1) While running XP on a Mac is cool, and definitely can be useful for those looking for diversity in application availablity in one box, there's the question of how ALL programs run on it. I have enough problems running all my windows apps on my XP box, much less on a dual-boot system.:)
As you point out, that'll be a problem regardless.
2) And, while getting XP to run may or may not help Mac users who want #1, the truth is that in a couple years, we're talking about Vista, not XP. Therefore, while this is a huge step, it's still a step behind. It says quite a bit about what can be achieved, and likely, if XP can boot on a Mac, then Vista will follow. But I just wonder if this is all THAT useful in the long term. It's still going to always be a game of catch up, IMHO.
That's years from now.
MS Vista is still far in the future for XP users, XP doesn't lose support from MS for year.
What being able to run XP, OS X and Linux on the same hardware does is give sites flexibility. If you have a university computing lab full of desktop computers, it is now possible to have users decide which OS to boot into. Previously the administration had to decide months if not years in advance how many MS machines vs OS X machines to buy. Now you (can in theory) have one that will do both.
It seems I hit a nerve by stating the obvious. The department needs to get past its ideology and go back to choosing technology based on merit.
... Not to mention the fact that you are using high maintenance Microsoft Outlook type services...
That's probably the heart of the problem. Like it or not, those are key symptoms of your average MS shop.
MS-based services consume staff time like it's going out of style. And not just IT-staff, those stuck with such an infrastructure or desktop services lose a lot of productivity due to extremely poor levels of service and frequent outages, even re-starts. Sure the re-boot after a crash is automatic on XP, but you still have lost your train of thought and will have to re-expend a lot of effort just to pick up where you left off. By that point, other time constraints kick in. e.g. a meeting, another project, lunch, quitting time, etc.
MS Exchange may be ok as a calendar system on a quarantined intranet, but once you connect it to the Internet that beast turns into an electronic chernobyl of viruses, worms, warez, porn and videos. Not to mention that it loses a heck of a lot of mail. Even your die-hard MS apologists have to admit that 10%-15% error rate is not acceptable.
There are an increasing number of "Exchange Alternatives" out there for those that bother to look. Yes, MS Exchange is about Calendaring and there are also many separate calendaring tools out there as well. Having separate calendar and mail clients allow your site to choose the best of both.
The basic description is that the IT department is over-taxed, but adding more staff won't help any if the underlying cause is the technology. The MS-Outlook / MS-Exchange is probably the most burdensome and should go first. File storage should move next. Then ease people off of MS Office. At that point, much of the maintenance difficulties will be gone, though you can go that little bit extra and eventually ditch MS Windows. They're there to work, not play games. Evaluating technology based on technical merits rather than how it fits in with admiration of Bill will go a long way in reducing overhead.
... Not to mention the fact that you are using high maintenance Microsoft Outlook type services...
That's probably the heart of the problem. The symptoms he described sound like your average MS shop. MS based services consume staff time like it's going out of style. And not just IT-staff, those stuck with such an infrastructure or desktop services lose a lot of productivity due to extremely poor levels of service and frequent outages, even re-starts. Sure the re-boot after a crash is automatic on XP, but you still have lost your train of thought and will have to re-expend a lot of effort just to pick up where you left off. By that point, other time constraints kick in. e.g. a meeting, another project, lunch, quitting time, etc.
The basic description is that the IT department is over-taxed, but adding more staff won't help any if the underlying cause is the technology. The MS-Outlook / MS-Exchange is probably the most burdensome and should go first. File storage should move next. Then ease people off of MS Office. At that point, much of the maintenance difficulties will be gone, though you can go that little bit extra and eventually ditch MS Windows. They're there to work, not play games.
Yeah, its "small", but actually the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) does have an established reputation of being an early adopter. One example relevant here is that it had one of the first 25 web servers in the world.
That DTU now backs OpenDocument so prominently speaks to the potential that standard has in the world. Whether MS has more success at blocking OpenDocument than it did trying to block the web remains to be seen. Myself, I think not. If OpenDocument gains a small amount of marketshare, MS loses its monopoly on office formats. When the monopoly on the formats goes, so does the monopoly on office software. When that goes, the monopoly rents (aka over charging) go. Unless MS can between now and then generate some new profitable activity, all it will have left then is MS Windows. But without an office suite and formats tying people to Windows, it too will start to lose market share...
