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Slashback: Secrecy, Toyware, France 185

Posted by timothy from the what's-the-plural-of-old? dept.
Whatever happened to those drives at Los Alamos? Is my Mattell software worse than Back Orifice? Have the French courts cowed Yahoo!? Did I or didn't I buy a license for Windows? These and other ponderables have been glued in place below for your leisurely weekend perusal.

Can't you just see this happening at your workplace? snowbike writes: "The missing hard drives at Los Alamos have been found. Apparently they fell behind a copy machine. It will probably be attributed to the closure and evacuation associated with the fires. Read all about it at CNN. Looks like there is still plenty of heat to go around regarding this--now the UC contract to run the lab is in danger." OK. So a little bit of data went missing. Are you perfect? Are you saying you've never misplaced a floppy, or left a few nuclear secrets behind the copy machine? More coverage can be found at ABC News, at The L.A. Times and at The Washington Post .

This is for your own good. In regards to Xday's discussion of privacy violations in Mattel software, Moses Lawn writes: "I'm an ex-Broderbund programmer that wrote all of the code for this, and I just posted a comment about exactly what it does, how, and why. It's actually pretty benign. (Hopefully my comment wound up in the right place - first-time posting and all.)"

Not a single Earth-destroying collision yet! People are pretty excited at Brookhaven National Laboratory, as RHIC (the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) just saw its first collisions. There are pictures and a press release here. That page also has links to some animations and more info on how RHIC and its component systems work. RHIC is the new particle accelerator at Brookhaven. Its main goal (among many) is to look for a quark-gluon plasma. This is the result of about 18 years of work, and it will be the premiere facility for high-energy physics research until about 2008.

Tell me again how this makes things easier? snoogans writes "I just received this from my Dell account rep. As deep a hole as Microsoft has dug, do they really need to do this? How can they force all OEM's to implement this BIOS lock thing?

'The contents of the OS media kits that are shipped with Dell systems for Windows 95, Windows 98SE, and Windows NT4 will be changed as of June 1,2000 (New OS media kits are already shipping for Windows 2000 Professional) Systems impacted: All OptiPlex, Dimension, Precision, Latitude, and Inspiron systems. Implementation will be worldwide and include all languages. Why? The changes to the OS media kits are required by Microsoft in an effort to reduce software piracy What is changing (exactly) Dell-branded OS media replaces the Microsoft-generic OS media. Artwork on CD will change from "Microsoft Windows X" to "Dell Product Recovery CD -- Windows XX" In addition to a copy of the OS, the OS media will include a BIOS lock that prevents the OS media from being installed on a non-Dell system. Microsoft requires the BIOS lock to help prevent software piracy. The set-up diskettes have been removed because customers can now boot directly from the CD The functionality of the OS media remains the same -- whenever the user is asked to insert the "Microsoft Windows XX" CD, such as when they are reinstalling the OS or when they are changing the configuration of their system -- they will use the Dell Product Recovery CD The Certificate of Authentication (COA) will no longer be attached to the front of the Product documentation. Instead, it will be on a label affixed to the outside of the system chassis. The COA label should not be removed from the chassis -- the label will tear into small pieces if there is an attempt to remove it and it will become unusable. The product key located on the COA label is a mechanism used by Microsoft to ensure that the operating system loaded on the system is legal - the product key cannot be used by other users to compromise the security of the system. Your ability to re-install the OS from CD has not changed, the Dell Product Recovery CD replaces the functionality available in the Microsoft OS media kits'"

It would be great if hordes of programmers and interface designers worlwide would come up with a freely distributable alternative that was more stable than Windows and obviated the need for such presumption.;)

Blowing their nose in the general direction. MissKitty writes: "Even though I deplore Naziism and have got to wonder about the people who collect this stuff as memorabilia, I was amused that someone had the guts to tell the French Court to push off. Under French law it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones. They were wanting for Yahoo to filter France's access to these things (that came up on their auction site). "Asking us to filter access to our sites according to the nationality of Web surfers is very naive," Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! said. Score one for political incorrectness."
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Slashback: Secrecy More

Slashback: Secrecy

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  • 15 - 30 minutes to get back up and running when Windows gets wrecked. This makes life so much easier for consumers and for technicians.

    I don't know about you, but back in the days that I actually did use Windows, it took me that time or less to get it back on without the recovery disk. It's really not as hard as you're making it out to be. In fact, you don't even need the Boot Disk at all. Just head into your BIOS settings and tell it to boot from the CD. That certainly worked well enough for me. The fact that it took "trained" technicians more than 30 minutes to reinstall Windows - What is the world coming to?

    (Since this is slashdot, I also have to ask, why are you installing Windows on a computer you slaved hard at building??? You should now enough to run Linux (or *BSD)).

    There is a good reason to throw Windows on your machine: Games. I'm sorry everybody, but once in a while theres a game that you just can't miss, and unfortunately, it's only for Windows. Just because you have built your own computer doesn't mean that you're not going to want to play games other than UT, Quake 3, or Railroad Tycoon. Not being able to freshly install with the OEM cd is a huge hindrance. I don't want to have to head out and buy a 90$ piece of crap when I'll only use it once a month.
    - - - - - - - - -

  • But what if you upgrade your PC? (Score:3)

    by jsm ( 5728 ) <james@jmarshall.com> on Saturday June 17, 2000 @08:09AM (#996268) Homepage
    If you buy a PC with Windows on it, you have bought a license for that piece of software, and you should be able to install it on whatever machine you want.

    If you buy another PC two years later, you should be able to install that same copy of Windows on it, because you paid for the license! You don't need to buy a new copy of the software for every machine you buy, just as you don't for any other piece of software.

    Somehow, almost no consumer ever thinks of this. Maybe it's because the act of buying Windows is seldom a conscious decision; the tax is slipped in under their noses without giving them a chance to think about it.

    If you buy a new PC to run Windows, save money by installing your old version of Windows on it.

  • Speaking of things oral - Woody Allen once told a joke that went something like this:

    "I'd like to say a brief word now about oral contraception.

    [pause]

    I had an experience with oral contraception, just the other day...

    [bigger pause]

    I asked a woman to sleep with me - and she said no."

    (badda-bing!)

    Actually, it was quite risque for the early Sixties... And the album it's on, "Standup Comic" is a classic. Woody in his day practically invented the cerebral one liner.

    Of course, your get rich quick method has probably been used to copy floppies more than once - or so the apocryphal tech support stories go.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • If I remember correctly, couldn't one just return the CD to Dell, saying that you disagreed with the EULA and demand a refund as one is entitled to if one disagreed with it.

    Then, with that refund in hand, goto [insert major software chain] and purchase a retail version. The retail version couldn't possibly have the BIOS lock on it, & it would save circumventing the BIOS hack or CD copy everytime you reinstall windows.

    I can remember this tactic being used with many Linux installs.

