down... that's straight from a MS EULA.
I8-D
We're talking here about OnLive. In addition to Windows and Office they also stream recent PC games to your iOS or Android device.
I've used their game streaming. It's not exactly what I would call good.
As long as they're not based in the U.S., no one really cares about copyright. The WHOLE rest of the world half-asses the enforcement of IP protection in comparison. The only news that ever happen in that field are always caused by US interests trying to force a shrill, paranoid climate of fear of reprisal for innovating anything at all without having paid everyone else in the industry.
Abolish IP, solve the problem, adapt or die.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I wish I could agree with you. I use openoffice most of the time at home, google docs and docs to go on my phone, and Office 2010 at work. None of the free solutions are nearly as good as actual office. They do the same thing, but the open source ones are all clunkier, and more difficult to use. This is coming from someone who *HATES* ribbon.
Why? Its the OS people choose to use for desktop PC.
Seriously, this idea that people are forced to use Windows is crazy. Dell made Windows standard on their PC's because the majority of people ordering Dell PC's back in the 90's also bought a copy of Windows with it. Microsoft may have given them added incentive, but the reality is people did NOT choose OS/2.
Even when Mac computers grew in popularity when they switched to the Intel platform, the Lion's share (pardon the pun) of users are want to boot into Windows, or at least have the option available. Almost everyone I know with a Mac is running Windows on it predominantly.
The reason why Microsoft has not gained traction in the mobile market is because they have not produced a product people want. If you have the option between three phones, one by Apple, one running Android, and one running WP7, people are choosing Apple and Android more then Microsoft.
Also how is hosting Windows/Office over the web reducing the use of Windows. It is pretty much indicating that people want to use Microsoft products, even on non-Microsoft platforms.
I find comments such as yours flawed and biased with an necessary hatred of something that is a non-issue. Nobody holds a gun to your head and forced you to use Windows, chances are you whipped up your comment on a Windows box. You can freely choose Linux or OS X as your desired platform, but the PC market pretty much universally choose Windows as their preferred desktop OS, just as they are predominantly choosing iPad as their tablet platform and iPhone/Android split as their preferred mobile platform.
If you think that consumers are not dictating the popularity of software/OS/hardware, etc, you are woefully out of touch with reality.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
A couple of years ago I migrated around 1000 users from Exchange to Google Apps. We had HEAVY push from management (it was a company-wide initiative in a Fortune 500) but there are still a few holdouts 2.5 years later (just a few stubborn "VIP" users who couldn't be strong-armed). Overall, it was very difficult and time-consuming (and the users hated me and everyone else on my team for months) but the project was successful.
We tried to do the same thing moving from Office2k3 to OpenOffice when things began to calm down a bit, but that project was VERY unsuccessful. The business units all revolted. We were able to migrate about 80% of users in the CIO's organization and a few low-end manufacturing workstations that nobody used for office-type work anyway.
You haven't actually READ a MSFT license in awhile, have you? there is like 40+ pages to the thing where lawyers have tried to cover every single possible use case you can imagine and considering thin clients have been around for over 15 years i seriously doubt their licenses don't have clauses concerning thin clients and cloud computing. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it says quite clearly you have to buy a user CAL for every user who accesses thin clients which if they are giving this service free I seriously doubt they did.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
VP Engineering sir (or mam); 13 years of experience. I find that most poor technical decisions are the result of a) politics or b) ignorance. Neither is an excuse for a poor technical decision. If you want to make the choice not to use Google App services, make it. Don't bullshit that its because of sensitive data though. Google manages more data in a day than you'll see in a lifetime. I'd select them over Microsoft, Apple, or any of the other few options out there.
And yes, I can have the opinion that someone made a poor technical decision by excluding Google from a selection of vendors, unless its a genuine concern. That doesn't mean I'm berating someone. It means I believe their priorities are skewed.
When you pay for Google Apps, yes, you're specifically paying Google for a service being provided. I wouldn't consider that "owing you nothing".
I've worked with exchange for......*counts on hand* 6 or 7 years on and off? I'd rather charge $2K on my credit card once each year for Google Apps, and enjoy working on real problems other than Exchange (hosted or not). Even Rackspace can't reliably provide hosted Exchange services without constant maintenance windows and downtime (yes, I keep tabs on service notification site for the mail application platform).
In fact, there are technical features in place that actively block prevent many remote clients working. Microsoft are squeezing competitors out of the Windows hosting sphere by making companies buy Terminal Services CALs for all users as well as the licenses for VMWare, Citrix or whatever. Or they could buy just the TS CAL and use RDP instead. Guess which option most clients go for...?
Onlive will have created an interface protocol that bypasses Windows' own protocols, and Microsoft don't have access to an installation, so they can't introduce a patch that breaks Onlive (as they're famous for doing since the days of the war with OS2/Warp).