All I want from Dell is a commmittment to ship hardware for which open source drivers are available -- for them to say, for example, we need open source audio drivers or we won't ue your soundcard/integrated chipset, or your graphics chipset, or whatever. If Dell leaned on vendors, they'd give open source developers the info they need to support their products.
Reading the interview, I think that is exactly the issue that Michael Dell is trying to avoid answering.
If we look back a few years, we used to have a larger number of vendors that made linux-compatible modems, sound cards, video cards, wireless network cards, scanners and so on. MS has been able to lean on these enough for them to make it hard or impossible for Linux (or BSD) support. Michael Dell could help counteract this method of MS, if he so chose.
As others have posted and will post some more, it doesn't matter which distro he chooses. Once he supports one, the others can take up the slack themselves. Debian stable, being a slow-moving target and completely unencumbered, would be my first choice, but Ubuntu or Kubuntu would give a predictable release schedule.
Sure, it costs a bit more for a bigger mail server, but that's ok as long as that's what everyone wants.
No. It causes too much harm. Better to actually set up proper networked storage.
Attachments are an egregiously inefficient way to move and store binary data. There are two big reasons why they have become such a problem.
1) First, when MS ran the illegal smear campaign against Novell, MS Windows gained some market share in the server room (which has slowly been eroding). The effect of that was that in practice networked storage went away. The need for it did not.
2) Thus the second factor. The need for networked storage being as strong as or stronger than ever, but no means of carrying it out any more, users resort to work-arounds such as using sneakernet and / or e-mail attachments.
MS encouraged the latter by setting up Outlook and Outlook express to facillitate the sending of attachments. First, it mailbombs people not on the same MS Exchange server, second it is usually used as a vector to spread MS proprietary data formats which in turn drives sales.
I'm not saying they have the skill and forethough to intentionally plan all that. I'm saying that's how it rolled out. It works the same way with housemates, if you're a big enough slob and your housemates can't straighten you out or evict you, then all the clean people leave and everyone else just live in a place like a sty. Just as it's very hard to turn around a pig style of a house, it's very hard to clean up a corporate computing environment once MS products have started to metastasize.
Most people will stop mis-using their e-mail if they have networked storage available, but it does mean that their IT shop has to set it up for them and will only work if it's a non-MS arrangement (e.g. Netware, Samba, AFS, etc.)
No kidding. My brother made a [MS-based presentation] for school, and after saving it in at least three compatibility versions (one of which was a honkin' 12MB, for about four slides) it still didn't work on the school computers.
My experiences with MS' presentation graphics were the same as your brother's and were what really soured me on MS Office. File-format compatibility between versions and even different sites was absolutely awful for MS Office. I eventually tired of having to make three or four 3.5" disks for a single presentation when lecturing or presenting.
PDF would have been one way to go, but only for stuff that you won't re-edit or re-use. My solution was to go full W3C-compliant HTML + CSS for most text documents and presentations.
OpenDocument is an extension of that concept.
People laughed at the web a bit too before it caught on. And some hadn't even caught on to the Internet by that time, such as our esteemed Chairman Gates who in 1995 even went as far as to call the Internet a "passing fad" and "unimportant." I recall many people wanting to prioritize Gopher since it was already more established. However, when it came down to it, so many people found the usefulness of a format that anyone can implment, distribute or read/write. From there it took off like wildfire.
Ignoring the time wasted in the 'browser wars', the complaint about HTML was that it was not advanced enough for more complex documents. OpenDocument scratches that itch. And, being XML, browsers could even be made to render it. There's money in reducing work (and data) lost to format incompatibilities.
Just goes to show, the media is to blame. Apple did no hyping whatsoever - they sent out invitations to the event to a few relavent people and nothing more. The media took those invitations and plastered them over the internet and made wild declarations of what's the latest gadget that'll be coming out of Cupertino.
In contrast compare that to MS, which has press release after press release, paid pseudo-research, shills, astroturfers and more all churning out a half dozen headlines per day per news site.
Their Next Version(TM) and their sorry under-produced-yet-still-undersold game consle are two recent examples.
If you take the manufacturing process for Blu-Ray, which has higher capacity, and substitute the proprietary Microsoft codec for Theora, then you have a winner. Skip the DRM. It's not viable in the long run and only hassles your honest customers in the short run.