    Just my $0.02
  • Stupid? You bet. Happilly Americans get to sit on the smiling side of this double standard, but don't expect that to last forever. Yeah but as long as the U.S. has the nukes and the military muscle, the rest of the world WILL put up with it (unless you really foresee a day when Americans will vote in a public representatives who would allow extradition of a business leader to another country to answer to contravening such a questionable law). I'm upset about what happened with iCrave especially (I am Canadian - [used without permission of Molsons]) but what can we do? Very few countries on this planet have any kind of ability to stand up to the U.S. on issues such as this, except as a concerted group, which this situation certainly doesn't warrant. I also agree with many of the other posters here who feel that France is desperately trying to hang on to a view of the world that just doesn't exist anymore (much like the Canadian province of Quebec). It's kinda quaint too though, but I'm concerned as to what might happen if the majority of the French don't wake up and smell the cafe (notice I have qualified the preceding statement -- I'm sure that some of the French citizenry do 'grok' the shape of things to come) soon.
  • Unfortunately all of these computer builders have to compete on price. Their bargain models are bound to include cheap components and integrated proprietary software. I am sure that Dell, Gateway and others get a discount from the major suppliers when they use bios locked software like this.

    I recently helped a friend of mine purchase a Dell. The cost competing model L had on board video, cheap components and proprietary software. For a hundred fifty dollars more she got a nice XPS model with top drawer video, and audio cards.

    The Sound Blaster live install CD that came with the XPS system was seperate from the Dell recovery CD and was genuine Creative Labs, I doubt that it was BIOS locked but do correct me if I am wrong. When you have a choice don't go with the cheapest components they are bound to be junk.
  • Have you ever tried installing Windows 9x on one system and then move it to a system with different components? The OS will barf when it boots. It will see a million different components fro the last time it booted and it will simply barf.

    True.

    It would be very similar to installing linux one one system with a custom kernel, and then moving that drive to another system. There is a good chance it wont boot because all of the drivers are wrong.

    Not true. Linux is very tolerant of changes in the platform. I do this all the time in the course of building systems for clients. Just avoid Kudzu.

  • Re:Why weren't the drives encrypted? (Score:5)

    by sigwinch ( 115375 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @10:29AM (#996274) Homepage

    To quote from CNN [cnn.com]:

    They contained details of how to dismantle numerous nuclear weapons from U.S. and other nations' arsenals. The information is used by the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), which is trained to respond to nuclear accidents or terrorism.

    If NEST doesn't have *immediate* access to the information they need, bad things will happen, like cities being atomized or poisoned by plutonium. Encryption would add several failure points to the system, such as losing the key. Furthermore, a single bit error in encrypted data can render it all meaningless. When you're sitting next to an active nuke, "access denied" is *not* what you want to see.

    On the other hand, secrecy isn't that important. The information probably didn't include full engineering drawings and instructions for building bombs, just diagrams and instructions needed for deactivating them. Besides which the open literature already tells you how to make a nuclear explosive -- obtaining the plutonium, and precision machining the fissionable core and explosive lenses are the hard parts (not to mention synchronized detonation of the conventional explosives and injection of neutrons).

  • Is there any news on the Douglas Adams interview (not complaining, just intrested)?

  • I meant advocating the belief (i.e., attempt to convince others of the truth of the belief), not advocating the acts of the Holocaust.


    --

  • you have bought a license for that piece of software, and you should be able to install it on whatever machine you want.

    Perhaps you should look up the definition of "license". You only have the rights that the licence allows you to have. I can't tell if you are being idealistic about licences, or just stupid.

    The machine-locked versions of Windows are sold at a discount. You save money, you have less rights. Is that so difficult?

    As far as the tax goes, you are right on -- Not only does this screw non-Windows users, it also screws Microsoft's paying corporate customers. We have a Windows NT/2000 site licence at work. But we buy machines with 98 pre-installed because it saves us $100/machine. We could save another $100 if we bought 'bare disk' machines, but Dell won't sell them to us because we're too small.

    Whether or not Microsoft gets broken up, it's a sure bet that the OEM contract restrictions will get put in place. Hopefully this will give Microsoft's biggest customers (Dell/Compaq/IBM) the balls to actually stand up for their own customers. Some day we might actually see a dropdown on a web site which reads like: OEM Windows 98 [Can not be transferred] ($0) / Bare Disk (-$92) / Retail Windows 98 [Can be transferred] (+$102)
    --

  • If NEST doesn't have *immediate* access to the information they need, bad things will happen, like cities being atomized or poisoned by plutonium.

    Cities atomized? How?

    The toxicity of plutonium is a myth. What's worse, it's also pseudoscientific nonsense perpetuated by muddy thinking. I hesitate to post a link for fear of tanking an innocent web server, but here it is [sigmaxi.org]. Here's another link [powerup.com.au] with more numbers, and another [umn.edu].

    It's not poisonous in the chemical sense. There are any number of common materials that are more toxic chemically than plutonium. The chemical tocxity, if there is any (it has not been observered) is completely insignificant compared to its radiation effects. It is most dangerous when inhaled, since it is an alpha emitter and can then raise the risk of lung cancer. Even so, there are no peer-reviewed studies showing that plutonium is extremely dangerous when inhaled. This is just one of those old canards that will probably never die.

  • It would still be overpriced.
  • Recently I set up a dual-boot Linux and Win98SE for a client. I purchased the latter from one of my distributors. On opening it up, I saw on the included manual it said that the computer vendor was required to affix the Certificate of Authenticity to the computer's case.

    Beats me what requires me to do that - certainly nothing I agreed to! I stuck it on the manual, and would have preferred to stick it somewhere else, except he wasn't around.

  • I heard recently that it is actually illegal to believe that the jewish holocaust never happened, or other similar ideas, and in fact the law actually defines that history to be true. Is that true?

    Given France's, er, generally wacky nature, it wouldn't surprise me, but I thought I would put it out for verification.

    P.S. Yes, I believe the holocaust happened, etc, etc


    --

  • I was recently looking at an IBM Thinkpad model A20 (brand new - actually a demo system) and noticed that the windows serial number was on a sticker on the bottom of the machine. After seeing this posting it's pretty apparent that IBM is doing just what Dell is doing in the article. Then again, AFAIK, IBM has _always_ used product recovery cd's that are designed to work with a specific model (be it desktop, laptop, or whatever)... This is pretty much why I don't buy computers from these jerk-off companies.. If it comes time that I upgrade the system (keep the HD, maybe the floppy and cd drives, but replace the mobo - including the bios) I __have__ to buy Windows again, even if the old system ends up being un-useable (I have several ancient "part" machines, and imagine I'll have some more in the future).

    Microsoft just gets suckier and suckier every day....

  • Re:Building your own (Score:4)

    by linuxonceleron ( 87032 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @08:10AM (#996283) Homepage
    If you are building your own system and trying to stay legit, you would buy your own copy of windows, you can legally get an OEM copy if you buy a motherboard/hard drive. Now I imagine this scenario, you buy a Dell computer, 2 years later your PIII-800 is feeling a little slow, so you swap out the ATX board with a board designed for a Pentium VII 2000Mhz, all goes well until inevitabley Windows breaks and its time to reinstall, the Dell Windows CD won't find the Dell BIOS any longer even though you legally are entitled to install Windows on that machine.

