Article reads in part ... There are days when Microsoft seems to go well out of its way to look really evil. And it is these days people remember, so I am going to wade into an issue involving Microsoft, an Australian charity, kids in East Timor, and you. Yes, you, because this matter--like so many these days--revolves around Microsoft's inability or unwillingness to fairly deal with intellectual property issues. As we've been reporting, Microsoft has gotten itself into what we Texans refer to as a pissing match with an Australian group that takes old PCs, refurbishes them, and ships them off to East Timor to be used by kids. That sounds like a wonderful program that we all should endorse. BUT MICROSOFT AUSTRALIA sent the charity, PCs for Kids, a letter telling them to stop installing old versions of Windows onto the machines. I presume an "or else"--in the best Aussie lawyerese, of course--was tacked on to the end of the Microsoft missive. The charity is quite reasonably upset, and you should be, too. The issue here isn't that Microsoft is picking on a kid's charity--though there's enough issue there to go around--but that Microsoft is taking the attitude that the OS license doesn't go with the machine. And that's important to everyone who has an old PC lying around they'd like to do something with. ... for the rest of the article see: <http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2800646-10,00.html> <http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2800646,00.html> To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
