Vista's Legal Fine Print Raises Red Flags (All your computer are belong to us.)

The Toronto Star ^ | January 29, 2007 | Michael Geist

[Vicki]

From everything I have heard today (PC Magazine) and here I think Vista is an expensive "upgrade" that really doesn't do much for the consumer. Just makes Gates richer and more in control.

We'll stick to our Macs and will not upgrade our business Windows machine.

[George W. Bush]

Have you guys seen this demo of open-source Vista/Tiger clone?

YouTube: Xgl Demo

Amazing that they manage to run a desktop UI that visual and 3D'd with a pretty modest machine. I think it's prettier than Vista and contains many of the upcoming Mac Leopard features.

I'm thinking about running it in a VM...

[Echo Talon]

But of course. My Mac Pro is just a generic Xeon workstation from an Intel reference design. Same thing as all those AMD reference designs you get from AMD's motherboard vendors. There's nothing dirty about it and there's no reason for Apple or AMD's vendors to design their own boards and buses and such. That's so Second Millennium. Let the chip makers solve the EE design problems, not the PC makers.

Not really... try overclocking that generic "workstation"

[Echo Talon]

thats Sabayon Linux Beryl XGL... give it a try... Lots of new Linux distro's are using beryl and xgl/aixgl sp? now

[Echo Talon]

beryl switched to sabayon

[Echo Talon]

one of beryl's themes

[Echo Talon]

Gates has the usual billionaire's preoccupation with funding depopulation (birth control, aborticide) around the world.

and malaria and all kinds of other diseases...

[Golden Eagle]

Yeah, it's just common lingo. We don't have a good word for it.

Those that have a better idea what they're talking about, do. I'll give you a hint, "bootcamp" and "multiboot" contain the same four characters in a row, but I don't think that was what you were actually doing.

Yes, if they have retail stock you can buy it. Other places too.

You were the one saying XP wouldn't be available in 3 months, why not if I can still get 2000 seven years later?

DRM is just bad.

Bad for those who want something for free, but good for those that already have something worth protecting.

More accurately, they have no choice but to buy it with a new machine.

Apple sells new machines without Windows, you bought one or more yourself right?

Microsoft is who made the hackers so dangerous by refusing to fix so many long-time flaws.

Yes, I believe you said it took them "years", so where's the example I asked for?

Holding hands? I thought I had seem them all.

Unfortunately yes, it was something about being able to network together, I saw a stillshot posted here a couple of weeks ago too.

In fairness, Apple forbids you to virtualize their OS currently but it's widely expected they'll relax this to allow OS X to be virtual on OS X

I don't see much purpose in that, in any event Vista can virtualize and be virtualized whereas OSX still can't.

I don't see any reason to constantly allow this creeping intrusion and datamining of my personal property.

Automatically applying security patches is "datamining"? What about the pop ups I recently got to update my Quicktime, and even install iTunes, for which I have no use?

I'm not interested in the bargain basement machines. You do get what you pay for in design, support, etc.

This machine is no clunker, it's very sleek and very fast and very affordable. Extremely bright screen, super keyboard, even has features you don't see on the Mac notebooks like a memory card reader and dialup modem.

Look, until OS X.2, you couldn't have paid me to take an Apple machine.

I've always liked Apple, even after they abandoned me early on, because it is a premium product. I just find a portion of their users annoying who think every last person that uses a PC must be a gullible idiot. Obviously not, since I saw right through your questionable claims from the start.

[Golden Eagle]

Have you guys seen this demo of open-source Vista/Tiger clone? I'm thinking about running it in a VM...

Apple and Steve Jobs will be thrilled. They should do wonderfully well in the new "no sales, service only" business model you have planned for them. /SARCASM

[George W. Bush]

Not really... try overclocking that generic "workstation"

So how many people are overclocking these newer dual-core Xeon machines (not just Apple's version)? I hadn't read about it. Generally, overclocking a workstation just isn't done since the whole point of buying one is to have something powerful enough to carry an exceptional workload without "cheating" the hardware specs or introducing instability.

[Golden Eagle]

Ah, here that little rascal is, the "Apple Software Update" utility that installed itself when I installed Quicktime. Let's see, right under the Edit menu, then Preferences, I see the following:

You can select to check for updates automatically. If you do, Apple Software Update will notify you when an update is available. How often would you like to check for updates?

Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Never

Is this the "datamining" you were accusing Microsoft of? How in the world could Apple do such an evil thing as well?

