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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Randall R Schulz Sent: Tuesday, 01 April, 2003 12:07 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