  • Heres what I'm wondering.. Now that we're at the point where when you purchase a cd for, say win98, you do not actually own it. However.. you still own the physical media that the data is stamped on (at least, I hope). So, is it still piracy if I make a copy of that media and give it out to my friends? None of them would own it, but since I dont either, where is the problem? Microsoft didn't sell me the data on it, they sold me the right to use it. My friends may not have the right to use the data on the disc, but can't I still give them the cds, assuming they never actually use it?
  • Yes but the license is for one machine only. Now if you delete every trace of Windows on the old PC you should be fine. The problem is deleting every trace of Windows :P
  • Next time use the recovery CD, then go to the run prompt and type "msconfig." This will let you disable all those background utilities from starting up. Total time this way: 20 minutes. Total time installing windows from scratch: hours.

    Compaq Presarios suck. If you disagree, just spend some time fixing the damn things (not one or two for friends, but dozens in a professional setting). They come preloaded with too much crap, and the hardware tends to be too proprietary. But msconfig is a great utility for disabling all that crap and making things run better.

    Granted, Compaq has been doing some stupid things with recovery partitions, but recovery CD's are really very nice. Again, if you don't like the recovery CD's, make a copy of the cab files in C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS and spend your six hours reinstalling everything.

  • It seems to me this won't combat piracy much - in one particular crowd. The average home user. When they go to do a big hardware upgrade and their Windows (recovery) CD can't do crap for them, are they going to go to the store and spend $100 on a OS they already have and own? No, they're going to get really pissed off and borrow someone else's copy. Why pay twice for something you already have? If Microsoft/OEM can have no morals, why should they?

    The real big time pirates, or whatever you call them, don't care. They just go down to the store to buy the first original copy anyways.

    Microsoft and the OEMs sure are doing their part to make sure the end users are powerless. Why don't they just start calling them what the OEMs and MSoft really think they are... "maggots." I can see it now "Dear MAGGOT, thank you for buying a Dell computer w/Windows 2000....."

  • Here's what you do:

    Buy two Dell computers under two different names.

    Swap motherboards.

    Attempt to reinstall Windows on machine #1 with machine #1's disk.

    When it fails, contact Dell technical support and demand a CD that will work.

    When it arrives, attempt to reinstall Windows on machine #2 with machine #2's disk.

    Repeat until Dell is bankrupt, then purchase their systems at a huge discount.

    --
  • I've never heard that before, but I sure as hell hope it's not true. Making it illegal to have a belief, no matter how screwbally it may be, is a BAD thing. To be sure, I wouldn't want this person teaching a history class, just as I wouldn't want a member of the Flat Earth Society to teach a geography class or a boss that thinks serfdom and slavery is really cool. But I'm not going to prosecute them over it. I simply won't hang around (or work with, take classes taught by, etc) that person. Other than that, if they want to get through life being stupid it's fine by me.

    And you say France may be doing that? Geeez...

    Dyolf Knip

    --

  • I agree.
    I have started looking around for a computer to replace my Sony VIAO P166.
    I was looking at Dell. Now I will no longer consider their machines.
    I saw some well priced machines at buypogo.com, but if they have MS bios traps in them I won't go that route either.
    Looks like I will be visiting Linux Only retailers who sell clean bios PCs.
  • as *nice* a library? They integrated all the documentation into one index. When I want to know about the javascript top object, I get all sorts of irrelevant results.

    Other than that, it is nicer than the linux docs.

  • The suggestion was good; I got a little carried away before. I'm glad you liked this one better! :)

    timothy

  • thanks for the spelling lesson

    send flames > /dev/null

  • gee if they just 'fell' behind a copier then they are probably damaged now huh

    send flames > /dev/null

  • Alternatively, perhaps VMware can give people their choice of BIOS key. . .
  • hmm last time I checked both India and was it China, did produce nuclear devices. I don't think that the data on those hard drives is a 'sensitive' as everyone thinks.

    send flames > /dev/null

  • Like the old secretary/blonde jokes: (Score:5)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:09AM (#996297) Homepage Journal

    Boris: Did you get the secret plans?

    Natasha: Of course, comrade.

    Boris: Let me see!

    [Natasha hands a sheaf of splotchy blackened xerox paper to Boris.]

    Boris: What is this?!

    Natasha: I copied secret data from computer parts. They won't know.

    Boris: Ayiiii! We burned the hillsides for THIS?!

  • Think about it. Microsoft has been behaving themselves for the last couple of years, because of the ongoing antitrust case. Guess what? The trial is over; Microsoft lost. Microsoft no longer has to try to make themselves look good. Judge Jackson released his Final Judgement, and it says nothing to prevent Microsoft from doing this - and the appeals process can only make it better for Microsoft, not worse. The government won't interfere, because they just won their case - they had their chance to fix the problems.

    --

  • One could just stop it from booting the time before it detects the PNP and other resources. So, the next time it boots it boots on the new machine and ...

    Methinks.
  • how do you lose a hard drive behind a copy machine??'sounds like a blonde joke waiting to happen. What happened to the blonde russian who tried to copy the hard drive? (insert punchline here) c'mon people, think.
    Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul

  • It is more important, in the Microsoft culture, to bash their competitors and pirates than to actually serve their consummers. It is because it is not structured as a service company, but as a manufacturer.

    In a somewhat related case that appeared in a renowned Brazilian newspaper, Microsoft is suing several companies stablished in Brazil, including Schering-Plough and Wella, that bought computers from IBM and Compaq with pre-installed MS software.
    They have all the authencity certificates but MS decided to sue them anyway since the software wasn't specified in the bills of sale, even though local law is clear in stating any of these two documents is sufficient proof of legal ownership.

    Looks like OS X will have a bright future.

  • AOL has submitted it's IMX draft to the IETF and it is available on the Internet at http://aim.aol.com/openim [aol.com]. Here's news of the story on C|Net [cnet.com].

    As for the MSFT BIOS lock deal with Dell i'm not exactly sure how new this is. My IBM Aptiva i bought in April last year did not come with Windows 98 but instead with an IBM Recovery disk that would only install on my Aptiva 9which i found out much to my chagrin after assembling a new machine and being forced to buy a copy of Windows for it). I am surprised this practice is just getting mention now. It is VERY old news to me and I'm sure it is to other IBM Aptiva users.

  • it will be only days before Tim Koogle and his friends at Yahoo! are facing extradition to France.

    The notion that the US government would hand over a leading tech CEO to the French government for possible incarceration is laughable.

    unless Yahoo! can guarantee that the offending content can not be accessed from France then that content will have to be pulled.

    This is not a possible outcome either. If it were even possible for the French government to restrict French access to Yahoo (it isn't), French citizens would be in an uproar over the zealous censorship of the surfing.

    Frankly, such restrictions don't hurt Yahoo, they hurt the French people.

    France is already seen an an Internet laggard. The government won't be taking such Luddite steps anytime soon, although they'll learn a thing or two about the realities of filtering internet content along the way.

  • The missing hard drives at Los Alamos have been found. Apparently they fell behind a copy machine

    Notice that in none of the stories does it say photocopy machine. Consider that it may have been a hard drive copier.

