I really don't understand what the hell possessed them to lash together Windows Media Player, IE, ActiveX and some proprietary P2P downloader. It doesn't even work on Windows properly. Just using a different version of Windows, IE or WMP from the ones requires will break the software. Classic design by committee.
Few people really care about DRM on DVDs. All DVD players will play the things. It's easily circumvented. It's more or less invisible to most people. DVD recorders are still quite rare amongst non-techies. True.. although quite a few have heard about the extra helpings of DRM on HD disks. They haven't caught on yet, and I suspect that the DRM requirements and licensing deals have some bearing on the price.
I think they're mostly talking about DRM for downloads. This is more of a problem. People expect their music to be portable, and don't want any complexity or compatibility problems transferring music to their mp3 players. Very true. Even the iTunes users seem to be coming to the realization that a light DRM is still DRM. EMI was the first one to blink, and now the others stand a good chance of looking for a face saving route to DRM free sales. Surprisingly enough, its not just us techies that notice this and dislike it. Ordinary consumers are getting fed up with CDs that will not play in some CD players, downloaded legal music that will only play in the player they are registered to etc. And I don't think the dream of music rental is quite as well received as some would like to think. Especially once the customer realises that they can loose their music collection the minute they cancel their subscription...
A useful software product needs no "user support". If the user has to call for help, the product is incomprehensible or it fails when the user needs it the most.
Some very complicated products require training (e.g., Oracle) to use properly. However, once trained nothing further is required other than using the product. Great in theory, doesn't work in practice though. Any program that gets beyond very simple functionality needs support of one kind or another.
A shovel can work for decades without any servicing. But a digger needs a service every now and then, and active attention to lubricant levels and wear and tear on various components. Which would you prefer to use to dig the foundations of an office block with?
Yes, but when does a "patent" become a hindrance to society by stifling innovation and competition? All that Microsoft has done is made a non-specific claim about owning patents and companies that can't pay the toll are afraid to move forward because they might end up sued into non-existence.
That's called a back-door monopoly... and it hurts us, the marketplace, and the implementation of the benefits of technology we should all enjoy. It doesn't really say anything. Its like a major news story about an explosion in an animal shelter with the tag line "authorities do not suspect terrorist involvement" Spices up the story a little, but adds no actual information.
There are three distinct and unrelated aspects to the story.
1) Microsoft and Kyocera signed a cross licence agreement.
Common business practice. Nothing suspicious. The only relevant bit.
2) Kyocera uses Linux in some of it's products.
Again nothing unusual, and nothing suspicious. Mostly irrelevant, although there is the possibility that Microsoft patented functions might run with but not be part of the Linux functionality.
3) Microsoft claim to have patents relevant to Linux.
Nothing new, nothing proven. Most likely FUD. Not relevant in this story. Patents are a very dangerous weapon for all concerned. The owner of the patent is in just as much danger as the target company. Which is why businesses usually cross license instead of going to court. Especially if they are big companies like Microsoft and Kyocera.
Because 1 and 2 are true, doesn't automatically make 3 part of the deal. Much as I would love to be critical of Microsoft. HTey haven't done anything unusual or immoral. They have just made a common business deal. End of story.
This system easily meets the spec to run XP, and also meets the advertised base spec for Vista. But the base spec is like the minimum spec on a game box. Meaning that the game will run on these spec, but forget about playing it.
You should hear the utter contempt the folks at Microsoft in charge of taking on Linux have for you open source folks. Your Weakness sickens them. Ohh.. the plan is working then:-)
Says who? Selling advertisement to a traffic spike is just as profitable as selling advertisement to regulars. A traffic spike is potentially more valuable, since they are more likely to be seeing the ad for the first time. The integral is therefore probably a better measure than the median. And why would this be relevant to a web site that doesn't sell ANY advertising?
It could have been angry nerds protesting and visiting bbc.co.uk sites from their linux boxes to boost the market share stats. Or maybe a bunch of BBC stories have been posted to slashdot recently (e.g. this one). Or... the guy could have pulled a random number out of his backside that he felt sounded right. The BBC have been dragging their feet and have been called on the concept of their iPlayer being Windows and IE only. Now they have yet another embarrassing incident to explain.
I've been using the BBC site for years, and I frequently watch streamed media, search for information and look up websites of various programs there. And I do the same on my Linux PC now I'm using it predominantly. The BBC website is linked to when discussing relevant topics on the Linux forums just as much as it is from any other.
