🚀 go-pugleaf

DonRawlins (donrawlins@aol.com) wrote:
: The entire non-issue of the automated registration is a perfect example of
: how the whining anti-Microsoft community will ignore every published
: attempt in an effort to propagate their narrow minded rhetoric.

: Case in point.  MS announces that as an >optional< service to users they
: will speed up the registration process by providing a utility to scan
: their system automatically.  Not mandatory.  Clearly documented as
: optional during setup.  Can be performed manually if that is what a user
: desires.  In short?  An example of Microsoft providing a more >user
: friendly< registration process.

First of all, a registration process should only require me to send my name
and the serial number of the copy if W95 I run in. NOTHING else is required
for "registration" purposes. So all the other information beeing gathered
has to be for other reasons. The only other thing I can think of that they need
the information for, is when customers phone up Microsoft when something does 
not work. But then, wasn't W95 plug and play??? Conclusion: they gather
information for efficient marketing strategies and other purposes that we
don't know about are are too dumb to imagine. Let's try anyways: if you know 
what the average Joe-PC-user has on his desk you can customize your products 
accordingly and sell more stuff.

Secondly, a bit of order of magnitude MATH can show how much market advantage 
Microsoft can gain with their Installation-Wizard. The following number were 
overheard on last night's news: ``30 Million W95 copies are expected to be 
sold until the end of the year.'' 

I think it will be more, but anyways let's work with 30 Million W95 users.
Let's assume that 20% of the people are or will be networked and that only
5% of these will let the Wizard scan the machine (for whatever reasons).

	30000000 users * 0.2 * 0.05 = 300000 scanned and archived

Quite impressive database for a 4 month period - don't you think? 
Just imagine the fleets of laywers going out prosecuting users of illegal
software - say another 5% are stupid enough to let the Wizard scan while
using an illegal copy of Word - 15000 (quite legit) lawsuits at, say, $5000
	
	300000 scanned * 0.05 * $5000 per conviction = $75000000

well, another 75 Million added to the Microsoft empire. If they do it is
another question.


Just my 2 cents to the debate.
Andreas

--
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 Saskatoon Linux Group  http://www.cs.usask.ca/~ddb132/slg/slghome.html
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   andreas@karlsberg.usask.ca              andreas@milo.usask.ca 
    schifflr@debye.usask.ca              schiffler@skisas.usask.ca
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