News from PANUG/BizNix - August 30, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org

VOLUME LICENSING IS NO PROTECTION FROM AUDITS
by Patrick Corrigan

If you think a volume license agreement protects you from a
Microsoft audit, think again. According to these articles,
Microsoft is saying that the volume agreements only provide
upgrades, and you must have a license for each machine, either
supplied with the machine or purchased at retail. I assume this
means they still feel they have the right to audit you at any
time and have you verify that each machine you own was shipped
with a valid OS license or that you purchased a valid OS license
for each "naked" machine at retail.

A quote from one unnamed OEM:

"Sounds like they're pulling another fast one," says an official
with one OEM, who asked that his name not be used out of fear of 
retaliation. "Have you seen how they're changing licenses and not
telling anyone? Look at the OEM license. Or the current fixpack."

and:

"I don't think Microsoft has any ethics or recognizes any law," he
said. "This thing in which they are switching, or at least it looks 
to me like they're switching, the volume purchasing programs -- that's
just so typical. They're squeezing everybody, really tightening up.
They want to make sure that every computer in the world that is sold
has one or more Windows licenses, whether there's Windows on it or
not. It's much worse than it was when they made you buy a license
for every processor you shipped. They're trying to set it up so 
that they can come in to your machine or all the machines at your
business and make sure that their software is all you're running. 
Unless the other software you have comes from companies that have
paid their tithe to Microsoft. It's worse than it has ever been, and 
I don't see anything stopping them."
 
http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=194

http://www.theregus.com/content/4/26105.html


NEWS

HP & DELL SWITCH TO COREL - On Monday, Hewlett Packard announced
plans to offer Corel's Wordperfect Productivity suite on all
consumer-oriented PCs in place of Microsoft Works. Dell announced
similar plans last week. Both HP and Gateway voiced concerns that
Microsoft was abusing its monopoly of operating system and desktop
productivity software. 

Mozilla 1.1 was released this week. It offers improved performance,
stability, and CSS, DOM, and HTML standards support. There are over
600 minor bugfixes. Supported platforms include Windows (9x, 2000,
and XP), MacOS 9.x, MacOS X, Linux, and OS/2.

AUCKLAND WIRELESS - After last week's articles on the downside of
wireless communications, this news story seems timely. New Zealand
wireless provider RoamAD, based in Auckland, recently completed work
on a wireless networking grid that covers 3 square kilometers of
the city's downtown. The network is accessible to any system or
device equipped with 802.11b capabilities. These devices operate at
2.4 GHz and, as last week's articles point out, are susceptible
to both jamming and evesdropping. Wireless may be cool, but wired
is far more secure.

SPI Dynamics is claiming that 75% of today's successful system
attacks involve attacks against Web-based applications, not
network security flaws. Regardles of whether the number is accurate,
it's clear that attackers are having an easier time breaking in
to systems through web server vulnerabilities, such as cross site
scripting security holes.