Hope your copy of Windows is legal

[ColonelPanic]

"XP phone home".... (removed)!http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?page_id=317 ... .03441This doesn't affect me since I don't use Windows, but I found it interesting so I thought I'd share.

[Toasted7]

That's crazy... isn't that illegal to spy on somone's computer like that. Can you say invasion of privacy?

[GormalVibe]

I tried to update my computer, and i couldn't because the (removed) that sold me this computer didn't put a legal copy of the software on the computer

[vibe-04]

Anyone who thought the NSA phone logs was a personal infringment better get a reality check cause Microsoft's behavior is the tip of the iceburg. I have no doubt that they (MS vis-a-vie Homland Security/CIA/FBI/NSA/CSIS/RCMP/ et al.) can dail in any query and PC they want. And that all the major ISPs, Google and of course MSN/Hotmail are all working together to track this info based on MAC address, IP address, cross-related to any social datamining constructs such as banking/credit card data and your political affiliations, beit ethicity, income whatever. Politics aside, I knew this was coming. It is the only way MS can provide a justfication to migrate to Vista or Office 2007. I mean, come on, just how much more has word processing advanced since Office 2000?So we're going Linux and OpenOffice. Period. As for my earlier rant, I'll protect freedom and democracy to the death and I support all the defenders around the world who put their lives on the line. But I cannot have faith in any organization that is run by a small group of elites -- the goverment. I've been lied to too many times.Andrew

[northvibe]

lol you have to love apple, no cd keys, no bs. MS thinks they can stop pirating, yea...theres already ways around this

[coldmm803]

i wont lie so, i didnt read the whole article but have an idea where it was goin. i have legit copies of windows so i'm not worried at the moment. as a college student i get discounts on software, back in november i got xp and xp 64 bit along with office pro 2003 all for $150. the sad part is that i just started having issues with xp 32 bit not the little support 64 bit. and the other day Microsoft released a public beta version of vista of which i downloaded, now i just need another hard drive to put it on. but if i feel really bored i may take the time to run a triple boot of xp, vista and linux until vista is final release since not all of my engineering software has support. its not that MS is less secure than other os's its just that less people use other os's. zdnet had a comparison between mac osx and xp and osx actually had more holes. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=165

[jwalcik]

well, as sneaky of microsoft as it was to activate this in the way that it did, any of you using XP actually agreed to it when you got your new computer (or upgraded to XP). take a gander at that EULA that you agreed to without reading. it covers not only the OS phoning home, but also the right of microsoft to take inventory of your installed applications, and their right to install things on your computer without notifying you.

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by coldmm803 »its not that MS is less secure than other os's its just that less people use other os's. zdnet had a comparison between mac osx and xp and osx actually had more holes. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=165Well, by reading that, to me the numbers dictate that Apple is getting out there and fixing stuff when they find bad things moreso than Microsoft. Same deal with Linux where I'm pretty sure the Linux box gets patched more than most Windows boxes get patched... I'm always applying security updates to my Linux box, but that's just because when vulnerabilities are found, whamo! you've got an update that fixes it, not much waiting. Quote, originally posted by jwalcik »well, as sneaky of microsoft as it was to activate this in the way that it did, any of you using XP actually agreed to it when you got your new computer (or upgraded to XP). take a gander at that EULA that you agreed to without reading. it covers not only the OS phoning home, but also the right of microsoft to take inventory of your installed applications, and their right to install things on your computer without notifying you.Oh, you mean that thing that everybody clicks through with "I Accept" and never reads a single bit of it? LOL!If I had to buy a PC that had Windows already on it, I wouldn't be agreeing to it... Instead, on the inital bootup, I'd be booting off a CD and installing Linux, whacking XP entirely.