This guy has been caught in a pathetically easy to discount inaccuracy, and has been called on it.
I'm guessing in this case they designed their game for Windows and Linux/OS X were an afterthought. If they designed their game for portability there would probably be a native Linux port. I dunno if a company like Loki can survive now, but even then with a MMORPG patches have to be released simultaneously or you risk pissing off some of your customers (and really it's unfair to them to do that). Holding back your patches to have all the platform on the same page risks the customers growing tired of waiting for new content. I would guess for a MMORPG its really better to have an in-house team to manage the Linux port, but that is expensive vs the amount of people playing the game on that OS. If Linux has 3% of the total userbase then only a fraction of the 3% would playing the game. I meant that for a yet to be written game, it would be much more practical to start with a portable system. Develop on Linux, Mac, Windows, Xbox and PS3 all from the same code base. Many companies are already doing this with consoles and computers, so an extra platform or two will bring in more profit.
As to the user base. Of the entire 95% that Windows is reputed to have, not every windows user is a gamer. I think you are severely over estimating the market. The Windows majority is made up of 98, 98SE, 2000, ME, XP and a few Vista users. So not all are going to be able to use the currently available games for a start. In other words, of no use to the game publishers. XP is somewhere around 70% of the total PC market, and is the largest platform for current games. So lets start from there.
First, subtract the percentage of business only PCs where the user is not only not going to not have time to play games at work, but they can not install anything on their work PC ever. This will be a majority of the 70%
Then subtract the number of 3 year and older PCs that people are still perfectly happy to use. A Pentium 3 and 256 meg of memory is not going to get you much in the way of game play, but it is fine for most if not all the uses that most people make of their PCs at home.
Then subtract the laptops, which are making up a significant amount of the Windows market at the moment. Playing a resource hungry game on a laptop is not a good idea. Unless you are feeling really cold.
Consoles are easy to use, comparatively cheap when you take the cost of a gaming PC into account, so even more Windows users are going to get a console instead, and they have about five years of use with the console as opposed to a year or two before the gaming PC looks a bit slow.
Now you have quite a small chunk of the 95% Windows market. That is the market that the gamers inhabit. At a very rough guess, the gaming market is much closer to 10%.
So now, the Linux/Mac markets don't look as insignificant.
Why would companies spend resources on a Linux version of their software if their software works with Wine just fine? Blizzard wrote a Windows client for WoW that is ported to Linux with Wine for free. What more can a company want than someone else doing the work for them for free? Any company that spends vast amounts of resources to port a product to Linux when it can be emulated with wine just fine probably isn't making good business decisions anyway, and won't stay in business long. On the flip side, Wine could very well be hindering games from being 'Linux native' because wine is capable of providing the performance needed to get the job done. There is no incentive to provide such software for Linux users because they can use Wine. Because Wine doesn't always work consistently. An upgrade can break some apps that were running well with wine, and a native client is going to work better. Games are also much more likely to do something low level that hasn't been thought of which could cause problems with Wine.
There doesn't need to be vast resources devoted to porting a game from one platform to the other. They don't have to write the whole thing from scratch..
The majority of the work is already done, and if the system is well designed, the game is practically platform agnostic already. All the animations, the meshes, the skins, the sound and music files are all independent of one particular platform, and if the engine is developed properly, the resources involved are minimized. Just the engine and a few other bits need to be ported and compiled for the other platforms. And in this day and age, when companies often release Windows, PS2/3 and Xbox versions of the same game, isn't it more practical to design the game as easily portable from the start? Then they can tap into the growing Linux and OSX markets with minimal extra development.
I think we may be arguing the same point here. So I'll clarify my position.
There are two distinct groups here.
1) The people running this particular project.
2) The developers who have volunteered to take part.
The people running the project need to set the scope of the project, so in this case Kernel only drivers, to make the project manageable. The idea of having every bit of hardware supported by the kernel would be impractical. So excluding scanners and printers from this particular project is perfectly rational, and are taken care of by different and already existing projects and dealt with by a different mechanism in the OS. Would it be any more efficient for both the kernel driver project and the Open Printing project to both be doing the same work on the same printers?
