Re: $200
 

I don't own a Wintel PC
 

I'm sorry Nate, I made estimated on those prices from what I remembered what I installed on my sisters computers. I may have missed it by a couple of dollars.

But it is interesting to note that none of that I have Office 98 for Mac OS, and I had to do none of that registration stuff. I heard that it is the same for Office 2001. Don't know about Office for Mac OS X though. They always said that Office for Mac OS X was easier to port off of their Office XP for Windows 2000 because of the FreeBSD Kernel (aka Darwin) inside Mac OS X. But most likely not, because no other Mac OS application has such a tight integration of that kind of that kind of licensing agreement.

I mean it is one thing into trying to cheat a demo by not paying for it. But when you shell out a lot of dollars for a system upgrade and it shut downs on you if you multiple computers than it is just a pain that makes you wonder that even though you are breaking the policy to be able to control your computers abilities. I mean that is just wrong.

The main issue is the fact that it is a license agreement and not a contract. You are allowed to license copyrighted works. Copyright licenses and contracts are different things under the law. However, many software companies (including Microsoft) want them to be treated as the same thing. Contract law falls under state laws so this will very state-to-state. The validity of software license agreements as contracts is questionable because they are non-negotiable. Non-negotiable contracts have not faired very well in courts. There is also the fact that is extrememly difficult to return a piece of software when you do not agree to the licensing agreement. The disclaiming of all warranties may also not be legal under state laws (some states forbid the disclaiming of implied warranties).

The main issue is to remember that copyright was established for the public good, not for the profits of different companies or producers. Therefore, unlimited control over a work is not granted to a copyright holder and the rights claimed by companies such as Microsoft may not be valid.

Matt

Technical Info on WPA
 

For those of you who are interested(or paranoid,) here's information from Microsoft on the WPA process, including how much has to require re-authorization.

http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/basi...bulletin.do c

From that, here's the list of what it uses to generate your hardware ID code:

Display Adaptor (5 bits)
SCSI Adaptor (5 bits)
IDE Adaptor (4 bits)
Network Adaptor MAC Address (10 bits)
RAM Amount Range (3 bits)
Processor type (3 bits)
Processor Serial # (6 bits)
Hard Drive Device (7 bits)
Hard Drive Volume Serial # (10 bits)
CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM (7 bits)
"Dockable" (1 bit)
Algorithm Version Used (3 bits)

Another thing to note is that in cases of things like the processor serial #, the actual hash code generated is 128 bits in length, but only 6 of those are used. Which means that out of the 100 million or more PCs sold last year, only 64 keys could be generated(privacy issues solved)...but back to WPA

Of that list up above, if you haven't changed your network adaptor(if you even have one), you can change up to 6 of them without having to reactivate. If your network adaptor changes, then you can change up to 4 without requiring reactivation.

Also, just one last note, in a direct quote from that document, "the Microsoft activation clearinghouse system will automatically allow activation to occur over the Internet four times in one year on substantially different hardware."

Just some info I found that I decided to pass along...