Until we have a law clearly stating that software cannot be patented (written in a form that closes as many loopholes as possible) people will keep playing the "computer running XYZ" card.
Agreed. That's why I wrote that you, your company or institution, your professional organizations, and union chapter
need to be providing input to the Commission's public consultation on changes to EU patent law. The knowledge that computers programs, algorthms, mathematical formulas, business methods and dances are not eligable for patents in the EU can be used for leverage.
Thanks. That's one down. I need them for the rest of the products, too.
Perhaps you need to go to MicroSoft s/w users, not enthusiasts.
A problem is that in such IT departments non-fanbois get driven out or insane, leaving ONLY the MS enthusiasts. Usually takes less than a year after the first server is infected with an MS operating system.
It was frozen. I don't recall how we resolved the problem, but since the head chef dealt with the suppliers and he was a huge (nearly 2m), loud Italian guy we probably got a lot of free 'samples' next delivery.
Erm, this is news for nerds. You ought to know what Snort is.
Slashdot turned mainstream a few years ago. Hence posts like the one asking what Snort is and many of the MS apologists and the Bill Gates fanbois. Most of them aren't dumb, they just don't know better.
Yes. I mean mainstream. You see newspapers and news magazines with national distribution mentioning Slashdot topics and occasionally even citing them or, worse, the posted responses.
Permanently block software patents: This would greatly reduce Microsoft's power to kill off competitors in the EU through litigation. It would also allow European software companies to use technology patented in the rest of the world, leading to much stronger competition.
...
Software patents are not banned in Europe, but we have people working at it and they're working well.
Ah, but software patents are banned in Europe already. One problem is that the EC (European Commission) doesn't know it's own legislation. Another problem is that the Commission members are appointed and not elected and thus have been full of corruption and scandal to the point of the whole commission being dismissed more than once. It's both of these, but especially the latter, which are the cause of sw patents even being discussed.
One thing you missed in your list of advantages, though, is that patents affect usage, not production or distribution. That makes it not a developer problem, but a problem for anyone planning to use a computer, especially to use it for earning money. Allowing the issue to be turned into a developer-only issue, or even more incorrectly an open source developer-only issue, is really playing into the hands of the pro-sw patent lobby. Such a spin encourages the majority of stakeholders, who are the ones with the most to lose anyway, to not defend their interests and to even dismiss the problem as being relevent only to a marginal group.
how the current patent system in Europe
could be improved;
and possible areas for harmonisation.
The Commission's solicitation is about sw patents. Both the topics
"Community patent" and "harmonization" have already been used in attempts to
bring sw patents to Europe.
The middle part, "how the current patent system in Europe
could be improved", in all likelihood, serves as an invitation for
pro-sw patent lobbies to bring up the topic. If only their voice is heard,
then the outcome of any decisions based on that input is not likely to be
beneficial for Europe.
The threat is still present while the European Patent Office continues to grant patents
on things otherwise not patentable in Europe.
All MS has to do to wipe Google off the map is make sure all new OEM sales of MS-Windows point their searches only to MS own excuse for a search service. Or make sure that one of the payloads snuck into a "security" update does so. Something over 75% of people just leave the default install. Even if they don't leave the defaults, every time support bleats the "re-format, re-install" mantra they get rid of all those customizations. Eventually they disappear through attrition.
Illegal tying helped them out with MSIE vs Netscape. Netscape had the market, but MSIE came pre-installed on all Wintel hardware and all W95 CDs. Don't take my word for it. Look up US DOJ vs MS. Both products rather sucked.
Illegal tying helped them out in getting WMA/WMV and its DRM a serious share in a market where a few years ago they had none. Don't take my word for it. Look up the case of MS vs the EC, which MS is still footdragging on.
And to a certain extent, illegal tying helped them out in getting MS-Word and MS-Excel to take the place of WordPerfect and Quattro. Heck that was probably the whole reasong for bundling everything into MS-Office in the first place.
... One of the major problems in software companies is that programmers get promoted to positions of management because they excelled at what they did, but they lack management skills. So you've taken someone out of a position they excel at, and put them into a position they need to learn. I forget the term for this.
It's called the "Peter Principle": Each person rises to their particular level of incompetence.