The programmers, who are not very likely to be sitting around waiting to be allocated a specific driver to work on, are free to follow which ever project they are interested in. Including printers, scanners, and anything else that takes their fancy. Should a rush develop, they can be called upon to contribute to the kernel driver project instead of writing drivers for a multitude of drivers on their own, and risking duplication.
Thus, no waste of resources, and a perfectly justified narrow scope for the project. The administrators can approach companies and try to get them to see the advantage of giving them the needed information and access to one or more of their techs, hence the requests for the hardware that people want to see supported.
Are you stupid? Do you look through everything you buy to make sure it's exactly what it's labeled as? I sure as hell don't open my cereal boxes in the store just make sure I'm really getting cereal. There is a slight difference though. A box of cereal is a small cost, and usually comes in a sealed box with a sealed liner. Pretty obvious if it has been interfered with. Nobody in their right mind would buy food items with damaged packaging.
A hard drive in a sealed box is very easy to open up and check for the right contents in the presence of a sales person. They can't very well accuse you of fraud when you have a receipt timestamped a few minutes ago as proof that this item was bought there and you couldn't have swapped the thing for something else. It could potentially be a different capacity drive that would be very difficult to prove was supplied in error, a returned as faulty device that a manager decided to put back on the shelf after a return, or as in this case, something totally different to the item purchased.
I've bought quite a few lower end devices from computer fairs, and to avoid getting ripped off, I always inspect the item after paying. So far, I haven't been stung. But it would be very easy for a stall holder to substitute the item for something else and deny all knowledge of the swap. Bring out the dodgy stock an hour or two before the end of the fair, and few would have the time to go back and challenge them.
I don't see why you'd need RFIDs to track down the person returning rubbish. Most stores I've been to take your address when you return something, so if someone is scamming, it should be easy for the store to track down the person by looking up the serial number on the box. Unless the theft was carried out by an employee. Wouldn't it be common practice to check the contents of a returned item? I know whenever I have returned an item, it has had the packaging opened and the contents checked to make sure that all the bits and the manuals/driver disks etc are in the box. In which case, it would be difficult, and very risky to try something like that.
Have you tried polishing out the scratches? Worked very well for me on an old CD that had a scuff mark on the first track. You can get gadgets that will polish the scratches out using a very fine abrasive liquid similar to metal polish. Some even come with sanding pads for very deep scratches. Or you could try a small amount of metal polish on a cotton bud. Polish in line with the data tracks, not inside to outside. If the disk doesn't work right now, what do you have to lose.
how employable do you think someone is going to be if they go into the workforce having never used windows?
yes, thats right, you just hurt their chances at getting a job all in the name of your own pet crusade.
schools are not the place for politics of any kind. So everyone over about thirty is unemployable!! The vast overwhelming majority of people leaving school are not going to walk into a tech job. They are going to be sitting in front of a word processor or a spreadsheet, or more likely a call centre database, or a custom designed database particular to their chosen profession. And quite a few are not going to get any closer than a POS display at the local supermarket. That is what the school is aiming at. Basic generic office skills. Not manufacturing power users and programmers or graphic artists.
Being realistic.. An employer is not going to take the school qualification seriously for a tech job. So programing and other similar skills are a waste of the school's and the student's time at this level. Programmers and analysts get to go to university or on specific training courses to get these skills. The same applies to any of the more skilled computer jobs where the differences between one OS and another are really relevant. A GCSE in computer science...wow.. have you considered a career in the fast food industry.. McDonalds is always hiring. A high mark on a school course might mean you don't have to sit an aptitude test for a computer course, but thats about it.
A general linux user does not care how the distro has been put together. He or she just wants it to work. Then they will be in for a big disappointment. Linux is a challenge. Unless you are incredibly lucky or did your research, it isn't going to just work. And strangely enough, I have yet to come across a Linux user who doesn't care about the way that Linux is put together. If anything, I'd say the opposite is true.
I respect anyone's choice to work only in kernel-land if they so desire, but collecting hundreds of people who say "I only can or want to do kernel" only to then complain that these folks don't have enough work to do while on the other side of the wall there are Himalayan mountains of work left over is just plain ridiculous. What's even more ridiculous, is to claim that "the linux driver problem is overstated" simply because of this kind of self-selected mismatch. And for all we know, these coders are involved in other projects too. The Linux driver project was specifically set up to offer the hardware manufacturers a service where they could get kernel drivers developed for free. Nothing more. Not a general driver writing project, but one specific to the kernel. So a bunch of coders volunteered to be in the pool of talent to get the job done. Its just taking a while to get things rolling. If the world and his dog decided to take advantage of this, then they might just as easily be calling out for more coders to keep things ticking along.
