M

[cahult]

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/all_wire_stories/101386428029222529.xml

Is it OK for a company to have these 19th century tactics?

[voidmain]

Like I said in other earlier posts. Tell me what those M$ happy businesses have to say after the auditors have been through with the bats... Great story. I just recommended it to our favorite news site.

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

quote:excerpt only:
Article by Steve Duin

At the busiest time of the year for those [school] districts, Microsoft is demanding that they conduct an internal software audit to "certify licensing compliance." In a March letter, the software giant gave Portland Public Schools 60 days to inventory its 25,000 computers.

"Which," said Scott Robinson, the district's chief technology officer, "is a virtual impossibility."

The school districts are considered guilty of software piracy until they can prove they're in licensing compliance. If the district can't drum up the staff to manage the inventory, Microsoft is willing to show up with its own audit crew, but if a single computer is found with illegal or undocumented software, the district must pay for the audit.

"This doesn't recognize any of the complexities of the educational environment," Robinson said. Many of the 25,000 computers in Portland schools were donated and arrive without pedigree or papers. "We're bubblegum and baling wire in terms of what we're putting on the desktops. For us to try to manage every donated desktop that comes in from a business or an individual is ridiculous."

Ah, but wait. Microsoft has an offer it thinks you can't refuse, if only to avoid the audit: the vaunted Microsoft School Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, a school or district simply counts its computers and pays Microsoft somewhere in the neighborhood of $42 per machine for one systemwide annual license.

But Microsoft has put a new spin on the agreement, requiring an "institution-wide commitment." That means the district must include in its count not only the PCs, but all the iMacs and Power Macs that might conceivably use Windows software.

Reach Steve Duin at [email protected]

In case you needed a taster before clicking the link.
I think this is outrageous myself, but again, the words 'barrel', 'shotgun' and'fish' spring readily to mind when i think of what M$' tactics will do for them in the long run.

cahult, sorry, i edited yr message so it wouldn't run off the edge of the page...

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[cahult]

It

[Calum]

hey!

i just posted a couple of paragraphs from the article, and a link on the windowsbbs.com board. within 5 minutes i founf out that  

quote:vBulletin
vBulletin Message  
Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here

I wasn't inflammatory, i wasn't rude, i just asked what people thought. What do you think of this??? these people run their fucking bulletin board on linux and they have the nerve to ban my IP within 5 minutes of my FIRST POST on the board, so i can no longer even look at the board, let alone post.

I am not sure what sort of punishment i could exact upon these bastards but something is definitely in order...  :mad:    :mad:    :mad:    :mad:    :mad:

[Calum]

not only that but the cuntz have deleted the post!!! i'm really fucking annoyed! no email from them, nothing. I didn't even swear!!!

bastards!

yes of course they know that ignoring a problem will make it go away.

This to add on top of the glaring irony and total moronity of RUNNING A HELP FORUM for WINDOWS FAILURES on a LINUX APACHE SERVER.

They deserve sand in their beds, and toothpaste in their orange juice.
Not to mention cyanide in their coffee (or oysters, coffee and oysters are about the only things you can put cyanide in without it being obvious what you've done from the taste).
AAAAGGGGHHH!!!!!

[grif_mcrenolds]

Microsoft picking on a public school?  :lol:  The government fucks with M$, M$ fucks with the government.  Hehehe.  I don't believe in the way that Microsoft picks on small businesses with their licensing shit, but as a poor bastard who attends public school, I say power to Microft!

I hate Microsoft for making shitty software.
But I hate public school system even more for making a shitty education.

We use Windows 98 on all of the PCs here at Winton Woods High School, and I must say, they deserve everything they get.  In the last few years, WWHS has been hit with numerous viruses from guys like me.  Last year, we were hit with a virus that took out the whole district for two weeks, and I know the guy who did it.     A buddy of mine found the one PC they left without a firewall and did his business.  He slipped in a disk with ten different virusses and uploaded them all to the main server and the PC itself.  It took them two weeks to figure the thing out, and by the time they found the source, the entire hard drive had been eaten away by trojans. :lol:

So please don't cry for public schools that use Windows.  I've warned Winton Woods about the lack of security that comes with Microsoft software, but they never listen.  Most of the teachers never even heard of Linux.  They usually say something like "Oh Linux, that's too expensive," even though the OS is free, just RedHat costs money.  Check out the Winton Woods web site.  They haven't updated it in ages.  The school anthem is posted in .wav PCM format!  Ever heard of MP3?  Ogg?  The tech guys haven't even found the MP3s that I've got saved on my network drive.  Hehehe.  

http://www.hccanet.org/wwhs/

[Master of Reality]

quote:Originally posted by grif_mcrenolds:
Microsoft picking on a public school?  :lol:  The government fucks with M$, M$ fucks with the government.  Hehehe.  I don't believe in the way that Microsoft picks on small businesses with their licensing shit, but as a poor bastard who attends public school, I say power to Microft!

I hate Microsoft for making shitty software.
But I hate public school system even more for making a shitty education.

We use Windows 98 on all of the PCs here at Winton Woods High School, and I must say, they deserve everything they get.  In the last few years, WWHS has been hit with numerous viruses from guys like me.  Last year, we were hit with a virus that took out the whole district for two weeks, and I know the guy who did it.      A buddy of mine found the one PC they left without a firewall and did his business.  He slipped in a disk with ten different virusses and uploaded them all to the main server and the PC itself.  It took them two weeks to figure the thing out, and by the time they found the source, the entire hard drive had been eaten away by trojans. :lol:

So please don't cry for public schools that use Windows.  I've warned Winton Woods about the lack of security that comes with Microsoft software, but they never listen.  Most of the teachers never even heard of Linux.  They usually say something like "Oh Linux, that's too expensive," even though the OS is free, just RedHat costs money.  Check out the Winton Woods web site.  They haven't updated it in ages.  The school anthem is posted in .wav PCM format!  Ever heard of MP3?  Ogg?  The tech guys haven't even found the MP3s that I've got saved on my network drive.  Hehehe.    

http://www.hccanet.org/wwhs/

red hat is free (if you dl it). Most of my school uses win95! They are peices of shit, i destroy most of the ones that i am on. I like to change the ms-dos file so that the computers take 15 minutes to load (instead of the extremely fast 5 minutes windows usually takes).

[mobrien_12]

This is an incredibly cheezy thing to do by MS.  A software audit?  OK.  But you have to give them enough time.  

On the other hand, it's hard to muster sympathy for the schools.  They should have seen this coming.  Deal with the devil and you get a pitchfork rammed up your butt.