[Echo Talon]

Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor X6800 (3.47GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB cache) Factory Overclocked Default X6800 is 2.93GHz the overclocked system is watercooled... ;)

[Echo Talon]

Windows Vista to Generate Billions in Revenue, Drive New Jobs

Microsoft touts Windows Vista as money maker and job creator

As part of the Vista hype machine, Microsoft has sent out several press releases detailing estimates of new revenue generation from major IT markets. Microsoft commissioned the IDC to complete research study to find out Vista’s effects on the IT industry within the first year of the new operating system’s shipment.

These studies look at the economic impact of Windows Vista at the U.S. state level for  California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Florida (all files in PDF).

As a quick summary of the above studies, Windows Vista in 2007 is expected to:

• Generate $10 billion in new revenue and to drive 16,000 new jobs in California.
• Generate $2 billion in new revenue and to drive 5,000 new jobs in Massachusetts.
• Generate $7 billion in new revenue and to drive 16,000 new jobs in New York.
• Generate $2.5 billion in new revenue and to drive 5,000 new jobs in New Jersey.
• Generate $3.5 billion in new revenue and to drive 11,000 new jobs in Greater Washington, D.C.
• Generate $4 billion in new revenue and to drive 11,000 new jobs in Florida.

Microsoft partners – companies that sell hardware, write software, provide IT services or serve as IT distribution channels – will also feel the impact of Windows Vista because it will drive substantial revenue and growth for Microsoft-centric companies.

The study also forecasts that each dollar of Windows Vista-related revenue earned by Microsoft in 2007 will generate between $18-20 in revenue for the ecosystem beyond the software giant.

Microsoft's ecosystem is making a sizable investment to prepare for and roll out Windows Vista worldwide, according to the IDC study. Between now and the end of 2007, IDC expects Microsoft partners to invest billions of dollars in Windows Vista-related products and services.

Windows Vista, together with the 2007 Microsoft Office system, was made available on November 30, 2006 to Volume Licensing customers and is broadly available to all consumers today.

[Echo Talon]

Gateway.com

Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700 (2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB cache) [ +US$0.00]

Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700 (3.20GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB cache) – Factory Overclocked [ +US$100.00]

More speed for $100 and watter cooling too boot... ;)

[George W. Bush]

Those that have a better idea what they're talking about, do. I'll give you a hint, "bootcamp" and "multiboot" contain the same four characters in a row, but I don't think that was what you were actually doing.

Huh? I have a 30GB BootCamp partition. I mostly use it as a virtual machine image, not as a BootCamp. This is why multiboot is a little more accurate term, I think. At any rate, I didn't invent the term. It's pretty common. Oh, and no, I do not mean just some puny dual-boot configuration.

You were the one saying XP wouldn't be available in 3 months, why not if I can still get 2000 seven years later?

Go back and look. Some ignorant people tried to pretend I said that. I didn't. I corrected them. Then another one popped to pretend I did again. Since I didn't say it and was not talking about old copies of Retail versions rotting in some warehouse, then Win2k at CDW proves, well, not much. You do understand that MS isn't actually making and selling copies of Win2K now, don't you? That's just old stock. You can buy it lots of places, heavily discounted. Still, it remains an excellent choice for many users. Rock solid.

Bad for those who want something for free, but good for those that already have something worth protecting.

So the DRM that locks up your music if you put it on a Zune is good even if you can't get it off again? And the Apple DRM is good even if you have to burn and rip the tracks to get your desired MP3 to play your licensed copy of it on your cellphone or non-iPod or toaster? You really think it's fair for them to sell you a generic track and restrict which device you can use? If so, you're pretty odd and far out of the mainstream. DRM is unpopular with everyone. Since the collapse of MS's own PlaysForSure (evil) DRM scheme, even Microsoft is now pretending to be anti-DRM (as a way of hitting Apple's iTunes profit center now that Europe is turning on all music DRM).

Apple sells new machines without Windows, you bought one or more yourself right?

This is just strange reasoning. Apple is not, of course, a Windows vendor. They have no official relationship with Microsoft the way Dell or HP do. You must have some grasp of MS's OEM licensing schemes. It's the basis of their monopoly for years.

Yes, I believe you said it took them "years", so where's the example I asked for?

