The Pk Blog:Microsoft To Fine Retail Stores $250,000 For Offering XP

July 26, 2007
By: nomad1984

Several retail stores are still offering at least a few desktop systems that come with XP instead of Vista. The reasons for this are plenty, as vista has a lot of shortcomings. Some business and consumer customer have an expressed need for continuing to run the "outdated" XP. However instead of addressing these valid complaints Microsoft has decided that during the month of August they will be sending out secret shoppers to several reatail locations.

I work at Microcenter where we have one specific model of desktop that we are told the secret shoppers will be asking for. This model comes with the choice of Vista Business of Xp Pro. Not only does the system come with xp, but the restore cd, the only way to recover from a system crash on this system is a copy of vista business. If we even mention the fact that we carry the model with XP preloaded to a Microsoft secret shopper the store will be fined by Microsoft for $250,000 dollars. So even though we offer a PC with XP Pro we are not allowed to tell you we do out of fear that Microsoft will fine us for 1/4 of a million dollars.

Despite earlier reassurances that Mono would never taint Fedora, it would seem that Mono has now poisoned the Fedora tree to a surprising extent. I can't say I'm very happy about Microsoft's patented, sour-grapes, anti-Java technology infiltrating a supposedly Free Community GNU/Linux distro in this way.

I’ve just completed an audit of Fedora Core 6, and this is the full list of mono dependants and sub-dependants, excluding doc, devel, debug, multi-arch and third-party repo packages:

avahi-sharp, banshee, beagle, beagle-evolution, beagle-gui, boo, bytefx-data-mysql, cowbell, daap-sharp, db4o, dbus-sharp, drapes, evolution-sharp, f-spot, gecko-sharp2, gmime-sharp, gnome-sharp, gsf-sharp, gtk-sharp, gtk-sharp2, gtk-sharp-gapi, gtksourceview-sharp, ibm-data-db2, ikvm, kerry, lat, mod_mono, mono-data, mono-data-firebird, mono-data-oracle, mono-data-postgresql, mono-data-sqlite, mono-data-sybase, mono-debugger, monodevelop, monodoc, mono-extras, mono-jscript, mono-locale-extras, mono-nunit, mono-web, mono-winforms, muine, nant, njb-sharp, tomboy, xsp.

Including mono-core itself, that makes a total of 48 packages.

Presumably Fedora 7 has the same number, or greater. I’ll do a similar audit on F7 later.

Forget about the WGA! 20+ Windows Vista Features and Services Harvest User Data for Microsoft - From your machine! - Softpedia

By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor (condensed version)

Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company.

GameRush Entertainment : Microsoft deletes mass Xbox 360 crashing claims from Forza 2 forums : News

In what appears to be an effort to conceal the over 900 replies gamers provided on the official Forzamotorsport.net forums about Forza Motorsport 2 crashing on the Xbox 360, Microsoft has deleted the long thread, now stating that it’s "exclusive content for registered forum users" only. However, the thread was removed entirely, even to registered members.

This article mysteriously disapeared from Bloomberg shortly after it was published.

I wonder why?

STLtoday - Business - Manufacturing & Technology

Microsoft faces antitrust challenge on Windows Vista operating system
By James Rowley
BLOOMBERG NEWS
06/12/2007

Antitrust officials may demand that Microsoft Corp. change its Windows Vista operating system to address a complaint that the program's design hurts competing software, said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.