Ending Harassment from Microsoft and the BSA? 49
Big_Joe asks: "Lately Microsoft has put a satellite office in the Grand Rapids, MI area. Because of this I, an end user working for a large contractual company, have been getting harassment mail from Microsoft and the BSA. The information they are using to contact me is information from Chicago's Comdex 3 years ago. Since then I have switch my career direction from Windows to Linux. I would like to get my name removed from any association with Microsoft products. The only systems I use with any Microsoft software installed are owned and maintained by my employer. An earlier story here said not to reply because it is more of a headache. So how do I get them to quit bugging me? Is there any legal action I can take for harassment? How do I tell them that I am no longer a customer and that they have no further right to pester me?" Hmmm... smells like more spam. How should one handle any corporation that does crap like this, especially one that makes backhanded threats toward your workplace?
CAB (Score:2)
In this wonderfull place are Lawers who are prepared to write leagale letters for free.
If this was happening to me I'd be round to mine like a shot with all the stuf MS had sent me and asking the Lawer to write a Cease and Disist letter.
The next time I got a letter from MS I'd be down to the local Small Claimes court, or whatever your equavilent is, where I'd start procedings against them.
Re:CAB (Score:1)
I cannot think of any U.S. equivalent of the CAB, but I believe that this advice is quite sound. –Anybody knowledgable(*cough*lawyers*cough*) who's reading this care to add any details?
The cease and decist order should be overkill. I know it's Microsoft, but the mere threat of action will probably call off their hounds. They don't honestly want to piss you off.
Re:procmailrc? (Score:2)
Of course, the problem is that if you can't block spam at delivery time, they keep sending it. Especially if it's from the bsa, you don't even want to receive it.
Re:procmailrc? (Score:1)
Re:procmailrc? (Score:1)
Re:procmailrc? (Score:1)
Re:procmailrc? (Score:1)
Re:procmailrc? (Score:1)
Actually, it's far more fun to set up a custom rule in
you must request to be removed from thier list (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't hide from the evil giant, they prey on fear.
Re:you must request to be removed from thier list (Score:2)
and (even though you may think so ) MS isn't the police.
however, unless people learn to tell MS to f-off, they may as well be the police.
NO!!! This is your big chance to mess with them. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Plus it will distact them from me.
Re:NO!!! This is your big chance to mess with them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NO!!! This is your big chance to mess with them (Score:2)
http://eri.ca.sandia.gov/eri/howto.html
I tend to agree with the above post. The best would be if you can get in a protracted legal battle with them over nothing, then sue them back for defimation, lost wages, and pain and suffering. You could retire off that kinda lawsuit.
M$ and the BSA (Score:1, Funny)
Re:M$ and the BSA (Score:1)
Staying Informed (Score:1, Troll)
Part of the problem with some *nix developers I know is that they honestly don't have a clue what the various Windows platforms are capable of. For all you know, you might come across an MS technology that is perfect for a project you are working on. Granted, this might be a rarity, but simply refusing to use a technology for "ethical" reasons is absurd... it should always be the best tool for the job... even if it is from MS.
Re:Staying Informed (Score:1)
So, to take an extreme example, you'd have no problem purchasing software made with slave labor? It's not absurd - search Google for "prison-industrial complex". This neoslavery is alread being used for routine data-entry tasks in some places. I could very well see, some years down the road, hackers imprisoned for "War on Copying" crimes being put to work for pennies a day...
If you're buying a hammer, and you can get an identical one cheaper made by Chinese prison labor, do you argue "it's the right tool for the job"? Or do you engage your fscking brain for a minute and contemplate the wider consequences of your actions?
Sure, Microsoft may not (yet) be that evil. But if people take your attitude, you're giving the opportunity for exactly that sort of evil to develop.
Re:Staying Informed (Score:1)
Ok... that's a rather extreme example. Maybe I should clarify: not using a software product because you find its license ethically questionable is absurd (to me). Here's an example. I have a client that has hundreds of workstations all running MS. Their entire knowledge flow is based on shared calendars via Exchange.I hate Exchange.. with a brutal passion. However, it doesn't make any fiscal sense for me to change them over to something else just because I prefer the GPL to an MS EULA.
Re:Staying Informed (Score:1)
Ah, but a large portion of the reason one should favor free software is exactly for technical reasons. It's not just a question of the ethics of proprietary vs. free software, it's the technical issues of interoperabilty, repairability, security, persistance of data, and single-supplier dependance.
Re:Staying Informed (Score:2)
Damn right. Screw ethics. Who needs 'em?
Re:Staying Informed (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It's the foundation of a market driven economy. In many many cases absurd purchasing decisions (aka boycotts) are the only thing that can cause change in american industry.
Re:Staying Informed (Score:1)
Part of the problem with Microsoft employees and Windows developers is that most of them honestly have no clue about non-Windows platforms, and never have had any either.
As someone who has been in the industry for nearly 30 years, I assure you, there is nothing, and has never been, anything novel or innovative on the Windows platform. Windows is a "me too" system, a collection of technologies copied and bought from others, and at that, it is mediocre at best. UNIX/Linux developers simply don't need to bother looking: they get the same old stuff on their own platforms.
Microsoft's actions buy bad feeling. (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing is good to keep in mind about Microsoft. By its anti-customer actions, Microsoft is buying itself an unprecedented amount of bad feeling. At present feelings against Microsoft are so negative that the company has business only because it has a virtual monopoly. If there ever becomes a real alternative to MS software (like the Open Office [openoffice.org] suite, for example), Microsoft will rapidly collapse.