And it gets even more fun when you compare the F/OSS licenses with the common proprietary ones. When our company decided Legal needed to review any F/OSS license used here, I got them to agree to do the same level of review on the proprietary licenses. Not surprisingly, there were *way* more proprietary licenses (the original concern was too many licenses), and the proprietary ones had way more questionable terms that raised the eyebrows of legal.
Does your shop still use and MS stuff? If so, how did you get hold of the licenses?
IIRC they cannot be printed and only are visible for a few fleeting seconds during the beginning of the install process. I've tried to get MS enthusiasts in IT departments to cough up a license, but all they can get out of MS HQ (their real bosses) are reams and reams of happy horse shit about the licenses, never any actual license.
I am curious as to how you actually did it, assuming your shop hasn't actually long since moved beyond MS.
Actually I recall your journal entries and both events. However, having a link or a citation to something printed makes all the difference in the world when dealing with bureacrats.
MS has to be suffering severely from Thailand breaking its "one price 'round the world" policy. Not only have the prices dropped in many countries, anyone that's not getting a 60% discount beyond that isn't even trying. Many places are pushing 90% and beyond. There has to be some really 'creative' bookkeeping going on at MS HQ because they can't keep giving away their cash cow year after year.
However, the lock-in has become far worse, and those that do give in will find it that much harder to threaten to leave MS later on when their next license negiotiation takes place.
... the government [of Thailand] had a plan to move 90% of desktops over within five years when MS came in with threats of audits and "convinced" the Ministry of Education to go on a five year deal with MS...
If you have a link in English about the pressure, that would be grand.
A lot of major businesses and government agencies are looking to retire their old hardware running Windows NT 4/Windows 2000 (NT5). Having a bit of forewarning about MS' tricks might help them, even if it's just to capitulate and go for that 60 % - 90 % discount.
... is the cost of Windows so much that it trumps the pains of introducing a student population of 25,000 or so to a completely foreign computer system?
Nice try at resurrecting that old myth from 10 years past.
Hate to break it to you but the kids will be mastering in matter of hours whatever you put on the machines be it KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, OS X or whatever. It makes no difference to them, so why not use something that's less expensive to acquire, support, install and operate?
KDE, Gnome or what ever windowing manager the kids will be interacting with are so easy now that to them it's just a computer. Ask a kid using a 'linux' computer and he/she won't know what you are talking about. To them it's a computer. It's got icons and you click on the icons and the programs run. If they notice any difference it'll usually be that they'll point away from the legacy machines running XP towards the Linux boxes and say, "those over there are faster, we're waiting for them to finish."
Even for users already familiar with one of the MS-Windows variants, KDE is as easy to use as MS Windows XP. Or hard, if you want to look at it that way instead.
The "piracy" bit is a red herring anyway.
Given the bizarre license tracking requirements and very unusual methods of providing proof of valid licenses, it is darn near impossible to be in full compliance. How about at your site, assuming you still have a few legacy systems with MS? Where are all the hologrammed license certificates? Did they get filed in the fire safe with the receipts or did they fade away into the 'IT' deptartment, never to be seen again, because the bean counters figure a CD jacket is a CD jacket. In short, if you're running MS, you're running the risk of a BSA / FAST raid.
Save your money and get a few more years out of the old hardware at the same time by running LTSP or one of the Linux or BSD distros.
There's MS hate, and there's this. When was the last time MS sued a school, exactly? Never, that's right. Yes, MS did one time threaten to sue when it found rampant piracy in one district, but the gentleman/lady in question is obviously worried about license fees, so has no plans to pirate anything.
Man, the M$ shills are out in droves lately. I assume you are mincing words or playing with semantics in your capacity as active shill. MS went after lots of schools, at least in the US and in the UK. Who knows? Probably the same in other counties. Try searching a little for BSA or FAST and other branches of the main party, or even some semi-legitimate groups like BSI.
Here's one example with what MS did in Portland, Oregon schools:
If the case were wrapped up right away, MS would really be in difficulty. However, MS has been able to drag it out several years already and even affect the selection of judges and the decision process. It took ten years for MS' investment in Craig Smith to pay off. Neli Kroes has yet to payoffm, but there's no hurry since MS benefits from each day of delay. There's no reason yet to believe that MS can't keep the EC hopping on the end of it's leash until either the clock runs out and there are no audio or video options except WMA and WMV, or the campaign kicks in. Before MS was a political movement and ideology, it was first a lobbying firm grown from a marketing firm, so there is probably time to run what is effectively a psyops campaign using the mainstream media.