I was trying to find Sysinterals website where you once could get some info. Then I remembered Microsoft just bought them, heh-heh. Surprising, isn't it, they'd buy a company with strong antihacking and antirootkit tools when Vista is such an invulnerable stronghold of security. Well, except for those six security flaws they just patched today, the day of the launch of "the most secure operating system ever" (Gates). Oh, yeah, and that Vista Service Pack 1 they already scheduled for release later this year to fix Vista's new beta final product launch. Look, some of this is just a bad rehash of the same exact crap they pulled with XP up through XP SP1. Same exact thing.

Okay, from Secunia:

• 7 from 2006
• 9 from 2005
• 5 from 2004
• 7 from 2003

Now, those are just for unpatched flaws in WinXP Pro, nothing else. I'm not going to bother to dig all the others out since you really could have found them yourself the same way I did.

I don't see much purpose in that, in any event Vista can virtualize and be virtualized whereas OSX still can't.

No. OSX and Vista can both be virtualized. But OSX can't be legally yet and will likely only be virtualized on Apple machines. (If you use some imagination, the implication is that you could boot Windows and then use VMware legally to virtualize OS X, all legal and with Apple happy because you're running that licensed OS X on Apple hardware with Windows and VMware as hypervisor/host. Vista can only virtualize on the most expensive versions of Vista and you are forbidden to virtualize on the 3 primary low-end versions. Maybe Business too, can't recall that one. Again, the key point is that MS actually disables the hardware you paid for if you won't pay them extra. Effectively, it's MS's "virtualization tax". You pay for the new hardware, Microsoft disables it until you pay the blackmail. As I mentioned before, WinXP Pro will run dual-CPU but they never planned on multi-core so I get all four cores on my dual-Xeon quad-core machine. That's just evil and I'm taking advantage of poor Microsoft, at least judging by this new licensing scheme.

Automatically applying security patches is "datamining"? What about the pop ups I recently got to update my Quicktime, and even install iTunes, for which I have no use?

I now realize you don't really understand the update procedures very well. Do you even read the article on what the Vista license contains? And as for popups for Quicktime or installing iTunes on Windows, well, I guess if you actually allow IE7 to popup windows on your screen. It's been about two or three years since I've seen popups unless I explicitly turned them on for a specific purpose. I just don't know anyone who still allows websites to do that crap on their screens. Especially since they are such a known vulnerability that even M$ is blocking them with IE7 (feature stolen from Firefox/Mozilla of course).

This machine is no clunker, it's very sleek and very fast and very affordable. Extremely bright screen, super keyboard, even has features you don't see on the Mac notebooks like a memory card reader and dialup modem.

Um...No, I'm not going to even tell you why those poor stupid MacBook owners, well, lots of others too, would be giggling to hear you say this. Yeah, your towering powerhouse obviously buries them and their rotten Apples.

Dude, there are reasons why some people pay for and can justify spending $2500-$5000 on first-rate laptops. You may not but that doesn't mean that everyone has such modest needs. A commodity HP unit isn't a bad machine. They're plenty good for lots of ordinary home and business folk, actually more than what most people need. But that's not Apple's market. If you sold Apple, you know they're a high-end creative professionals' machine, they're a science and educational market machine. And they're a boutique machine with prices to match. Like your HP, they have a market slot too.

I've always liked Apple, even after they abandoned me early on, because it is a premium product. I just find a portion of their users annoying who think every last person that uses a PC must be a gullible idiot. Obviously not, since I saw right through your questionable claims from the start.

Well, I looked and realized I did get into a rant (or three or five). It's those endless parentheses that are the tipoff. OTOH, lots of the fanbois are FUDding or lying on this thread. I have repeatedly provided concrete information and reputable sources. At any rate, whatever the question is, Vista just isn't the answer. Stick with XP Pro. Far more useful and less sinister. And almost nothing needs Vista yet anyway and won't for several years. And their eye-candy is lame, their Search and Gadgets clear ripoffs of Apple's, their IE7 innovations are blatant ripoffs of Firefox, etc. Where's that Longhorn we were promised? Well, Microsoft found out they weren't capable of producing such a product because Microsoft is large and bulky and apparently can't invent anything at all any more. And their record of innovation has always been remarkably weak. They're no Xerox or IBM or General Electric. Or Apple.

So, I take it you don't even run Vista on your HP lappie? Ah, now you did make me chuckle at myself.