The driver availability problem could very well be overstated when it applies to kernel space drivers. How many devices need to use kernel drivers? and of those, how many are not supported or currently under development.
To follow up on your analosy: a Windows developer can not go fix an Epson driver even if he wants to, but a Linux kernel developer can help fix a userspace driver problem if only he wants to. That's the big advantage of Open Source. And how do you know they don't? (the kernel developers that is)Another advantage of open source is that the coders can go where they are needed. So if there isn't any kernel drivers needed right now, they can go do something else instead of sitting around waiting for something to do. Like perhaps http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting
Don't be so sure. The effect of having so many people with computers in their homes is that there are growing numbers of computer literate users. It may be a minority, but there are more every day who are clued in enough to make informed choices, and it doesn't take much to change the direction of the market.
Your point is a good one, but the tension here is not the why but the what. Joe User wants (the what) simple booklet printing, for example. The fact that Person A hacks the kernel, whereas Person B hacks CUPS (the why) amounts to minutia. Only if you don't understand how Linux (as in the whole distro) is put together. The Kernel is a completely different project to CUPS or SANE. A Windows analogy would be complaining to Microsoft because there was no driver for your particular model Epson printer.
"IMPORTANT--READ CAREFULLY: This End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Microsoft Corporation or one of its affiliates ("Microsoft") for the Microsoft software that accompanies this EULA, which includes computer software and may include associated media, printed materials, "online" or electronic documentation, and Internet-based services ("Software"). An amendment or addendum to this EULA may accompany the Software. YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE SOFTWARE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL, COPY, OR USE THE SOFTWARE; YOU MAY RETURN IT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND, IF APPLICABLE."
Rejecting the contract at this stage means you have no need to read the rest of the EULA,and states explicitly that you are entitled to a refund, who you are entitled to a refund from, and as the court cases have shown, the refund is in fact applicable. So basically, if they don't give a refund, you are entitled to take them to court and enter a case where you as the end user will win.
Assuming the EULA is the same in the US and elsewhere, I wonder why this has not been tried before, and if it has, does anyone know the outcome? This has far reaching implications beyond HP. Any computer manufacturer would be affected, but the EULA seems to point heavily to the refunding procedure, not of Microsoft, but of the reseller. It should be interesting to see how HP responds. It is and it has. There was a case recently in I think a French court where one of the big names was being awkward, and the court awarded the customer the full retail cost of all the software they rejected instead of just the OEM price. This was obviously a penalty for the company being difficult about obeying the EULA. And there have been a few others where people have demanded a refund as specified in the EULA, and reported their adventures in getting satisfaction.
Its a case of "don't like it.. Don't buy it", so he didn't. This could be something that will get more popular as time goes by. If someone wants to install their own copy of Windows to get rid of all the crapplets, then they should be given a refund of the unused license, If they choose to use another OS, then that is also a perfectly legitimate reason to reject the EULA and have the price of Windows and any other software refunded. The conditions of the EULA are enforced when it goes against the user, so there is no real justification to not enforce the other bits.
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... how they could screw this up so bad.I really don't understand what the hell possessed them to lash together Windows Media Player, IE, ActiveX and some proprietary P2P downloader. It doesn't even work on Windows properly. Just using a different version of Windows, IE or WMP from the ones requires will break the software. Classic design by committee.
Surprisingly enough, its not just us techies that notice this and dislike it. Ordinary consumers are getting fed up with CDs that will not play in some CD players, downloaded legal music that will only play in the player they are registered to etc. And I don't think the dream of music rental is quite as well received as some would like to think. Especially once the customer realises that they can loose their music collection the minute they cancel their subscription...
Some very complicated products require training (e.g., Oracle) to use properly. However, once trained nothing further is required other than using the product. Great in theory, doesn't work in practice though. Any program that gets beyond very simple functionality needs support of one kind or another.
A shovel can work for decades without any servicing. But a digger needs a service every now and then, and active attention to lubricant levels and wear and tear on various components. Which would you prefer to use to dig the foundations of an office block with?
Kinda hard on Linux boxen.
