Codecruncher the Grey

Wed 15 November, 2006

Every morning it’s the same. I enter my firm’s building and I see a bunch of people waiting to be interviewed for a job. And I always have to restrain myself not to enter the room all crazy eyed and yell at them: “Fly, you fools!”.

I wonder why is this.

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Fair justice

Tue 14 November, 2006

Good news for all of us, here, among other places. Some Dave Mitchell, a freelance English programmer and sysadmin, who bought a Dell laptop, has managed to get back the money that Dell charged him for the bundled O.S., a Windows XP Home I guess. Mitchell asked for his money (45 GBP) back arguing that he never used and never was going to use that Windows license, and invoking Microsoft’s own EULA for it.

Good for him. That’s something we all should do, Linux users or not. For example, my own HP Pavilion W5080 (I can’t link it, because after less than two years is already out of HP catalog) comes with a bundled Windows XP Home, that I was never going to use. No setup CDs, no manuals, everything stored on a recovery partition on the main hard disk. If you install any other O.S., even from the same family, you’re screwed (spanish link, sorry), you just made your warrant void. Even if your problem has nothing to do with the O.S.

I heartily dislike this solution because:

  1. I don’t see the reason why I have to pay for an O.S. I’m not gonna use. Moreover, if the O.S. I’m going to use is not free; I have to pay twice for the same concept.
  2. The computer’s manufacturar has no right to tell me how I must setup my hard disk.
  3. Usually the recovery partition is bigger than needed. Because of their saving on buying complete Windows licenses, I lose hard disk space.

Let’s hope this catches and more people decides to ask for their money back for an O.S. they’r enot going to use. And it shouldn’t be necessary: manufacturers should realize this and give the customer the choice of preinstalled O.S., if any.

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Nine things developers want more than money

Thu 9 November, 2006

In the spanish main version of this blog I’ve just translated and published an original Rob Walling post, Nine things developers want more than money. It’s a great article, and since this is in English I’ll merely link to it here. My thoughts about it, coming up.