snip
>And, to those who have said "if I buy a box without Windows on it, Microsoft assumes I'm a pirate",

"Who" didn't 'say it'. Microsoft said it. They still imply it on their site, although public discourse made them change the wording a bit.

>try this sometime: go down to a Fry's Electronics or one of your local "no name" clone builder shops, buy the necessary parts for a new machine, and BUILD THE FOOL THING YOURSELF. It'll only take you a few hours.

No problem for me. I taught electronics in college. BUT, you know full well the fast majority of folks out there couldn't take such action. They wouldn't even know about clipping a static guard onto their wrist, etc.., and most probably don't even have a nut driver to remove the hardware fasteners.

In fact, going to a "no name clone builder" is exactly what I had to do to get my most recently pruchased PC consrtucted with the hardware I wanted. Dell wouldn't sell me a PC of the power I wanted without tacking on Windows, and the hardware they sold with RH I didn't want - too old, no power - etc... How convenient for MS!! Even then, I had to pay premium prices for non WinHardware because of MS's 'agreements' with peripheral card manufacturers (there is another fertile ground for monoply investigations!) And Mike, don't tell me WinXX came with it for 'free', you should know business better than that. Besides, the PCs that came with WInXC preinstalled had WinHardware peripheral cards. Read: no Linux drivers available - the anti-competitive hook, the unlevel playing surface. NOW, I hope you get a glimmer of how MS has pigeon-hold the PC industry. It is a miracle that Linux has grown as well as it has, and that growth has occured only since the DOJ has jumped on their case and they began relaxing their PC vendor contracts, somewhat. I can hear Mike now, "Dell stopped selling Linux because the customer didn't want it" Ya, right. IF "selling Linux" is doing what they did, it wasn't a matter of customers 'not wanting' it. They couldn't find it on the website unless they had someone give them a specific URL.

I used to be a Windows fanatic myself, until circumstances forced me to open my eyes.




>
>I guarantee you that if you do that, no one will ask you if you have a license for an operating system. No one will write your name down on a list because you didn't buy XP or Win2K with that sixty-gig hard drive. No one will knock on your door and ask to see your license agreements.


Can I have your send me a written agreement that if/when the BSA sends me a registered letter that you will cover the 'audit' and legal costs and pay any levies? I can guarantee you that I do NOT use or OWN any MS software.


>
>Why? Because they don't care. The only ones that care are the major system manufacturers, who are forced by *THEIR* licensing agreements to report back to Redmond on EVERY SYSTEM THEY SELL. That's in *THEIR* contract with Microsoft. If you don't -want- to deal with it, YOU DON'T HAVE TO.

You live in a dream world. Ask Virginia Beach, and the hundreds of other innocent MS users who were bullied into either paying double/triple prices for the software they had already legally purchased or face large legal bills defending themselves. THis is to say nothing of 'auditing costs'. Why? Their license count equaled their PC count, but they couldn't match a license with a PC. Remember, if you get a PC with Win98SE and one with W2K but, for some reason you want to swap them, you can't. You must buy two NEW licenses. Many just swapped them. Most moms and pops don't do anything more with the license paper than stuff it into a cabinet. Some just throw it away. Then comes a BSA bounty hunting lawyer. Pirate!


>
>You also don't have to buy their product(s). Nobody's forcing you. However, if you want the *benefits* of someone else's work, you should be willing to put up with the inconveniences of using their product.

Why do you folks so willingly forget that for several years, if you wanted to buy a PC, you HAD to buy WinXX with it. There are even examples of lawsuits where customers, trying to get their WinXX costs back according terms of the EULA, couldn't. They had to sue the PC vendor, but the Judge said they couldn't because MS wrote the software. They couldn't sue MS because the PC vendor sold the software. Catch-22. Classic, court aided, monopolist trap. But, you say, "Now you can bu PCs without Windows!" TO which I respond, "Only the less desireable models. But look what a market lead that illegal mopolistic activity gave to Microsoft." You are in a race and one of your competitors jumps into a car and goes several miles down the course. Your competitors fans, having waged money on their runner, cheers him on and gives no thought to the extra miles the other competitors had to run. This says nothing about the resources they had to spend to run that extra distance, and the resources the cheating runner bypassed because he wasn't thirsty or hungry or tired. Now you want him to run the Internet race, with the same advantages, owning the OS and having prorpriatary knowledge of it, and control of it's sale. Owning the OS and being able to dictate its usages to hardware vendors is a conflict of interest the courts haven't address. You are the only car mfg around and your license says that buyers can't travel in the state of California in 'their' car.


>
>The one who pays the piper calls the tune.

Not all the time.
By 1997 unfair marketing practices required that you 'pay the piper' more than $10B above what a fair market would have cost you. Part of that $30B cash reserve is that $10B in excess profits you paid.

You are "paying the piper" in higher software costs, higher downtimes, higher maintenance and 'upgrade' costs (some upgrades were no more than cash register churning by MS), and higher performance PCs because of bloated and slow software..... you aren't calling any tunes.