    One story today quotes Los Alamos residents as saying the incident was blown out of proportion... as if their opion matters and their wishing would make it so.

  • This is GREAT for Linux! Right now, I dual boot Linux and Win98 because it is a pain in the ass to do some things in Linux that are easy in windows (like getting games to work). My Linux is downloaded and my windows is pirated. If getting windows becomes more of a hassle for me than getting my video card or whatever to work in windows, my HD becomes one big ext2 partition.

    Among high school and college students so many people who can't afford windows are still using it. If it becomes imposible to pirate, these people would be willing to put in the extra effort to use Linux, because is saves them $200 they dont have!

  • No, you're the incompetent stupid fuck. Not all recovery CDs work as Windows CDs. The recovery CD for my Vaio is just one big binary image.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • MS's plans will be yet another nail in the coffin of the old practice of building your own systems. This of course just happens to be exactly what Dell and others want. It's no suprise this highly restrictive copy protection has gone through, it's in the interests of everyone involved except the consumers.

  • No, the reason microsoft implemented these
    extensions was to carry information about what
    groups and permissions a user has. The
    reason the field they used was added to the
    Kerberos protocol was for just such a purpose.
    What was objectionable IMHO was making the
    details of their extensions a trade secret.

  • Microsoft No-media policy (Score:5)

    by Mike1024 ( 184871 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:19AM (#996310)
    Hey,

    This has been discussed quite a lot recently. a Q&A section was recently run in PC Pro. Here's my parody:

    Q: Will this stop piracy or simply increase Microsoft's profits?
    A: By reducing piracy, additional revenue will be seen by us! Ker-ching Ker-ching! Woohoo! This in turn would lead to us paying higher taxes, but don't worry: Our lawyers are working 24/7 looking for tax loopholes so we can pay as little as possible!!

    Q: If piracy is reduced, will we see cheaper licenses?
    A: Of course not! Whilst we have just said "By reducing piracy, additional revenue will be seen throughout the industry", we won't pass this on to consumers. We'll carry on nailing you for the highest prices we can, just like always!

    Q: Why are you adding another complication to an already complicated licencing system?
    A: Our new media policy is genuinely intended to support the 5,500 OEMs who buy genuine products to compete on a level playing field. We are strong-arming them into this policy for their own good (And we wouldn't dream of disregarding their opinions), even if the only people who will see the 'additional revenue' which will be 'seen throughout the industry' will be us.

    Q: Is Microsoft passing the buck to OEMs in terms of technical support?
    A: We always have! Why should we change now?

    Q: Will my OS work if I upgrade my PC?
    A: Obviously, the BIOS key isn't overwritten when you flash your bios. We will, however, side-step the massive issue of people actually wanting to upgrade their motherboards but it won't matter! We think you're too dumb to notice!

    Q: In the case of a backup partition on the hard disk, what happens if my disk fails or becomes infected with a virus?
    A: Well, if you're within your warranty, you can send your system back for repair and wait weeks for it to be returned with all your files comprehensively erased. If you're out of warranty, you will have to go to a Microsoft-endorsed retailer who will nail you with massive charges to actually install what you have already paid for!

    Q: Do your proprietary Kerbeos extensions have any purpose except to stop Windows 2000 being compatible with UNIX servers?
    A: No, we're profiteering again! What's more, nobody will be able to do anything about it because the only people who have the power to threaten us are ignorant of the facts!

    Q: Does Microsoft support the old adage 'The customer is always right'?
    A: No, course not. Microsoft supports the adage 'The customer has money. Bill Gates must have this money'. Inkeeping with this adage, we will do whatever we have to to make more money, regardless of whether the end solution is as functional as the one it is replacing.

    Q: Does Microsoft hate us all?
    A: Only if you haven't got any money left to spend on our products.

    Just my $0.02

    Michael Tandy



  • BUT... for the average consumer this is a GOOD thing. Having to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows(which WILL happen eventually) is a real pain.

    My fiancee (who is very tech savvy) has twice attempted to use her recovery CD. In both cases, she wound up calling me to bring a real Windows CD over so it would actually work.

    And what happens when you buy a new modem or netcard?

  • it seems to me just the opposite - if OEMs are being forced to hardwire the OS to the exact motherboard it's sold with, why would I NOT prefer to build my own system and skip the whole annoying thing? I have not dealt with an OEM since Dell in 1992, from whom I purchased a system that I found to be so chock-full of proprietary and incompatible HARDWARE peculiarities from the MB on up (Slackware found an infinite number of ways to gag on it) that I chucked the whole box and started over rather than even attempt to upgrade it. ASUS rules.

    (One good word for Dell - the box came with a manual that included many of the so-called "secret" MS-DOS commands. I kept the *manual* longer than I kept the system - I think I might still have it.)

    Now thinking about your situation, you don't really have this option because (I think) an Aptiva is a laptop, and there are no big parts houses (that I know of) where you can pick and choose the individual innards of a laptop and slap a custom one together. But I'm wondering why this is still true. You would think if the wheels of competition were operating appropriately in the hardware world, somebody like TC Computers would be neck deep in this business by now. Sure, the learning curve with tinier parts and more sensitive heat issues would be a bit steeper, but that would just stimulate most of us who prefer custom boxes anyway.
  • And since you are reading slashdot you are obviously a step ahead of the average consumer, skills-wise. I am glad you have had such good experiences installing Windows. Most people don't. [slashdot.org]

    There is a good reason to throw Windows on your machine: Games

    But earlier I thought you said that you don't run Windows anymore.

    I don't want to have to head out and buy a 90$ piece of crap when I'll only use it once a month.

    And you didn't listen carefully. The Windows CD files are kept in C:\Windows\Options\Cabs. Burn them onto CD. Or stick the harddrive from your built system into the other one and copy the cab files over.

    In fact, you don't even need the Boot Disk at all. Just head into your BIOS settings and tell it to boot from the CD.

    I could be wrong, but I think only Win98 2nd edition is a bootable CD. 98 1st ed. and the 95's are not. And what about machines that don't have bootable CD's? Like older Compaqs for instance?

    The fact that it took "trained" technicians more than 30 minutes to reinstall Windows - What is the world coming to?

    Actually, my emphasis was on the fact that it makes life so much easier for consumers. But why would anyone (other than you) want to do a multi-step installation of windows when it could really just be a one-step process--boot to the restore CD (or companion diskette on older systems) and click restore. Done. No installing extra drivers or extra software. If the machine hasn't been modified, and the majority in the hands or retail consumers haven't been, this is a faster and easier process. We do seem to agree about the qualities of most technicians, though (dimmer than a dead lightbulb??).

    Finally: disclaimer--if you just trolled me, good job. But you raised some interesting points to respond to anyway.



  • Umm, I must have hit the wrong button when I moderated this... maybe if I post here my moderation will be undone.

    Sorry Booker.

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • Microsoft has traditionally been one of the least anti-piracy companies. After all, if users are running around installing bootleg Windows 98 (or whatever), it's only a matter of time until the IT department buckles under the pressure and buys the upgrade. Maybe they think they've finally reached market saturation, and it's time to crack down.

