Groklaw: MSFT phones home
 

I suppose the only people who think enough about such things to get upset have already read Grolaw's article:
Microsoft's Calling Home Problem: It's a Matter of Informed Consent. But maybe not, or maybe the dumbed-down coverage you'll see in a lot of other places is "good enough".

But PJ's words on this subject are definately worth a read...especially given the kind of ire we see around here about arguably much less intrusive monitoring conducted by the government.

I'm most pissed about not being able to uninstall. Maybe norton ghost will let me go back to a happier, less probing time.

This is just the cost of doing business with Windows. It's disappointing, but not particularly surprising. The only thing anybody can do about it is stop using Windows.

Which is what the article advocates.

And my personal meaning of "doing business" doesn't seem to apply here. This is more like aggravated assault; it is indeed essentially a root kit. Careful readers of MSFT EULAs over the last few years certainly won't be surprised.

Well I never consented to install this gadget on the two Windows machines I use; one at home (a laptop) or at work (for Exchange); the click-though points out that this is "pre-release" software, which I'm not certainly not interested in running for MSTF's benefit.

It's certainly a peculiar meaning of the word "release"; millions of people have installed this almost automatically, but it's not "released" yet.

MSFT, come back and ask me again when you have the final version. I'll think about it then.

In the meantime there's Ubuntu.

I told ZoneAlarm not to let it through. An imperfect solution, but it'll do for now.

Or, maybe I will. Try this link to remove the tool.

I agree: r:devil::devil:tkit.

I also especially liked this line of reasoning. "I am Spartacus!" hehehehe.

Sweetness! I think. Those wretches really really want taht shit in our computers. The first thing I tried was system restore. MS won't let me restore to a point before installation. I didn't try norton ghost since the last update point was a long while before I had downloaded a bunchof other software. I was thinking it would be a last resort, but maybe that wouldn't have worked either.

A number of the fixes on the site didn't work. Going to the third or fourth solution, C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\ Download\6c4788c9549d437e76e1773a7639582a allowed me to throw out wga related files and applications. Only the folder wasn't 6c4788c95 etc etc. it had a different string of characters.

a file by any other name would reek as much...

Well, I think it is out, out damn spot...

I usually tell microsoft to "pound salt" somehow, they caught me at a weak moment.

Thanks V,

And Maggie, I am thinking I might want to go Ubuntu, will I have to learn linux?

It depends on what you want to do foot³. If all you do is Net, Office, E-mail stuff then Ubuntu will be a breeze. Of course the easiest way to see what it is like is to download the Live CD and give it a spin. If something doesn't work Ubuntu has good support forums and at least one person here has been using Linux for a while.

Thanks Jebediah, I mostly look at the cellar, surf the net, use photoshop, and never download unlicensed music from peer to peer filesharing networks. ;)

Sometimes I send an email.

Well..Photoshop is an issue, because it's Windows only. There are other image editing programs.

Gimp works well for me. It takes some getting used to for sure. As for P2P there is mldokney (does pretty much everything), DC++ clients, SoulSeek, IRC, etc, etc. Not that I have personal experience using any of those ;)

I may be in for a learning curve.

I think GIMP is great; I use it all the time, even on Windows. If you're dependant on a lot of Photoshop plug-ins it may not meet all your needs. For vector/path based graphics (a la Illustrator), consider Inkscape. For diagramming there's Xdia and also yEd.

I like GIMP. I had Photoshop on my old Macintosh, and when I got a PC a few years ago, there was no way in hell I was dropping that kind of coin on Photoshop again. Gimp does everything I ever did in Photoshop. The controls are completely different, but the learning isn't so bad.