>Dont' ask me, ask David Coursey, the ZDNet Windows columnist,...
>http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2816975,00.html
>http://www.uninet.net/~blaisdel/Office10.htm
>JLK

The more things change, the more they stay the same. We are now on another uptick of the 'copy protection' syndrome, after years of enjoying software almost completely free of such nonsense. Some 16 years ago I had some Microprose games the absolutely would refuse to run or crash in the middle (before a save, of course) all because of the crazy copy protection scheme they employed. However, I have no moral issues over using protection defeat schemes on software I actually own, in order to avoid these kinds of issues. I'm not using the tools to hand out copies to all my friends, I am only making sure I can use the copy I paid for on my computer. There may be some fine print in the EULA that says I can't do this - my answer to that is they can all shove it. I pay for the right to use XYZ software on my computer, you can be darn sure it will run, whatever it takes. THe good stuff just works (mostly - the day I see a truly bug free large scale application is the day I hang it all up and go skiing with Lucifer), the stuff you need that gets in it's own way, well, you either take it back and find some other way to solve the same problem (not always possible) or work around the issue with the required app. I can't say to Office XP, I'm still using Office 2K, and I've never had any problems with that. I do use WinXP, and I haven;t had any problems with that either, at least where covert communications with MS is concerned - I have had extended outages of my ISDN line (Thanks, Verizon - that money you saved by switching to Linux has really improved things..) yet not having an internet connection does not impair my access to my file server or SQL Server on my LAN. I can also listen to music files and watch movie clips with media player, and run all my MS apps with no problem. I can't remove Windows Messenger, but I can and did remove it from starting up every time I boot, I don't need or use ANY of those chat programs.