    What sucks about these changes is that they are carefully crafted so that the burden doesn't fall on the corporate customers at all. Dell can do whatever, but I would imagine that a good number of their corporate customers reformat and install a disk image. Microsoft is still happily spamming my workplace with all sorts of MSDN CDs, all unlocked (you don't even need to enter a registration code), which we IT goons all happily burn copies and install at home. That's OK with them because we are in a position to influnce purchasing, but apparently someone reselling their OEM CD on eBay or at a computer show is a huge revenue loss.

    Meanwhile, the small vendors, small business that buy things preinstalled, and home users are the ones getting the shaft. The question is how much pain users are willing to go through before the backlash starts. Only that MS has the lowend market locked up so tight, there's not much people will be able to do, short of real warezing (as opposed to casual piracy like borrowing someone's CD).
    --

  • All Information classified secret or above requires "need to know" in order to access it. It is the second componet of clssification. Generally speaking however If you able to get into an area that contains x information, you are both cleared for that info, and considered to have a "need to know". The real bitch isn't unauthorised people getting access to information, it is the fact that sometimes the authorized people people become dishonest.

  • While I don't think anyone is a stupid fsck, I would like to point out, as the original post does, that the pertinent contents of the Windows98 cd (drivers, installation files, etc.) can be found in "c:\windows\options\cabs" on most OEM installations.

    It may, but noone tells the average consumer this (except perhaps buried deep within a manual that the salesdroid tells them they don't need to read), and, at least on this HP, the path to the "Windows CD" wasn't preset to the cab location (which happens if you actually install Windows from the HD).

    The argument was that having recovery CDs were a benefit for the average consumer, and I was providing a real example (rather than a vague hypothetical) of how it isn't.
  • to ask. Q: What are the past and present 'inovations' MS keeps referring to?

    A: Well there is embracing and extending proprietary file formats and protocalls, acquiring new technology through mergers, putting competition out of business by spreading FUD, and then there is our inovative licensing of our OSs.

  • I don't have a lot of time, so hear me out. There's something funny going on in the world today, and I've figured it out. But they're on to me, so I must be brief.
    It all started when buggy Mattell software sold to children in France went haywire, ordering Nazi memorabilia by the metric ton. Meanwhile, in Los Alamos, secret goverment agents were attempting track where John Rocker's private stash is disappearing to, when--much to their dismay--all high-tech government computer equipment (Dell machines with Win2k, BIOS-locked, of course) became disrupted by high energy particle-collisions and set themselves on fire. The resulting panic brought several agents to their knees as they prayed... for the computer technicians to quickly remove the hard drives, thus saving complete system images of their OS, and copies every pr0nographic image ever made.

    And you thought your week was hell.


    -={(.Y.)}=-
  • Ok...While I don't think anyone is a stupid fsck, I would like to point out, as the original post does, that the pertinent contents of the Windows98 cd (drivers, installation files, etc.) can be found in "c:\windows\options\cabs" on most OEM installations. If they are not there, someone likely removed them to "save space". In todays world, I don't think it is too much to ask to use 100 MB of HDD space.

    Anyway, I hope that helps your Grandma next time. Also, if she owns a copy of the software, fair use (regardless of DMCA, RIAA, MPAA) AND her license (go ahead...read it) allow her to maintain a copy of the software for backup purposes. So getting the CD from a friend, as long as you have your own valid reg key and License is perfectly okie dokey.

    -fp
  • I bought a (shit)-Packer(d) [H]ell back in '96 that had a recovery CD instead of a Windows 95 CD. So what do you do?

    copy d:\win95 c:\win95

    problem solved.
  • Oddly enough the hard drive's contained information to make things safer. Such as data on clean up and disarming of nuclear weapons.

    --Justin
  • did a group of linux users try that a little while back? if I remember right they just got a a smile and a "no". I would still love to see it happen in mass. And BTW the price an OEM pays for windows is alot less then what we pay (if we pay at all) at the store. Just my $0.021
  • Dell has been doing this since their first implementation of Windows 2000 on at least all their business systems. Heck, even before that they were affixing the OEM code to the outside of their boxes even if we ordered NT4 workstation on them (Yep... all windows NT shop - I'm attempting to get more linux/bsd servers in for web and database serving - MS-SQL on NT is just not a good thing, and IIS has been nothing but trouble. The NT boxes without either of them on them have had uptimes of over 200 days, the IIS/SQL boxes never over 20).
    ...
    I don't see what the huge deal is over this - the Disc that comes with it with win2k should only need to be installed on Dell systems anyway. We have retail or quick license copies for the rest of them. We've been getting licenses for win2k way before they released it so that when we switch (sometime later this year) we wouldn't have to go buy upgrade licenses.
  • Aptiva - last i heard - was a desktop. The thinkpad is the laptop, and the workpad(?) i the palm-clone. It's funny that one of the biggest companies with "linux certified" laptops is using microsoft's latest stupid idea.
  • The problem with that is that the technical operation of "blocking all .fr addresses" would put a serious burden on Yahoo, especially if you're talking only about the specific auction content, not all of *.yahoo.com. Blocking based on domain requires reverse DNS lookups which is expensive (wall time, networking and other resources) and doesn't always work (some people dont have reverse DNS set up properly.) Not to mention the possiblity that users within the juridiction of this French court ruling can access Yahoo from an ISP or other provider not in the .fr domain.

    So, at best, it would be an expensive, possibly ineffective political statement. Who knows, those wacky kids at Yahoo! [yahoo.com] might try something like it.



  • and I meant to post that at 1. I think I need to stop using Slashdot in the morning...

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • Funny thing is, I used to have an IBM CrAptiva a couple of years ago which used a recovery CD like this.

    The "protection" was password-protected zip files. The setup program you run unzips them.

    Opening the setup EXE in DOS edit allowed me to see what password they were using and unzip them myself, so that I could use it later.

    Not only that, but running the setup myself kept it from installing all of the extra crap on the desktop that IBM snuck in there, as well as all the "family" programs I could care less about.

    Let's hope the copy protection doesn't improve, and then it'll all be OK. :)

    :wq!

  • Who the hell leaves nuclear secretes on hard drives just lying around? Even if this is a secure area, why were they left out? Don't they normally put these things in secure volts? Also why would you take the HD's out of the computer in the first place, unless you were planning on moving the data? Personally I think this shows gov mentality at its best. But that is just my opinion.

    Lets face it. Someone really screwed up. The data is probably copied. The damage is done. Who's the spy? Also what kind of secretes about nuclear tech can these drives have? Can't you find that stuff on the internet or in your local library?.. let see take some uranium, or is it pletonium.. hmmm

    As for recovery CD.. I think that I can understand doing this if the cdrom is configured specifically for a computer. The BIOS may be used as as key, when the software detects thsi key it installs the necessary files to recovery this sytem. Hopefully this would include the proper sound drivers, cdrom drivers and all the other. If that is what they are planning then it is a good idea.