(I have written this comment so that it includes information that most readers here already know, but that the average computer user needs. That way, if you like the comment, you can pass it on to your less knowledgeable friends.)
The first paragraph may sound like an exaggerated opinion, but collapse of a computer company's business has happened before. IBM had, at one time, almost 100% of the personal computer business. But it was surprising at the time how much people didn't like IBM. People who supplied cement to the building industry and people who ran dry cleaners and students who played with Basic all knew that IBM was in court for anti-trust violations. It was often shocking how much negative feeling toward IBM there was among people who had little understanding of the technical issues behind the violations.
As soon as an alternative to buying PCs from IBM was available, IBMs business dropped rapidly. The magazine articles at the time exaggerated IBM's percentage of the market because they failed to count the computers that were made by very small businesses. The alternatives to IBM PCs were called clones, and thousands of companies built them. IBMs business quickly dropped to 8% of the market, and then below that.
Now history is poised to repeat itself, this time with software. Linux is still not easy enough to configure. Open Office has, for the needs of many people, arrived. The Mozilla browser [mozilla.org] will soon be released, but it doesn't have a calendar or a spell-checker yet, and these are important to many people who use Microsoft Outlook. Events are moving fast, and it won't be long before the selfless love of the open source programmers overthrows the world's most abusive software dictator.
Often people with little technical knowledge don't understand that underlying the negative feeling toward Microsoft are strong technical failings. For example, Windows XP, Microsoft's newest operating system, has a file called the Registry. This file contains settings for the operating system and almost every other program that is installed. The registry file is a single point of failure. If something goes wrong in the registry, as it sometimes does, the only method of recovery is to re-install Windows XP, all the programs, all the drivers, and all the patches again. This can take days, during which the user is not able to work normally.
Why does Microsoft have such a flawed design? Why put information for many programs in one file? Why not put each program's settings in separate files, so that one cannot destroy the others? Apparently because having all the settings in one file accomplishes a kind of copy protection. Someone who copies a program's folder will not be able to operate that program on another computer because the settings are hidden in Windows XP's registry file. So, all the honest customers suffer because of Microsoft's desire to extract the most money from the world. That kind of offensive defensiveness actually lowers long-term profit, something the company executives have not learned.
Re:Microsoft's actions buy bad feeling. (Score:2)
Microsoft had inadequate standards. (Score:2, Insightful)
Back in the day of INI files, they were all over the place. They were inconsistent. That was because Microsoft had inadequate standards.
The registry is a trade-off, but a different trade-off, in my opinion. The registry (which is in all versions of Microsoft Windows from 95 to XP) works perfectly as copy protection. It also causes all versions of Windows to be unstable.
Re:Microsoft had inadequate standards. (Score:2, Insightful)
But you want to uninstall? Delete the folder and you're done, unless you've made the program a startup item, and that's easy to nix, too.
Registry is not necessary anymore. It's stupid to keep it, except for copy protection.
Re:Microsoft's actions buy bad feeling. (Score:1)
Indeed. And this tradeoff is worse than the disease it was trying to cure.
Re:Microsoft's actions buy bad feeling. (Score:1)
For the record: (Score:4, Informative)
Grand Rapids, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Milwaukee are being singled out for a May 1 - 31 "grace period".
If you hurry up and register with the grace period program, they come and audit you this summer, and the promise not to prosecute you for 'pirating' that occured before May 1.
BSA 'grace' [bsagrace.com]. Two of my offices are already getting warnings, and there are obnoxious advertisements in the paper, and on the radio.
Simple answer. (Score:3, Informative)
I don't even have a company, and I get this shit. (Score:3, Funny)
Two weeks later, I get another mail addressed to me (misspelled last name and all) from Microsoft themselves. The same basic form letter, warning me of the dire, scary consequences if I don't license all my illegal pirated Linux warez. I don't even bother burning this one; I just toss it.
I'm now waiting for the Software Police to show up with a battering ram and a bullhorn, waking me up at 4:15 AM on a Saturday morning and demanding to see every little piece of documentation in my house proving that I didn't steal that copy of Microsoft Bob back in 1994 or give my aunt a computer with a burned copy of Win98 installed on it.
They won't get too far up the stairs, because I have a particularly vicious dog, but it'll be fun to watch, anyway.
- A.P.
distract them with other companies. (Score:1, Flamebait)
t.
Re:distract them with other companies. (Score:2)
Make a list of your company's top competitors. Take full advantage of the BSA's anonymous whistle-blowing system. Be a little paranoid, and use public telephones to telephone and libraries to email. Be specific. "At least X copies of Win2000, only one licensed Photoshop being shared by both the web designers and marketing, etc." If you are an activist, report your city government, then send them some appropriate literature when they get audited. (Yes, an audit wastes your tax dollars, but they are already wasting your tax dollars, so make them pay for their lack of vision.)
The preceeding unethical material has come to a halt. You may open your eyes now.
:Peter
threating letters etc (Score:1)
I actually rang Microsoft to ask them to take me off their list and they said they'd have to take all my details etc and then they'd find out why!
I told 'em where to go! Last thing I need is more threating letters!
Did I just see Elvis driving a mail truck? (Score:1)
Address Unknown"
Carcasses (Score:2)
Use a US Postal Prohibitory order (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.junkbusters.com/dmlaws.html#form
Which kind of mail? (Score:2)