You're also already seeing the shills piping up all over the place attacking MS' competitors, trying to start a myth by implication that MS has been competing on merit rather than mostly by illegal and anti-competitive means.
The part you missed, since you ask, is that unlike Apple, Microsoft does have a monopoly on the desktop. What Microsoft is in trouble for (in the case of WMP) is illegally leverage its desktop monopoly to try to create a monopoly in another market - that of audio and video. So far, it's mostly succeeeded. Quicktime and Real, oncec the market leaders, are relegated to the backseat and all the small companies disappeared.
I realize the pro-MS spin makes the issue confusing, but other than that what's so hard to understand? It's not the bundling that's illegal, is the use of a monopoly in one market (the desktop) to create a new monopoly in another market (audio and video formats).
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What being able to run XP, OS X and Linux on the same hardware does is give sites flexibility. If you have a university computing lab full of desktop computers, it is now possible to have users decide which OS to boot into. Previously the administration had to decide months if not years in advance how many MS machines vs OS X machines to buy. Now you (can in theory) have one that will do both.
JAZ-39 was one, but despite having a good aircraft, there have been some setbacks and even greater difficulty actually closing a sale.
MS-based services consume staff time like it's going out of style. And not just IT-staff, those stuck with such an infrastructure or desktop services lose a lot of productivity due to extremely poor levels of service and frequent outages, even re-starts. Sure the re-boot after a crash is automatic on XP, but you still have lost your train of thought and will have to re-expend a lot of effort just to pick up where you left off. By that point, other time constraints kick in. e.g. a meeting, another project, lunch, quitting time, etc.
MS Exchange may be ok as a calendar system on a quarantined intranet, but once you connect it to the Internet that beast turns into an electronic chernobyl of viruses, worms, warez, porn and videos. Not to mention that it loses a heck of a lot of mail. Even your die-hard MS apologists have to admit that 10%-15% error rate is not acceptable.
There are an increasing number of "Exchange Alternatives" out there for those that bother to look. Yes, MS Exchange is about Calendaring and there are also many separate calendaring tools out there as well. Having separate calendar and mail clients allow your site to choose the best of both.
The basic description is that the IT department is over-taxed, but adding more staff won't help any if the underlying cause is the technology. The MS-Outlook / MS-Exchange is probably the most burdensome and should go first. File storage should move next. Then ease people off of MS Office. At that point, much of the maintenance difficulties will be gone, though you can go that little bit extra and eventually ditch MS Windows. They're there to work, not play games. Evaluating technology based on technical merits rather than how it fits in with admiration of Bill will go a long way in reducing overhead.
The basic description is that the IT department is over-taxed, but adding more staff won't help any if the underlying cause is the technology. The MS-Outlook / MS-Exchange is probably the most burdensome and should go first. File storage should move next. Then ease people off of MS Office. At that point, much of the maintenance difficulties will be gone, though you can go that little bit extra and eventually ditch MS Windows. They're there to work, not play games.
That DTU now backs OpenDocument so prominently speaks to the potential that standard has in the world. Whether MS has more success at blocking OpenDocument than it did trying to block the web remains to be seen. Myself, I think not. If OpenDocument gains a small amount of marketshare, MS loses its monopoly on office formats. When the monopoly on the formats goes, so does the monopoly on office software. When that goes, the monopoly rents (aka over charging) go. Unless MS can between now and then generate some new profitable activity, all it will have left then is MS Windows. But without an office suite and formats tying people to Windows, it too will start to lose market share ...
If we look back a few years, we used to have a larger number of vendors that made linux-compatible modems, sound cards, video cards, wireless network cards, scanners and so on. MS has been able to lean on these enough for them to make it hard or impossible for Linux (or BSD) support. Michael Dell could help counteract this method of MS, if he so chose.
As others have posted and will post some more, it doesn't matter which distro he chooses. Once he supports one, the others can take up the slack themselves. Debian stable, being a slow-moving target and completely unencumbered, would be my first choice, but Ubuntu or Kubuntu would give a predictable release schedule.
Attachments are an egregiously inefficient way to move and store binary data. There are two big reasons why they have become such a problem.
1) First, when MS ran the illegal smear campaign against Novell, MS Windows gained some market share in the server room (which has slowly been eroding). The effect of that was that in practice networked storage went away. The need for it did not.