[George W. Bush]

Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700 (2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB cache) [ +US$0.00] Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme quad-core processor QX6700 (3.20GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB cache) – Factory Overclocked [ +US$100.00]

Those are not Xeons, which use numbers like 5300 and 5500 and such but not the older Xeons which share the name but are not Core Duo architecture. They don't use the same memory architecture (they're too slow for my Mac's memory bus and they don't use the serial RAM interface and they aren't parity-checked). And of course some of the Core 2 Duos and the new Quads can be overclocked. But you're comparing consumer chips to workstation chips. You didn't get the point I made about workstations and how and why you buy them, their attributes, etc. I know, I'm writing too much. I hardly slept last night and never got a nap today.

Not merely with Apple but across the board: no one runs around overclocking their workstations. I suppose maybe when they're getting old and slated for replacement. Maybe. But generally you want stability. So you run them by spec. And that protects their longevity and your investment.

[George W. Bush]

As part of the Vista hype machine, Microsoft has sent out several press releases detailing estimates of new revenue generation from major IT markets.

Quick translation: help jumpstart this turkey and it'll generate jobs and therefore state and city revenue.

It's not about technology or the merit of the product. In effect, they're just bribing these pols and relying on greed to sell a product no one needs or wants.

[George W. Bush]

You can select to check for updates automatically. If you do, Apple Software Update will notify you when an update is available. How often would you like to check for updates?

That is not what the Vista license is about. It does identify you and they reserve the right to scan every file and delete anything they want. GO READ THE ARTICLE.

As for Apple, I've already said I don't let them scan me anyway. It's not Microsoft scanning everything on my disk that I object to. It's ANYONE trying to honeypot a license to get the right to scan my disks. But Apple doesn't do that. Microsoft spells it out right in the license.

[Golden Eagle]

I mostly use it as a virtual machine image, not as a BootCamp. This is why multiboot is a little more accurate term, I think.

Sorry, you're still mixing and matching terms. At least you do seem to understand there is an actual difference.

You really think it's fair for them to sell you a generic track and restrict which device you can use?

Well it is their property. If you don't like the license restrictions you can spend your money on something else you might like better. They made an offer, you either take it up as offered, or not, seems pretty simple to me.

DRM is unpopular with everyone.

False again, else it wouldn't even exist. It's unpopular who want access to someone else's property, but not on the owner's terms.

This is just strange reasoning. Apple is not, of course, a Windows vendor.

Of course not, that was my exact point as I was responding to your claim that everyone buying "a new machine" was limited to Windows only, which remains incorrect.

those are just for unpatched flaws in WinXP Pro

Thanks, those do appear to be unpatched, but none of the older ones seem to be anywhere near critical. However, that site also lists OSX as having several unpatched holes as well, so I guess it's pretty much pot meet kettle again.

OSX and Vista can both be virtualized.

Not legally, as you admit, thankfully you're not going to start defending the Russian hackers, but instead hold out hope for the future.

Effectively, it's MS's "virtualization tax".

Still better than being told it's illegal to do it at all. Just trying to keep the discussion legal, and apples to apples.

And as for popups for Quicktime or installing iTunes on Windows, well, I guess if you actually allow IE7 to popup windows on your screen.

It has nothing to do with the browser, these are application popups from the "Apple Software Update" application that was installed somehow as part of Quicktime. I set it to monthly so now about every 30 days, even if there are no security updates for Quicktime, I get this annoying popup begging me to grant 50Mb of space for it to install iTunes. This seems to be the exact sort of thing, auto updates, annoying messages, you attempted to single MS out for.

Dude, there are reasons why some people pay for and can justify spending $2500-$5000 on first-rate laptops. You may not but that doesn't mean that everyone has such modest needs.

I'm well aware of the combined power and grace of Mac powerbooks that for some justifies their comparatively expensive price. However, I did pay significantly less, and got features I use such as a compact flash card reader and dialup modem that they didn't. If I had needed something better I would have spent more, but why not save money verses spend it recklessly?

Well, I looked and realized I did get into a rant (or three or five)

Thanks, I usually have little to dispute with Apple owners, but you did go a little off the deep end there.

I take it you don't even run Vista on your HP lappie? Ah, now you did make me chuckle at myself.

Not yet. I just got it around Christmas and Vista hasn't even been out till today. I am using it at work though, as we are getting ready for a major rollout in a few months. Runs great, at least so far.

[Golden Eagle]

It does identify you and they reserve the right to scan every file and delete anything they want. GO READ THE ARTICLE.

I've learned not to trust the foreign press when it comes to articles about Microsoft. If/when you find something similar from a respectable US publication, feel free to give me a ping.