    Something to consider is that most computer retail companies in the past were not giving any cdrom with the machines that they sold> If it does crash or something happens, the user would have to take it back to them. They were not giving them a cdrom nor were they giving them the software to reinstall from a crash. The manufactures (mostly small companies) were taking the cdroms and using them to install copies on dozons of computers. M$ sued some of these companies, over lost revenue. I am not sure that this is directed at the end user, but at computer companies. To prevent computer companies from taking one copy of M$ and installing it on dozons of computers. Personally I use RH Linux, so M$ can do what they want. I don't need their stuff at home. They way it is going, with OS X coming next year, M$ OS may be on its way out. If OS X is stable and works well, many people I know will be turning to Macs AT WORK TOO!

    send flames > /dev/null

  • I have an IBM Intellistation from last year, and it did not come with a recovery CD. Standard OEM copy of Windows NT Workstation and a second driver CD.

    I recall an IBM recovery CD from a couple years back that would install SmartSuite, whether you wanted it or not. Compaq and Gateway also install tons and tons of crap on their consumer systems. I suspect that's why OEMs are going along with this policy -- not only does it lower their support costs (Problem of any sort? Use the recovery CD!), but it also ensures that users are properly spammed with the OEMs software and marketing tie-ins.
    --
  • <joke>

    Ah, yes, a "hapless tourist" fell for that scheme, and definitely not you yourself, the teller of the tale. Just some "hapless tourist" who shall remain nameless (except that it's a /. editor whose name begins with "r").

    </joke>
    --

  • What is this thing going to do to people trying to run WinXX under VMware? The VMware stuff has it's own system bios (some form of Phoenix). From what that message is saying, if the CD can not detect a Dell BIOS, then it is not going to install... or did I read that wrong?

  • returns (Score:1)

    by Doke ( 23992 )
    The license certificate is now a sticker on the PC case. It flakes apart if you try to remove it. This makes it impossible to return the software for refund, without returning the PC too.

    Admittedly, only a few people ever got their money back by returning the bundled copy of windows. However, this completely prevents it.
  • That's not quite true. Actually the law doesn't define such thing as an illegal belief. The mind reading police isn't yet efficient enough anyway.

    However, there is a law that forbids to publish material that denies the existence of the crimes against humanity as defined in the 1945 Nuemberg trial of the major nazi leaders. That law is an add-on to the 1881 "freedom(!) of press act" ; whether or not it may apply to the Internet is the leagal grey area that is used to sue websites like in that Yahoo nonsense.

    So French law does define the historical truth. It has therefore been criticized by history reasearchers (I might have a link there but since the text is in French :) ...), who said that it is definitely not up to the government to define the past.

    And of course there are obvious free speech issues with such laws. The problem is that free speech isn't as highly valued down there as it is in the United States.

    PS : I'm glad to hear that you believe the holocaust happened. So do I.
  • "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

    I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.
    -- Bob Dylan
  • Not to mention the possiblity that users within the juridiction of this French court ruling can access Yahoo from an ISP or other provider not in the .fr domain.

    To back that up, note that many French already are in domains not in .fr . A lot of corporate users have .com domains, just like many ISPs. There is also a few .org's.

    Maybe Yahoo should block all .fr, .com and .org addresses, just in case :-)
  • You are absolutely right that reverse DNS will fail miserably. That is intended. The resource use would also be very large. Which gives them the opportunity to bring home to the court exactly what they mean when they say that blocking selectively for French users, "is not technically feasible."

    IOW Yahoo can go out of the way to block all of France from the auction site, come up with some publicity, French people will still have no trouble reaching them, and they can then talk about how much they are spending and how ineffective it is.

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • I seem to recall the packard bell I used to have had the same sort of deal. It had a system disk that came with it, and it wouldn't install Windows onto a system with a different BIOS, which caused some problems when I built my new computer.

    Fortunately, the Windows 98 Upgrade CD still recognizes it as a valid Win95 CD, and doesn't give a damn about what BIOS I'm using. :)

  • BUT... for the average consumer this is a GOOD thing. Having to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows (which WILL happen eventually) is a real pain. Normally, the average consumer takes the computer in to the local shop (CompUSA, Micro Center, etc). And pays a fee to have Windows reinstalled.

    Except what happens when your average consumer buys a printer, hooks it up, and Windows says "Insert your Windows CD"? That's what my grandmother ran into with her HP, because it dodn't come with a Windows CD, it came with a HP Recovery CD, and the recovery CD doesn't work as a Windows CD. She had two choices - put more $$ in MicroSoft's pocket, or get a pirated CD from a friend. Guess which one she went for?
  • Did Microsoft reimburse Dell for all the time they had to spend to implement these measures? They put an unnecessary strain on Dell's engineers to server the customer while at the same time abiding by the new MS licensing garbage. If I were Dell, I'd be pissed about it.

    As another note, if I buy a computer with Windows on it (like I have many choices), I shouldn't have to run that copy on that machine. I could wipe it out, put Linux on it, and decide to use Windows on another machine. That is my right, as I own one copy of the software.
  • My initial reaction was that somebody was feling the heat and trying to return the HDDs to stop or deprioritize the investigation. The history of HumInt is full of ridiculous stories of inside sources who were almost caught (but weren't) because an investigation moved on or was deprioritized. The Article suggests DoE was thinking on the same lines.

    Despite their safe recovery, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Friday afternoon he would continue an investigation into the matter, and he promised disciplinary action would result. Investigators are treating the area where the drives were found as a crime scene, and Richardson said "their authenticity" was still being evaluated.

    Maybe the theft was discovered sooner than expected (perhaps due to the post-fire audit) or maybe the original plan was to copy and return the HDD, but of course 'return' is less pressing than the original theft (and almost as risky). You have the data, everything else is icing... until you realize your source is almost compromised!

    "authenticity" - I doubt anyone was foolish enough to return a copy of the HDD, so this suggests some clean-room (in the original sense) technique for checking if an archival (written then stored) HDD was ever read, or if *all* of it were read (Normal use would only read parts as needed. If all of it had been read - especially recently - it would strongly suggest copying.)

    Does anyone out there have any info on the current capabilities of 'clean-room' HDD analysis? We know the Gov't has impressive recovery methods for recovering long erased and multiply re-written files from off-track traces.

  • What I think Yahoo should have done... (Score:4)

    by tilly ( 7530 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @09:44AM (#996362)
    Blocked all *.fr addresses, directing them to a page saying something like Nos excuses. Ces pages sont actuel bloquées des utilisateurs français pour nous introduire dans la conformité à une décision récente de cour.

    Then they could honestly tell the French court that they were making a sincere attempt to comply with the ruling...

    Hmm...perhaps they should also include contact information for the case, and a link to an explanation of what their position was.

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • Microsoft has traditionally been one of the least anti-piracy companies.

    Perhaps, but Bill Gates of Micro-Soft [eskimo.com] is the original anti-piracy zealot.
  • Nah, that costs more and entails getting to listen to some other lucky bastard getting some. :)

  • You have the right to believe what you want (it's not Orwell-land here, you know !). However, there are some very specific beliefs and behaviour (namely, Negationism (negating the Holocaust), and all incitation to Racial Hatred) which are totally forbidden *to* *advocate*.