2) Thus the second factor. The need for networked storage being as strong as or stronger than ever, but no means of carrying it out any more, users resort to work-arounds such as using sneakernet and / or e-mail attachments.
MS encouraged the latter by setting up Outlook and Outlook express to facillitate the sending of attachments. First, it mailbombs people not on the same MS Exchange server, second it is usually used as a vector to spread MS proprietary data formats which in turn drives sales.
I'm not saying they have the skill and forethough to intentionally plan all that. I'm saying that's how it rolled out. It works the same way with housemates, if you're a big enough slob and your housemates can't straighten you out or evict you, then all the clean people leave and everyone else just live in a place like a sty. Just as it's very hard to turn around a pig style of a house, it's very hard to clean up a corporate computing environment once MS products have started to metastasize.
Most people will stop mis-using their e-mail if they have networked storage available, but it does mean that their IT shop has to set it up for them and will only work if it's a non-MS arrangement (e.g. Netware, Samba, AFS, etc.)
PDF would have been one way to go, but only for stuff that you won't re-edit or re-use. My solution was to go full W3C-compliant HTML + CSS for most text documents and presentations. OpenDocument is an extension of that concept.
People laughed at the web a bit too before it caught on. And some hadn't even caught on to the Internet by that time, such as our esteemed Chairman Gates who in 1995 even went as far as to call the Internet a "passing fad" and "unimportant." I recall many people wanting to prioritize Gopher since it was already more established. However, when it came down to it, so many people found the usefulness of a format that anyone can implment, distribute or read/write. From there it took off like wildfire.
Ignoring the time wasted in the 'browser wars', the complaint about HTML was that it was not advanced enough for more complex documents. OpenDocument scratches that itch. And, being XML, browsers could even be made to render it. There's money in reducing work (and data) lost to format incompatibilities.
Their Next Version(TM) and their sorry under-produced-yet-still-undersold game consle are two recent examples.
So who's over-hyped?
If you take the manufacturing process for Blu-Ray, which has higher capacity, and substitute the proprietary Microsoft codec for Theora, then you have a winner. Skip the DRM. It's not viable in the long run and only hassles your honest customers in the short run.
Agreed. That's why I wrote that you, your company or institution, your professional organizations, and union chapter need to be providing input to the Commission's public consultation on changes to EU patent law. The knowledge that computers programs, algorthms, mathematical formulas, business methods and dances are not eligable for patents in the EU can be used for leverage.
It was frozen. I don't recall how we resolved the problem, but since the head chef dealt with the suppliers and he was a huge (nearly 2m), loud Italian guy we probably got a lot of free 'samples' next delivery.
Yes. I mean mainstream. You see newspapers and news magazines with national distribution mentioning Slashdot topics and occasionally even citing them or, worse, the posted responses.
One thing you missed in your list of advantages, though, is that patents affect usage, not production or distribution. That makes it not a developer problem, but a problem for anyone planning to use a computer, especially to use it for earning money. Allowing the issue to be turned into a developer-only issue, or even more incorrectly an open source developer-only issue, is really playing into the hands of the pro-sw patent lobby. Such a spin encourages the majority of stakeholders, who are the ones with the most to lose anyway, to not defend their interests and to even dismiss the problem as being relevent only to a marginal group.
However, that said, if you do really want to keep use of computers possible in Europe, then you, your company or institution, your professional organizations, and union chapter need to be providing input to the Commission's public consultation on changes to EU patent law.
The consultation focuses on three major issues:
The Commission's solicitation is about sw patents. Both the topics "Community patent" and "harmonization" have already been used in attempts to bring sw patents to Europe.
The middle part, "how the current patent system in Europe could be improved", in all likelihood, serves as an invitation for pro-sw patent lobbies to bring up the topic. If only their voice is heard, then the outcome of any decisions based on that input is not likely to be beneficial for Europe.
The threat is still present while the European Patent Office continues to grant patents on things otherwise not patentable in Europe.
All MS has to do to wipe Google off the map is make sure all new OEM sales of MS-Windows point their searches only to MS own excuse for a search service. Or make sure that one of the payloads snuck into a "security" update does so. Something over 75% of people just leave the default install. Even if they don't leave the defaults, every time support bleats the "re-format, re-install" mantra they get rid of all those customizations. Eventually they disappear through attrition.
