RE: Big Brother is Real

[günter strubinsky <strubinsky at acm dot org>]

Thank you for the clarification, Randall!

Fred mentioned the firewall issue. I have actually zone alarm installed and
disallowed -permanently- the Microsoft software (with the exception as the
usual suspects, DNS, etc.) to contact outside. Now I am not so sure anymore
that I got hacked by anyone else but Bill. My system started to behave
erratically when I had outlook and other ms programs running:

The cpu was around 2-3% busy -never more during those phases- but everything
stalled. (Including the task manager). I start to believe that those progs
called home and waited for response from ms until they timed out which is
why my system froze for about 30-60 seconds, execute a few time slices and
then went into wait-state again. I have office xp installed...

Is there any info out how the snoop works?

-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-owner at cygwin dot com [mailto:cygwin-owner at cygwin dot com] On Behalf Of
Randall R Schulz
Sent: Tuesday, 01 April, 2003 12:07
To: cygwin at cygwin dot com
Subject: RE: Big Brother is Real

Günter,

At 09:56 2003-04-01, you wrote:
>I missed out on that.. What does sp3 for win2k do?

It opens a back door for MS snooping. DRM indeed!


>Btw. I only use amd cpu's. To my understanding they don't have the cpu id
(I
>don't trust a software that allows me to turn the id of because obviously
>software can also turn it on ;)

Pentium IV has dispensed with the CPU ID, too. Bad PR, I guess...


>If star office and open office can read/write Micro$oft documents there is
>hope, otherwise don't hold your breath. Too much has been written over the
>last 2 decades -and stored in word documents-. If you can't open it the
tool
>can't be used in production environments. If it can, a seamless transition
>is possible. I just got a new laptop (birthday) and the first time of my
>life I will install 2 (TWO) OS's on it. (you know which ones)

It's a constant battle since MS applications will continue to extend 
their file formats while giving out specs only under non-disclosure. 
This forces the Open Source community to reverse engineer the file 
formats. But they're not cryptographic after all. They're meant to be 
readily encoded and decoded by software, so it's a manageable problem.

Keep in mind that there's a world outside business, too, where things 
like TeX, PostScript and PDF are the linguas franca. Many communities 
either formally proscribe or informally eschew DOC and PPT files.


>About the license policies integrated:
>
>I know that's not the right newsgroup and I will be very careful:
>The X box has highly sophisticated copy protection integrated in hard and
>software. It took a whole half year until it got cracked, but the point is
>that it cot hacked.

I think we have to work with the legal system, not try to subvert it. 
Microsoft has a right to set the licensing terms it wants. We have a 
right to tell them to go to hell. Currently however, and as you note, 
the power relationship is highly skewed. It ain't easy to "just say no" 
to Microsoft.


>I heard/read that there are already a wealth of xp versions for download
>that have the 'call bill back' inherently disabled. The same is true for MS
>software. I haven't the latest statistics at hand, but the private
>household; those who made a copy from the office and brought it home for
>business and private use, won't pay extravagant prices if this is not
>possible anymore. Those will 'get' the grey copies because of the internets
>endless sources.

Some OEM versions are also excused from the call-back requirements.


>A big problem seems to be the de facto standard of behavior by MS products.
>I loved Sun One's debugger since the function keys are identical to Visual
>Studio. I love JEDIT since the Ctrl-<char> functions are identical to the
MS
>way (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-V, etc.). If the main competitors can (and no
>copyright can forbid that) emulate this functionality/behavior I see hope
on
>the horizon.

Many high-end applications, even jEdit, have user-configurable keyboard 
mappings.

In other words: "Have it your way!"


>If, lastly Office 11 would not be backwards compatible with their previous
>documents, I see the sun rise!

It's still cloudy here.


>günter

Randall Schulz 


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