    How does the law define "advocating"? If I believe something, doesn't that mean I'm advocating it in some way, even if it's just generally voicing that opinion? I mean, the only way to not advocate a belief is to be forbidden to voice it, which seems then that (in practical terms) it's illegal hold the opinion.


    --

  • So use a hardware-based solution, installed in a few laptops with transmitters that alert security if they leave the building, so that sec staff can check it out. And make sure these platforms don't have non-encrypted writeable removable media.

    It's a lot harder to hide an entire laptop than, say, a laptop drive.
  • While I don't know about france, I suspect that this comes from the Canadian case involving Ernst Zundel. He was sued under Canada's "false news" laws, for publishing, amont other things, a pamphlet entitled "did six million really die".

    The extent to which the court defined history was to say that Zundel's defense that the government had not proved in court that the holocaust had occured was not a defense, that the existance of the holocaust is sufficiently well known and generally documented, that the burden of proof rested on Zundel to prove it didn't happen if he wished to defend himself by claiming that the news he published was, in fact true.

    All very oversimplified, but no, it's not a crime to believe it didn't happen (although apparantly is in canada to print false news, such as that the holocaust didn't happen), but rather that the assumption in court is, it did. There's some summaries of the case over on nizkor [nizkor.org] on their page about Zundel [nizkor.org]

    There does have to come a point in law where you just take something as a given and don't have to prove that there's a large country to the south of canada called the united states, or equal silliness.

  • MS's plans will be yet another nail in the coffin of the old practice of building your own systems.

    This will actually encourage me to continue building my own systems. The way prices in the computer market have been driven down, I fully expected that the next system I would purchase would be off the shelf. However, if all they will be able to provide me with is a recovery CD, not a real Windows CD, I'll stick with rolling my own.

  • Lost Drives (Score:4)

    by FraggleMI ( 117868 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:20AM (#996393) Homepage
    Well as a former memeber of the Army Intelligence Corp I can tell you that this isn't as big of a deal as you think it is. Remember that most likely this whole building is secure. To even get in you will need either a Secret or most likely a Top Secret clearance. And once you are in, you would probably be able to access just about anything in the building with a badge. Its not like X-Files where every door is locked :) I am not defending them for losing it, cause they shouldn't have lost the stuff, but, I think it is being made a bigger deal than it is. The media is probably trying to make money off of this since the russians dont have it. They have to earn a buck too ;) Plus, I mean, think about it, how many floppy diskes do you have laying around that you missplaced. I think the media is overplaying this situation WAY too much.

  • HDs Lost (Score:5)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:23AM (#996397)
    Ok, it's bad enough that the HDs with nuclear secrets were lost. It's worse that they were found behind, of all places, a copy machine. What really gets me is this:

    The drives have been missing since at least May 7, when Los Alamos employees prepared to evacuate the facility due to wildfires in the surrounding New Mexico countryside.

    I can see it now...
    Lab Attendant #1: Oh no! The wildfires are coming closer! We have to evacuate!
    Lab Attendant #2: What about the Nuclear Secrets? Shouldn't we take those along?
    Lab Attendant #1: Yes, we should definitely save them... But who knows, they might burn up in the fire. Take them out of the secret, underground, highly protected fire-proof room they are in and put them behind the copy machine in the first floor employee lounge!
    Lab Attendant #2: My God, that's genius!

    Siiigh.

  • Its like looking for those lost keys in your house :)
  • I figured that even if the drives were stolen, surely the data was protected with strong encryption... wouldn't that be smart? Was all the data on the drives "in the clear?" Besides, you could prosecute the thief under espionage laws AND under the DMCA, if he actually got to the data. :)

    ---

  • Business Opportunity! Yes! (Score:3)

    by Roblimo ( 357 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:33AM (#996406) Homepage Journal
    <joke>

    Wow! After reading today's SlashBack I am suddenly inspired to start selling copies of CDs online at very low prices. Example:

    *YOUR CHOICE ONLY $2.99*

    Copy of MS Office CD
    Copy of Red Hat 6.2 CD
    Copy of Corel Draw CD
    Copy of Metallica's latest CD
    Copy of MS Win2000 CD

    - hundreds of other popular titles available!

    (Plus $5 shipping and handling per order, of course.)

    Who wants to partner up with me on this thing? I'll supply the Xerox color copier. You make the Web site. We'll send out millions and millions of emails to lucky "pretargeted" Internet users! We'll get rich!

    </joke>

    This scam-thought is partially inspired by the many nude enounter parlors that dotted San Francisco when I lived there years ago. They all had signs that claimed they offered "Oral Sex." After a hapless tourist bit on the come-on and forked over his cash, he was informed that oral sex meant ... talking about it.

    - Robin

  • From the people I've talked to who work at LLNL, the drives were in a vault, which is located behind a copying machine, and is in the secure area. They were in a black suite case, and not been noticed. Of course, they didn't know if the drives were in the correct vault, but they were always safe. Its not quite as news-worthy to state that administration went a bit bonkers and that the drives were safe all along in a vault, instead we must insinuate they fell behind a copy-machine because employees were to busy making photocopies of various body parts.

  • Well, you could do that. But what if it checks with the BIOS lock every time you try to install anything from the CD, not just the whole OS?

    Windows will inevitably fuck itself up, and then you will need the CD for something. Windows tends to ask for the CD for changing even trivial things, and if it really fucks up (It does that about twice a year...), you'll have to install reinstall the whole OS.

    So, your solution would work, but every time you want to change anything, you'll have to rip out your hard drive and put it back in the dell. So you'd have to keep a functional dell box sitting around.

    This is actually the reason I switched over to linux, because I got tired of this kind of shit from MS. Linux's technical suppurioty isn't as great as people make it sound (Although it is nice to have an OS that doesn't piss all it's memory away...). And since I've been using it, I've really come to appriciate the idea of free-software (Stallman is right, damn it, free software is inherntly supirior _because_ it's free, not because of fewer bugs/better code, that's just a bonus). But I probably wouldn't have switched over to it in the first place if MS weren't a bunch of dick heads.

  • UEJF, one of the two groups who filed the suit against Yahoo, is a jewish students' association. I asked a few jewish friends of mine, and they shared my opinion on them: that they're a bunch of crybabies who is using their heritage in a sad, sad way -- to boost their future carrier probably, as most of them are law students, actually.

    When I first learnt about the lawsuit being filed, I jumped to their website [uejf.org] and expressed my disapproval and my concerns in a rather polite manner. In less than an hour, I was called a nazi, a collaborationist and fascist ... Really nice people.

    So I suggest that you all go to their forum and voice your opinion on this, here [uejf.org].

  • You only get to know what is above presidential if you have Presidential. NTK you see.
  • Simple: you don't teach, or lecture this opinion. And you don't print it in publically-available media. Otherwise, there's no thought-police, and as long as it's in a private discussion, you can say what you want (and turning in people for a felony or a crime *is* a felony, unless the authorities specifically asked for hints ; so, normally, you can talk).

    Yes, this sounds like a restriction on free speech. Here, before "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité", we have "l'Ordre Public" to protect and keep untroubled. In the spirit of law, public order is a prerequisite to everyone's enjoyment of one's individual freedom. However, incitation to racial hatred, or negationism are deemed (by the law) as having enough potential to overturn public order, thus harming everyone's freedom. That's why the freedom of some right-wing extremist has to be restricted a bit (according to the law).