[northvibe]

yea windows takes too long to update holes in thier os.. osx is based of BSD so its pretty safe for a gui'd linux. I still use windows because of compatibility with other ppl and apps but i run my powerbook for osx and i have a linux box for practicing linux. i say use many flavors! then you have a varied taste

[silver_vibe]

Quote, originally posted by vibe-04 »...So we're going Linux and OpenOffice. Period...How do you decide which is the best Linux distribution to download? There are over 200 Linux distributions listed on this site alone: http://shots.osdir.com/

[vibe-04]

Yep, we're going with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) once it is out of prerelease. http://www.novell.com/products....html We run Novell products on our server (Linux on the webserver and one MS Terminal server..the only one to get a virsu [backdoor trojan]) . We're trying to rollout OpenOffice 2.0.2 to eventually replace Wordperfect. Once that is done, we'll go to SLED. Well, that's the armchair plan. If this works is debatable. We're getting a lot of resistance to OpenOffice because the conversion is not always perfect. It has problems with legacy Word documents with footnotes and variation in formating using styles. Small stuff but still a pain. Either we go the MS way (for yet another file format change to DOCX, PPTX and XLSX) or fight the tide. My long view is that the world will be moving to web apps which will be dominated by Google and their partner Sun Microsystems which happens to support OpenOffice and the OAISIS open format. Google has already launched Google Spreadsheets so we're not far off from the entire offloading of apps to the web.As Wayne Gretzky said, "Skate to where the puck is going."

[silver_vibe]

Quote, originally posted by vibe-04 »Yep, we're going with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) once it is out of prerelease.So would you recommend SUSE Linux 10.1 for a personal PC?Sorry to semi-hijack this thread, but you guys just kick started me to finally do the switch to Linux (well, at least on one of my hard drives), so it's related .

[northvibe]

for Mac - Yellow dog linux works awesome.for windows machines -you could try linux with a boot cd, knoppix - this is linux on a cd so it boots off it but doesnt install to your system. this allows you to try it and then just eject and reboot and your back to windows or tryUbuntu - is fairly gui and easy to useSuse is good i hear too.

[jwalcik]

Quote, originally posted by northvibe »yea windows takes too long to update holes in thier os.. osx is based of BSD so its pretty safe for a gui'd linux. I still use windows because of compatibility with other ppl and apps but i run my powerbook for osx and i have a linux box for practicing linux. i say use many flavors! then you have a varied taste OS X is BSD based, but there aren't any linux underpinnings. the various linux distributions and the *BSD's (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc) are all open source software projects (some more open than others), but the two are quite different under the hood. of the various open/free unix derivatives out there, Darwin (the unix-like layer of OS X) is most like FreeBSD. Quote, originally posted by northvibe »Ubuntu - is fairly gui and easy to useubuntu is great. if you can install windows, you can install ubuntu. my personal preference is gentoo, but beginners beware, the learning curve is steep and treacherous. Quote, originally posted by ColonelPanic »Oh, you mean that thing that everybody clicks through with "I Accept" and never reads a single bit of it? yup, that's the one.

[binary]

I'll kick my two cents in here... Windows gives me job security. Linux gives me security. OS X gives me sanity.Gento is a great distro to cut your teeth on. Go get it!

[coldmm803]

heres some help for those considering switching to linux. i've not looked at the second link yet so i dont anything about it. to get an idea of the layout and gui you can do a search for screen shots if the distro's site doesnt have any. i know very little bout linux but my roomate was using suse on his server (almost 3 terabytes of data, windows server 03 couldn't handle it) but just switched to i think mythbox which is a linux media center version.http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php? ... /index.php

[silver_vibe]

OK, I'm posting for the first time totally un-Microsoft.- SUSE Linux 10.1- GNOME interface- Firefox 1.5.0.3All I can say is: Wow!, Linux has come a long way since the last time I've used it about 8-10 years ago.The most amazing part to me is just about EVERYTHING I use a PC for is included with this distribution. It's too soon for me to judge if I will be able to replace Windows, but I'm impressed (and telling everyone that'll listen).

[ColonelPanic]

Many, many years ago, I stumbled upon a great lil' distro, SuSE 7.something perhaps. From then on, I was hooked and I didn't even bother messing around with the others. SuSE always did everything perfect for me, I had no need for any other distro or even Windows. I would buy the Professional version religiously from 8.0 through 9.something at every release. But I kinda don't have the cash for that sort of thing anymore...I've just started dorking around with OpenSUSE 10.1 and it seems quite nice. I was using OpenSUSE 10.0 prior and have nothing but great things to say about it. With KDE though, I never could tolerate GNOME. By far, my favorite distro. They really make it easy on you, I find myself at work dealing with these antique Red Hat servers thinking to myself "this would be a lot easier if I had YaST!" I'm glad you found it and I'm glad you're liking it!