Get Microsoft products for free!

[elDiablo]

Nope! No warez here! Microsoft are giving away Vista Ultimate, Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Plus Premium, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008, and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 (you can choose one) on the condition that you let them monitor your usage of said program.

Now, that's quite a big turn off for me, though it shouldn't be (as I doubt I'll use of any of them for "dubious" activities). I just don't like the idea of people seeing what I'm doing all the time; a bit too Big Brotherish for me. Sorry!

Still, for those of you who want free stuff more than free dom (get it? You see what I did there?! ) then here is the Slashdot article link. Enjoy.

 

[thatbloke]

Nope! No warez here! Microsoft are giving away Vista Ultimate, Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Plus Premium, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008, and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 (you can choose one) on the condition that you let them monitor your usage of said program.

Now, that's quite a big turn off for me, though it shouldn't be (as I doubt I'll use of any of them for "dubious" activities). I just don't like the idea of people seeing what I'm doing all the time; a bit too Big Brotherish for me. Sorry!

Still, for those of you who want free stuff more than free dom (get it? You see what I did there?! ) then here is the Slashdot article link. Enjoy.

Unfortunately the T&C's count most of us here out:

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• Participation is currently limited to US residents of 18 years and older.
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• Microsoft, comScore, and MarketTools employees are not eligible to participate.

 

[elDiablo]

Still a valid conversation piece about free stuff or privacy though.

 

[Taffy]

doe4s that mean they can see your pr0n?

 

[thatbloke]

doe4s that mean they can see your pr0n?

possibly, I guess...

Tis an interesting concept though... Allowing someone to see what you get up to on your computer for free stuff... sounds like spyware to me, except that they don't have to force their way in.

This sounds like it may be some kind of beta for software that they want to implement in the future which will provide a standard within the OS itself for delivering advertising content to the user, in the form of popups or whatever.

The amount of info they could collect would be phenomenal and that kind of data could be used to generate such a standard.

 

[elDiablo]

...This sounds like it may be some kind of beta for software that they want to implement in the future which will provide a standard within the OS itself for delivering advertising content to the user, in the form of popups or whatever...

At which point I will probably start praying that Wine or whatever the hell runs games in Linux these days will be awesome enough for me to play everything I ever want to! And I guess that means I might start making games for Linux too! Who knows!

 

[Iron_fist]

i like the way Edinburgh does it:
1) email the person in charge of software licenses and tell him what software you need
2) await reply
3) go to his office with a pile of blank disks and a piece of paper and get given the install keys and get shown to a machine that has a directory with all the isos for you to burn to disk
4) profit???

true you can only do this if you are in the informatics department, but how many non computing students with the exception of some maths and physics are realistically going to get windows when it's not pre-installed on a machine?

as for the monitoring that is what really breaks the deal for me and moves this into the privacy "how far is too far" debate. I'm hoping that Xen gets a real working 3D layer (akin to parallels) soon so i can move totally to a *nix system and avoid this debate for the time being

And I guess that means I might start making games for Linux too! Who knows!

does that mean no multiwinia for linux then (though given that every previous game has had a linux version i guess it'll arrive soon enough after release)

 

[elDiablo]

...does that mean no multiwinia for linux then (though given that every previous game has had a linux version i guess it'll arrive soon enough after release)

I can neither confirm nor deny if Multiwinia is gonna have a Linux client, I merely stated that I was not overtly working on a Linux game, whereas in the future I may well do

 

[Traxata]

Isnt that elD where you would need to apply "My oppinions are expressly my own and are nothing what-so ever to do with the Oppinions of Introversion" ?