That's called a back-door monopoly... and it hurts us, the marketplace, and the implementation of the benefits of technology we should all enjoy. It doesn't really say anything. Its like a major news story about an explosion in an animal shelter with the tag line "authorities do not suspect terrorist involvement" Spices up the story a little, but adds no actual information.
There are three distinct and unrelated aspects to the story.
1) Microsoft and Kyocera signed a cross licence agreement.
Common business practice. Nothing suspicious. The only relevant bit.
2) Kyocera uses Linux in some of it's products.
Again nothing unusual, and nothing suspicious. Mostly irrelevant, although there is the possibility that Microsoft patented functions might run with but not be part of the Linux functionality.
3) Microsoft claim to have patents relevant to Linux.
Nothing new, nothing proven. Most likely FUD. Not relevant in this story. Patents are a very dangerous weapon for all concerned. The owner of the patent is in just as much danger as the target company. Which is why businesses usually cross license instead of going to court. Especially if they are big companies like Microsoft and Kyocera.
Because 1 and 2 are true, doesn't automatically make 3 part of the deal. Much as I would love to be critical of Microsoft. HTey haven't done anything unusual or immoral. They have just made a common business deal. End of story.
I've been using the BBC site for years, and I frequently watch streamed media, search for information and look up websites of various programs there. And I do the same on my Linux PC now I'm using it predominantly. The BBC website is linked to when discussing relevant topics on the Linux forums just as much as it is from any other.
This guy has been caught in a pathetically easy to discount inaccuracy, and has been called on it.
As to the user base. Of the entire 95% that Windows is reputed to have, not every windows user is a gamer. I think you are severely over estimating the market.
The Windows majority is made up of 98, 98SE, 2000, ME, XP and a few Vista users. So not all are going to be able to use the currently available games for a start. In other words, of no use to the game publishers. XP is somewhere around 70% of the total PC market, and is the largest platform for current games. So lets start from there.
First, subtract the percentage of business only PCs where the user is not only not going to not have time to play games at work, but they can not install anything on their work PC ever. This will be a majority of the 70%
Then subtract the number of 3 year and older PCs that people are still perfectly happy to use. A Pentium 3 and 256 meg of memory is not going to get you much in the way of game play, but it is fine for most if not all the uses that most people make of their PCs at home.
Then subtract the laptops, which are making up a significant amount of the Windows market at the moment. Playing a resource hungry game on a laptop is not a good idea. Unless you are feeling really cold.
Consoles are easy to use, comparatively cheap when you take the cost of a gaming PC into account, so even more Windows users are going to get a console instead, and they have about five years of use with the console as opposed to a year or two before the gaming PC looks a bit slow.
Now you have quite a small chunk of the 95% Windows market. That is the market that the gamers inhabit. At a very rough guess, the gaming market is much closer to 10%.
So now, the Linux/Mac markets don't look as insignificant.
There doesn't need to be vast resources devoted to porting a game from one platform to the other. They don't have to write the whole thing from scratch..
The majority of the work is already done, and if the system is well designed, the game is practically platform agnostic already. All the animations, the meshes, the skins, the sound and music files are all independent of one particular platform, and if the engine is developed properly, the resources involved are minimized.
Just the engine and a few other bits need to be ported and compiled for the other platforms. And in this day and age, when companies often release Windows, PS2/3 and Xbox versions of the same game, isn't it more practical to design the game as easily portable from the start? Then they can tap into the growing Linux and OSX markets with minimal extra development.
I think we may be arguing the same point here. So I'll clarify my position.
There are two distinct groups here.
1) The people running this particular project.
2) The developers who have volunteered to take part.
The people running the project need to set the scope of the project, so in this case Kernel only drivers, to make the project manageable. The idea of having every bit of hardware supported by the kernel would be impractical. So excluding scanners and printers from this particular project is perfectly rational, and are taken care of by different and already existing projects and dealt with by a different mechanism in the OS. Would it be any more efficient for both the kernel driver project and the Open Printing project to both be doing the same work on the same printers?
The programmers, who are not very likely to be sitting around waiting to be allocated a specific driver to work on, are free to follow which ever project they are interested in. Including printers, scanners, and anything else that takes their fancy. Should a rush develop, they can be called upon to contribute to the kernel driver project instead of writing drivers for a multitude of drivers on their own, and risking duplication.
Thus, no waste of resources, and a perfectly justified narrow scope for the project. The administrators can approach companies and try to get them to see the advantage of giving them the needed information and access to one or more of their techs, hence the requests for the hardware that people want to see supported.
