Re: Group tries to hold MS responsible for crapware apps and oses

From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 08/13/05 

Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 19:09:17 -0500

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<5ec16$42fc0082$18d6d91e$7980@KNOLOGY.NET>, Winged wrote:

>Imhotep wrote:

>> Excellent comments. Especially about not seeing the EULA until AFTER the
>> purchase...

I'm surprised someone from Europe hasn't chimed in on this - such a
license is illegal in many jurisdictions. Some countries (the UK being
one) also have a implied warranty of fitness. You bought it, you have
an enforceable expectation that it will do something useful.

>Hrrmm I wonder if I can ask for a refund?

google is your friend - it's been tried, not very successfully. The
normal wiggle is that the manufacturers policies require the software
as part of the hardware purchase. Don't want the software? Fine, you also
have to return the hardware. It's a rip-off, especially for those of us
who don't use windoze. That's one (of many) reason we build our own
systems from parts.

>But I came across another clause that I found curious.
>
>"The five (5) Connection Maximum includes any indirect connections made
>through "multiplexing" or other software or hardware which pools
>or aggregates connections."

My understanding is that refers to connection sharing on your end, not
on the other end. IANAL. YMMV.

>What I found most interesting however is immediately after doing a local
>search for the EULA txt file on my local machine, explorer.exe
>repeatedly attempted to access the Internet, though it is not allowed to
>connect to the Internet by MS XP settings and firewall block.

They're just trying to make your Internet experience more enjoyable ;-)
And maybe see that you don't have any illegal software or anything.

>Remote address,service is (sa.windows.com(207.46.248.249),http(80)).

If you do a whois for 'MICROSOFT' at ARIN, you get something like 190
address assignments, just in "North American" IP space. RIPE, APNIC,
LACNIC, and AFRINIC are not as convenient to use, but microsoft has more
address space from them as well. Note that I am NOT including the proxy
services like Akmai (which hosts some windoze updates servers among
other services). ARIN has assigned close to 3/4 million addresses (the
equivalent of 11.22 "CLASS B" or /16 networks) to microsoft, in blocks
as small as /29s (8 addresses, six usable) up to a pair of /14s (262144
addresses). These are scattered from 4.42.190.0/29 to 216.222.104.224/29
for some reason. Because of Classless Inter Domain Routing (so-called
Class A, B, and C were deprecated in 1993, and replaced with those /nn
style), and variable sized network masks, you'd need to block 174 different
networks just to get these 735 thousand addresses in North America alone.

>Process name is "C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE".

Hmmm, what is this "C:\" crap? ;-)

By the way, in another article in this thread, you reprinted the microsoft
EULA - did you get permission from them, or are they gonna come after you
for violating their copyright or something ;-)

        Old guy

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