[geeks] Re: Windows XP?

[Andrew Weiss]

On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 09:47  AM, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>
> Kurt, I hope you realize I was in full Dave McGuire mode while writing
> this, that and I jsut finished reading Rebel Code (a decent read, but
> don't pay full price for the book - it was worth the $8 I paid, but not
> the $27.95 the publisher tried to get when it first came out...)...
>
> Complaining about the choices you made, well, reflect badly on you. I
> know, you choose not to install XP, and that reflects well, but your
> rant was a bit misplaced, IMHO.
>
HE's perfectly allowed to rant about the OS he didn't install... as you 
said one puts oneself in a jail.  Kurt chose a different jail and is 
ranting about the one he didn't choose.

Most companies activate products... but once activated, they STAY 
activated.  The company also doesn't have a very obvious (disclosed) 
backdoor in order to deactivate your product.  Granted Adobe is 
starting to get nasty like this too, most companies operate on a trust 
basis (which in the long run doesn't decrease profits too much via 
theft of software).  It's this iron-fisted big brother is watching 
attitude that will hurt future sales.  The inconvenience of WPA is also 
compounded by the fact that it is not one number but two that must be 
entered... first the product key and then an activation key which is 
generated randomly each time.

Andrew