After checking, I was exactly wrong. it is across the disk (inside to outside), not in the direction of the data track. Sorry.
A hard drive in a sealed box is very easy to open up and check for the right contents in the presence of a sales person. They can't very well accuse you of fraud when you have a receipt timestamped a few minutes ago as proof that this item was bought there and you couldn't have swapped the thing for something else. It could potentially be a different capacity drive that would be very difficult to prove was supplied in error, a returned as faulty device that a manager decided to put back on the shelf after a return, or as in this case, something totally different to the item purchased.
I've bought quite a few lower end devices from computer fairs, and to avoid getting ripped off, I always inspect the item after paying. So far, I haven't been stung. But it would be very easy for a stall holder to substitute the item for something else and deny all knowledge of the swap. Bring out the dodgy stock an hour or two before the end of the fair, and few would have the time to go back and challenge them.
Have you tried polishing out the scratches? Worked very well for me on an old CD that had a scuff mark on the first track. You can get gadgets that will polish the scratches out using a very fine abrasive liquid similar to metal polish. Some even come with sanding pads for very deep scratches. Or you could try a small amount of metal polish on a cotton bud. Polish in line with the data tracks, not inside to outside. If the disk doesn't work right now, what do you have to lose.
how employable do you think someone is going to be if they go into the workforce having never used windows?
yes, thats right, you just hurt their chances at getting a job all in the name of your own pet crusade.
schools are not the place for politics of any kind. So everyone over about thirty is unemployable!! The vast overwhelming majority of people leaving school are not going to walk into a tech job. They are going to be sitting in front of a word processor or a spreadsheet, or more likely a call centre database, or a custom designed database particular to their chosen profession. And quite a few are not going to get any closer than a POS display at the local supermarket. That is what the school is aiming at. Basic generic office skills. Not manufacturing power users and programmers or graphic artists.
Being realistic.. An employer is not going to take the school qualification seriously for a tech job. So programing and other similar skills are a waste of the school's and the student's time at this level. Programmers and analysts get to go to university or on specific training courses to get these skills. The same applies to any of the more skilled computer jobs where the differences between one OS and another are really relevant. A GCSE in computer science...wow.. have you considered a career in the fast food industry.. McDonalds is always hiring. A high mark on a school course might mean you don't have to sit an aptitude test for a computer course, but thats about it.
Don't be so sure. The effect of having so many people with computers in their homes is that there are growing numbers of computer literate users. It may be a minority, but there are more every day who are clued in enough to make informed choices, and it doesn't take much to change the direction of the market.
Bravo!!! I and my 450 spam emails last time I checked my email agree completly.
Joe User wants (the what) simple booklet printing, for example.
The fact that Person A hacks the kernel, whereas Person B hacks CUPS (the why) amounts to minutia. Only if you don't understand how Linux (as in the whole distro) is put together. The Kernel is a completely different project to CUPS or SANE.
A Windows analogy would be complaining to Microsoft because there was no driver for your particular model Epson printer.
After a few seconds to get to the Google page, the EULA states exactly in the first paragraph.. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/proeula.mspx
"IMPORTANT--READ CAREFULLY: This End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Microsoft Corporation or one of its affiliates ("Microsoft") for the Microsoft software that accompanies this EULA, which includes computer software and may include associated media, printed materials, "online" or electronic documentation, and Internet-based services ("Software"). An amendment or addendum to this EULA may accompany the Software. YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE SOFTWARE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL, COPY, OR USE THE SOFTWARE; YOU MAY RETURN IT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND, IF APPLICABLE."
Rejecting the contract at this stage means you have no need to read the rest of the EULA,and states explicitly that you are entitled to a refund, who you are entitled to a refund from, and as the court cases have shown, the refund is in fact applicable. So basically, if they don't give a refund, you are entitled to take them to court and enter a case where you as the end user will win.
Its a case of "don't like it.. Don't buy it", so he didn't. This could be something that will get more popular as time goes by. If someone wants to install their own copy of Windows to get rid of all the crapplets, then they should be given a refund of the unused license, If they choose to use another OS, then that is also a perfectly legitimate reason to reject the EULA and have the price of Windows and any other software refunded. The conditions of the EULA are enforced when it goes against the user, so there is no real justification to not enforce the other bits.