This Is Embarassing

This article should be an embarassment to this site. First off, I'm willing to bet that most of your readership *uses* Windows. Secondly, you're vastly uninformed - you try to sound professional, but resort to hyperbole throughout, and your condescending tone makes you appear like an anxious 15 year old. I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not impressed. I mean no personal attack, but this article should have no place on this otherwise respectable site.

I'd add that while some of your points may be loosely based on truths, they are generally wrong. Microsoft products are inherently not as insecure and crackable as you'd seem to imply. Linux is just as succeptable to attacks, if not moreso, than Windows, when improperly maintained. A quick glance to Red Hat's errata list will confirm the constant stream of flaws found almost daily. Competent Windows administrators don't have many of the problems you mention because they know how to run their systems. (did you know that a patch for SQL Slammer was available over 6 months before the worm appeared in the wild?!)

Unless you've written your own OS, you are probably dependent upon updates provided to you - which makes you just as clueless as a Windows user waiting for Windows Update. I'd suggest you stick to PHP.

And I'd suggest codewalkers, which is heavily sponsored, reconsider a column focused on one person's personal and off-topic rants.

m$ paches and "service packs" often cary with them modifications to EULAs, and need to be aproved by company lawyers.. how nice is that?



btw, do you know "how ti install windows xp in 200 steps or less"?

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/08/04/xp

How about home users who can't afford lawyers? And you can't see the EULA before you buy the software. If you don't agree with EULA you can't return the software to the store for a refund. Who enforces EULAs anyway?

THe companies pretty much, they don't enforce them strictly unless someone complains. And these off topic rants are quite entertaining, and funny too. I really wish people would register before complaining about these articles instead of posting anonymously.

exactly! for example, SP2 (i think) for w2k had an EULA addition that practicly said:

"m$ can enter your computer via internet, view all you files, change/delete any of them if they want, and rape your mother while pouring sugar in you gas tank..."



well, except for this last one, this is honest to god truth!

I think Media Player 9 did the same thing as I recall, they have a right to monitor what music you listen to and what source you got it from, and to proseute you for pirated music or some crap like that. I remeber reading that somewhere, so I never upgraded it

I don't have any links right now, but I know there have been court decisions ruling some EULAs unenforcable because they added stuff that is outside the normal expectations for what EULAs contain. So, basically, just because you didn't read the EULA when you quickly clicked the "I Agree" button during installation, doesn't mean you're actually bound to the EULA in all cases.

And when someone clicks "I agree" after "reading" the EULA, who will be responsible for that? How can you have any evidence that who clicked the button. This means that

I know I must seem like a dolphin wondering wondering in a pastre, but could someone explain to me more about the capabilities microsoft has to invade your pc? and what if anything can we do to kinda give them a hard time doing so?

Wow! It's a good thing that I live in Finland, coz here's a consumer protection law that says that consumers may expect products to last for some time (at least six months.) Plus there's a law that says that no contract (this includes EULAs) may limit consumers' rights.

As far as what abilities MS has to invade your computer, seeing as how they wrote window, they could have written in tons of their own backdoors if they felt like it. Again, I'm not 100% sure on the media player thing, but I think they classify it as "an optional survey system to better improve their porduct" so it doesn't limit your rights particularly, but with the wonderful use of that plus the music industry threatening to sue individual piraters..... It could get kind of bad.

Apparently, whoever posted this was too embarassed to sign up and have their screenname shown ;-)