Illegal tying helped them out with MSIE vs Netscape. Netscape had the market, but MSIE came pre-installed on all Wintel hardware and all W95 CDs. Don't take my word for it. Look up US DOJ vs MS. Both products rather sucked.
Illegal tying helped them out in getting WMA/WMV and its DRM a serious share in a market where a few years ago they had none. Don't take my word for it. Look up the case of MS vs the EC, which MS is still footdragging on.
And to a certain extent, illegal tying helped them out in getting MS-Word and MS-Excel to take the place of WordPerfect and Quattro. Heck that was probably the whole reasong for bundling everything into MS-Office in the first place.
IIRC they cannot be printed and only are visible for a few fleeting seconds during the beginning of the install process. I've tried to get MS enthusiasts in IT departments to cough up a license, but all they can get out of MS HQ (their real bosses) are reams and reams of happy horse shit about the licenses, never any actual license.
I am curious as to how you actually did it, assuming your shop hasn't actually long since moved beyond MS.
MS has to be suffering severely from Thailand breaking its "one price 'round the world" policy. Not only have the prices dropped in many countries, anyone that's not getting a 60% discount beyond that isn't even trying. Many places are pushing 90% and beyond. There has to be some really 'creative' bookkeeping going on at MS HQ because they can't keep giving away their cash cow year after year.
However, the lock-in has become far worse, and those that do give in will find it that much harder to threaten to leave MS later on when their next license negiotiation takes place.
A lot of major businesses and government agencies are looking to retire their old hardware running Windows NT 4/Windows 2000 (NT5). Having a bit of forewarning about MS' tricks might help them, even if it's just to capitulate and go for that 60 % - 90 % discount.
Hate to break it to you but the kids will be mastering in matter of hours whatever you put on the machines be it KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, OS X or whatever. It makes no difference to them, so why not use something that's less expensive to acquire, support, install and operate?
KDE, Gnome or what ever windowing manager the kids will be interacting with are so easy now that to them it's just a computer. Ask a kid using a 'linux' computer and he/she won't know what you are talking about. To them it's a computer. It's got icons and you click on the icons and the programs run. If they notice any difference it'll usually be that they'll point away from the legacy machines running XP towards the Linux boxes and say, "those over there are faster, we're waiting for them to finish."
Even for users already familiar with one of the MS-Windows variants, KDE is as easy to use as MS Windows XP. Or hard, if you want to look at it that way instead.
The "piracy" bit is a red herring anyway.
Given the bizarre license tracking requirements and very unusual methods of providing proof of valid licenses, it is darn near impossible to be in full compliance. How about at your site, assuming you still have a few legacy systems with MS? Where are all the hologrammed license certificates? Did they get filed in the fire safe with the receipts or did they fade away into the 'IT' deptartment, never to be seen again, because the bean counters figure a CD jacket is a CD jacket. In short, if you're running MS, you're running the risk of a BSA / FAST raid.
Save your money and get a few more years out of the old hardware at the same time by running LTSP or one of the Linux or BSD distros.
Here's one example with what MS did in Portland, Oregon schools:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,101601,You can find many other cases where M$ went after schools. Did they sue? Maybe / maybe not. Did they threaten? youbetcha
Don't go on about "MS hate". It's called experience or brand recognition.
If the case were wrapped up right away, MS would really be in difficulty. However, MS has been able to drag it out several years already and even affect the selection of judges and the decision process. It took ten years for MS' investment in Craig Smith to pay off. Neli Kroes has yet to payoffm, but there's no hurry since MS benefits from each day of delay. There's no reason yet to believe that MS can't keep the EC hopping on the end of it's leash until either the clock runs out and there are no audio or video options except WMA and WMV, or the campaign kicks in. Before MS was a political movement and ideology, it was first a lobbying firm grown from a marketing firm, so there is probably time to run what is effectively a psyops campaign using the mainstream media.
You're also already seeing the shills piping up all over the place attacking MS' competitors, trying to start a myth by implication that MS has been competing on merit rather than mostly by illegal and anti-competitive means.
I realize the pro-MS spin makes the issue confusing, but other than that what's so hard to understand? It's not the bundling that's illegal, is the use of a monopoly in one market (the desktop) to create a new monopoly in another market (audio and video formats).