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The customer in question is in Canada and has government contracts, and the Canadian government has specifically excluded all data storage outside of Canada.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Even more kludgy and reliant on external components than Exchange, and my experience is that the Outlook plugin just doesn't cut the mustard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So what if it's proprietary. Since the customer in question receives a considerably amount of correspondence from external sources, most of it in docx format, it's what they have to deal with. Period. Installing a program known to open such formats poorly as a stand on principle will end me up out of some good paying work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Disclaimer: I worked there for two years, though I haven't been with OnLive since early 2010 (before the OnLive Desktop). I do not hold any OnLive or Microsoft stock at this time, and therefore don't have a horse in this race. It's just amusing to watch.
Something to consider. Steve Perlman, their CEO, was also the CEO of WebTV, which was sold to Microsoft. He knows the Microsoft execs at the highest level, and has a good business relationship with them. He also isn't stupid. I know that it's trendy to be cynical and hipster-esque about these things, and that it generates page views (and revenue from advertising, hence the motivation for TFA to appear as it did) to make this sort of speculation, but common sense dictates that no company of OnLive's size would do something as blatant and as public as wholesale commercial piracy. There is far too much to lose and very little to gain. In fact, one of OnLive's messages to software publishers is "software installed on OnLive cannot be pirated, because there is no external access to the binaries". Short of a hack that allows access to the back-end servers, you can no more pirate an app from OnLive than you can pirate AutoCAD by taking a photograph of the box. In that context, does any of TFA make sense?
In fact, the entire article seems to come down to "I, random bloggy guy with zero personal access to what's actually happening, am not aware of a licensing program that fits, therefore such a licensing program does NOT exist, and CANNOT exist. I'm not smart enough or educated enough or informed enough know how it works, therefore it cannot work." Pretty thin, if you ask me.
I do not have firsthand knowledge of this, but I know the people involved, at least on the OnLive side. They're not PirateBay; they are thoughtful people who are aware of the consequences of their actions and who want good business relationships with software publishers (including Microsoft). I think it is very likely that there is a deal in place which might not be a boilerplate license. It is also possible that such a license is part of a larger framework.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Exchange, MS-SQL, private software made for Windows-only, office communicator proprietary features, active directory infrastructure with it's proprietary features (Including profile management, etc), the entire office suite (ENTIRE), the list can go on.
This is coming from a UNIX professional.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
They don't have to, all they have to have is the most trivial of security crypto and then they can have them busted under DMCA. Also the courts have held EULAs to be valid and I'm sure that it says quite clearly in the EULA that as you point out you HAVE to have a terminal services CAL for EACH USER that accesses this. Now since i doubt Onlive has shelled out a couple of million for TS CALs the only question is how badly the courts are gonna bust them and how high the fines are gonna be. Since this is the willful breaking of copyrights, EULAs, and contracts for profit? Onlive will be lucky if they have enough money left to keep the lights on.
Like it or not you DO have the right to license software as you wish and if MSFT doesn't want to give you a cheap and easy way to do what onlive is doing its their code they can do that. just as I can't force GPL to allow me to make proprietary apps out of GPL code without buying the rights from the devs so too can MSFT say they won't let you stream services without a TS CAL.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
MS fanboi with no Linux experience?
I'm relating this from personal experience. I hate all operating systems. I'd prefer to use Linux if possible but haven't been able to get away from using windows as my main boot. Why? Well games of course.
But beyond that, maybe I'm just unlucky but not one of my five printers works (one several years old the others all under 2 years old)
Never got either of my two scanners to work... one of which was one of the top selling scanners in history, sold for almost a decade with only minor changes. There's still a version sold today. But linux drivers? Nope. It's on the "don;t even ask, we're not going to" list.
Obviously most of this has to do with peripheral manufacturers being unwilling to release code or specs or be supportive in any way, but the end result is the same.
This space available.
Point being that .docx formatting is, by nature of being proprietary, intended to be difficult (or maybe not even possible) for some other app than that provided by the manufacturer to open.
.exe-format programs? No. Yet to deride them as OS'es because they don't, would not make any sense.
Think of it this way: Do Linux or BSD suck because they don't natively run
I don't begrudge you your good living, at all. I am a hearty proponent of and regular user of Linux myself, yet like you, make my money working primarily in MS environments (mostly, fixing them). My post does not take issue with that, or you; instead, it was intended to point out that using a wrench to turn a screw, isn't going to work well.
But that is not the fault of the wrench - it is simply the nature of the screw.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Where I work, we have concerns regarding PHI. When HIPPA is involved, Google is strictly prohibited (at least according to our legal department). So, for that matter, is DropBox.