    You might want to babblefish some stuff at
    http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr for more info...

  • Uhh, have you ever done something like that before? Windows HATES it when you swap hardware like that. Chances are it'd eat itself so bad you'd have to reinstall from scratch. On the wrong box. ;-)

    --

  • Recovery CD's are GOOD thing. (Score:3)

    by sethgecko ( 167305 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:49AM (#996429) Homepage
    OK, first off, not giving a copy of the Windows CD is bad. Really bad. That's like buying a copy of the latest Peal Jam CD (insert your favorite bad here) and then finding that it only plays on the bundled CD player. If you ever want to buy (or build) a new CD player it won't work on it. Fine. Bad.

    BUT... for the average consumer this is a GOOD thing. Having to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows (which WILL happen eventually) is a real pain. Normally, the average consumer takes the computer in to the local shop (CompUSA, Micro Center, etc). And pays a fee to have Windows reinstalled.

    Ah, you say. Installing Windows is easy! Well... not really. You boot to the boot disk (do you have one that has CDROM support, if not, too bad) and type D:\setup. This installs windows, no problem. But what about the drivers? When Windows restarts it asks you for the drivers for the sound, video, and modem cards, which are usually included on batch made CD's with multiple drivers. Find the CD for the video card. Navigate to the directory where the driver is, because windows isn't smart enough to scan the whole CD for the correct driver. Load it. Repeat with the other devices, etc. But hope that Windows detects support for your CDROM drive before it detects your other devices, otherwise you won't be able to load the drivers--something that happens pretty often.

    When I worked as a technician for a major computer retailer--our house brand did not include recovery CD's, but just Windows and individual driver disks. I am pretty sure that this is because we could charge $50 a pop for reinstalling Windows properly. (As technicians, WE had the recovery CD's) Lots of revenue there.

    Giving the customer a recovery CD which reinstalls everything properly in one step is a Very Good Thing.

    I cannot stress this enough. 15 - 30 minutes to get back up and running when Windows gets wrecked. This makes life so much easier for consumers and for technicians.

    The main complaint I hear is that you can't then take the OEM Windows CD and install it on a computer you build. But how big a percentage of the population is this anyway? (Since this is slashdot, I also have to ask, why are you installing Windows on a computer you slaved hard at building??? You should now enough to run Linux (or *BSD)).

    If you really want the Windows installation files, buy a burner and copy them from C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS\, right where they've always been on OEM installations of Win9x. Nothing too tough there, is there?

  • Compaq has been doing this for at least 3 years.
    And I have been merrily copying the cab files from the cd
    to do manual installs the whole while. I ripped out the mobo
    and just about everything else, and so of course Micropaq
    deemed my purchase of a Windows liscence invalidated. Yeah, ok.

  • Why the concept of a Recovery CD REALLY sucks (Score:3)

    by jblackman ( 72186 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @07:49AM (#996431) Homepage
    I've had experience with these little gems, and they are an absolute bitch to try to use. Actually, let me rephrase -- they're easy enough to utilize (stick in in the cd-rom drive and boot up the computer). But if you want any control over your system at all -- components installed, configuration, etc. -- then you're pretty much out of luck.

    One of my friends was having trouble with her Compaq laptop, and I basically decided to do a fresh install of Windows 98. Since I couldn't find a Windows 98 CD among the materials that came with her computer (because -- surprise, surprise -- there wasn't one!) I had her buy the academic edition through our school.

    Over, hmm, the six or so hours that I wrestled with that installation, I slowly got Windows working with all of the proprietary hardware on the Compaq. However, I just could not find drivers for the sound card. I finally broke down and called Compaq, and they told me that no drivers were available, to use the helpfully marked recovery CD, blah blah, etc.

    Well, I used the recovery CD, and like I said, it was simple enough (a 20 automated minute install vs. the six hours I had spent) but there was no way to stop it from installing all the additional crap that had been bogging her system down in the first place. I tried manually uninstalling all the programs that a.) run in the background and b.) have no apparent function, but there was only so much I could do.

    Honestly, I get the feeling that this particular step taken to combat piracy has just gone too far. Personally, I could probably accept a computer with a machine- or brand-specific bundled OS. I mean, the next computer I buy will probably include an OS one way or another, so I can live with that. It's not particularly fair, it's an example of unreasonable software licenses, but it could also be worse. However, when the step so fundamentally cripples the installation process, you know there's a problem.
  • Do you encrypt all of your data?

    Only when I'm doing top-secret defense work... oh wait, I don't do that... but these drives were supposedly from a shelf in a locked vault. Their loss triggered hearings in Congress. Seems to me that if they were that big of a deal, encryption would have been a snazzy idea.

    ---
  • Who the hell leaves nuclear secretes on hard drives just lying around?

    Someone did, apparently. Actually, if you go to a weapons laboratory and trek behind the multiple layers of security, badge readers, biometric scanners, you'll likely find many computers just "lying around," some of which may have nuclear secrets on them. This may come as a shock to you, but weapons designers actually use this kind of data in performing their jobs. Being able to use data entails being able to access it. Being able to access it entails having the data be somewhat more vulnerable than if it all sat in a sealed concrete bunker with 3 divisions of infantry guarding it. This is the nature of the game--the best you can hope for is to hire qualified people and to have .

    The data is probably copied. The damage is done. Who's the spy?

    Don't jump to conclusions. No evidence has been released that suggests that espionage is in any way related to the drives' disappearance. More plausible scenarios are that someone made an honest mistake in misplacing the drives, or possibly that someone feared losing their job and being prosecuted aggressively by an FBI all too eager to assume the worst of someone. Just ask Wen Ho Lee the price of cooperation with the FBI when someone has a political axe to grind.

    pletonium

    It's playdonium. It comes in many bright colors, tastes salty, and can be molded into most any shape you like--even rockets and bombs. Look for it in the toy section of Walmart.
  • Dell Optiplex, included in this scheme, are actually user upgradeable.. The powersupply requires a short and Dell is rather happy to tell you this when you ask, but that is the only issue..
  • Would someone please enlighten me as to why Microsoft is worried about piracy. It seems to me that most computers are sold as packaged products (ie: not bought as parts and assembled). Thus they come with Windows pre-installed. The primary need for a windows cd then, would be to reinstall the operating system after some catastrophe or a new hard drive etc..

    Sure, there's some piracy that goes on, I've witnessed people installing windows on used 486's and such, but how is this a big revenue loss for Microsoft. It seems to me that the people who have the most need for a Windows cd are the one's who legitimately paid for it in the first place and just want to re-install it on the same computer or possibly on a second computer they've bought which for some reason does not have windows already.

    Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot here. As if they're not already in danger from the growing use of linux,BSD, etc.., now they are giving people even more reason to stop using their software altogether. They should be trying to give their users more freedom not less. Personaly though, I'm glad their doing this. I don't use windows except for at work and I hope this will convince more people to switch to one of the free nixes.

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