[FADCA] Free, a question for you

[russ]

Just in case you wondered, EULA is "End User Licensing Agreement"

Here is a note that may be of interest to you from "The Register"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25956.html :

"you would have been confronted with an End User License Agreement (EULA)
stating, most ominously, that:

"You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software
protected by digital rights management ('Secure Content'), Microsoft may
provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be
automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates
may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other
software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use
reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update."

"Reasonable efforts to post notices" somewhere on the Web. I think it's
clear from the wording that MS has absolutely no intention of bringing this
behavior to our attention.

Instead, Microsoft has just assumed the right to attack your computer and
surreptitiously install code of its choosing. You will not be warned; you
will not be offered an opportunity examine the download or refuse it. MS
will simply connect remotely and install what it will, or install it
secretly when you contact them.

This means MS will have administrator privileges on your personal computer.
What they feed you may be infected with viruses; it may break your
applications, corrupt data files, destroy weeks or months or even years of
work, but you'll have no recourse if it does. By downloading this WMP
critical security patch, which you must do to operate WMP safely, you'll
agree to give Billg deed and title to your personal property and to leave
Microsoft immune from legal retaliation if they damage your machine."

I, for one, have no intention of purchasing any products from Microsoft
after Windows 98SE.

----- Original Message -----
From: <wchast@utilpart.com>
To: <fadca@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 6:18 PM
Subject: [FADCA] Free, a question for you
BIG SNIP

is there anything gained by using IE over other
> browsers to look at the FADCA site or is that something
> that just gets stuck in there by the HTML formatter?
 I would think it would be better
> to make sure the page is W3C (world wide web consortium)
> compatible and have the W3C logo rather than the IE advert.

>.. I just read the EULA for XP SP1
> and Win2K SP3 and found out that by installing the service
> pack I have just allowed MS total access to my computers
> at work and they can change or remove anything at will without
> my consent according to that EULA, so I have had to remove
> the service pack off of several machines because if they
> can do what they say they can do according to the EULA it
> is a violation of company policy to have it on site.

> If you are running XP or Win2K and have not done the SP for
> either one of them, you can upgrade Win2K to SP2 without
> running into that EULA, SP3 though is a different animal.
>

There is something to this.

Russ
N4KOX