Between a bug and a deep hole
Posted on August 01, 2002 @ 23:32 in General
Yep. Microsoft released Service Pack 3 for Windows 2000. As was to be expected, they changed the EULA (End User License Agreement, you know, that boatload of legalese you have to Agree to, to install...) so that it gives them the right to use your internet connection to check your Windows installation without asking you or even giving you a notification and if they deem it necessary, to 'update' your installation, again, without asking or notifying you. In their words:
The OS Product or OS Components contain components that enable and facilitate the use of certain Internet-based services. You acknowledge and agree that Microsoft may automatically check the version of the OS Product and/or its components that you are utilizing and may provide upgrades or fixes to the OS Product that will be automatically downloaded to your computer.
So what's it going to be? Are you going to update and give Microsoft total and utter control over your computer or are you going to leave your computer full of holes and buggy as hell because with this EULA you refuse to patch the 64.000 holes they left in their software for hackers to play with. And I'm not even talking about the undoubtedly buggy auto-update system that will probably within months allow hackers to push malevolent code onto your computer without you even clicking on that attachment.
I must say that Linux is looking better every day. I've tried out the OpenOffice suite of programs on Windows and I must say that I'm pretty impressed. Maybe not completely up to par with MS Office, but for what I am doing with Office, it's plenty good enough. It read all my MS Office 2000 documents without a hitch and allowed me to do basically whatever I wanted to do. I'm already very happy with my FreeSCO Linux router, so my next computer is going to run Linux, if I don't make the change sooner. Let's see if I can get my fingers on an old machine to experiment with before I move my production machine to a new OS.
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