Package management patented?

[Keith Mastin]

> Keith Mastin wrote:
>
>>M$ should love these guys.. now they can offer full mirrors of client
>>computer located on their servers, and when that big ole blue screen of
>>death raises it's ugly head you just give a call to M$ and bingo! they
>>rebuild your system from the image stored in Redmond.
>>
> You could have a program to restore your known-good installation. The
> only ( minor ) complication is figuring out how to run a program when MS
> crashes so hard nothing runs.

They already have these system restore disks that overwrite the whole disk
including your saved data... is that what you mean? :) I had to buy a copy
of WinXP_pro to learn for a client. Put it on my trusty old IBM thinkpad,
which crashed during a filesystem check a month or so later. M$ suport
said I need to restore. The WinXP_pro cd was asking for a prior version of
M$ on the machine, which there wasn't (I resized my deb install to put it
on). I finally got it installed only to find a shiny new XP install with
nothing from the previous work, and it dies again (same problem) a couple
weeks later. I asked for a refund (just to hassle the so-called tech
support weenie) 'cause I bought somethng that didn't work.. weenie hung
up.

Knowing about M$'s love for $$, I can see them doing away with those
restore disks so they can charge you to rebuild your system from their
servers, adding in a nice little piece of fine print to the EULA that says
that the user agrees that anything on M$ servers is M$ property and cannot
be encrypted. And we've all been bored silly with every EULA that flashes
across the screen that everyone and their mother just ignores them and
hits 'OK'.

-- 
Keith
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