{"id":1609,"date":"2010-09-19T11:28:27","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2010-09-19T11:39:42","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:39:42","slug":"shiver-me-timbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=1609","title":{"rendered":"Shiver Me Timbers!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gnome<\/a>

That's "Playground" in the photo upper right of the screenshot.<\/p><\/div>\n

I have a computer (I have many computers) that I use for just experimenting and trying new programs. It has a network name of \u201cplayground\u201d. That should tell you something. I use it with my ham radio right now so it is not a critical machine. I have written about it before in this blog and have described the special small keyboard I bought to go with it.<\/p>\n

I had a SUSE Linux OS<\/a> installed on it when I first made it operational. I have always enjoyed \u201cplaying\u201d around with the free software available in Linux. (Now you know the reason for the name.)<\/p>\n

When I bought the full Windows 7 OS, I thought it wise to first try it out on the \u201cPlayground\u201d. It was the full price legal version. What I did though, was go on Ebay and found several dudes selling discounted license keys. At one point they were as low as $10.00 but I think I paid about $30 for mine.<\/p>\n

I did the full install of Windows 7 and used the discount key. The install went perfectly and the Windows registration also went fine. Windows 7 has been running perfectly and doing the normal updates and confirmations as \u201cauthentic\u201d software for almost a year.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, after one of the usual updates, the OS suddenly reported itself as a non-authentic version of the software. It didn’t shut down but reported that I could no longer obtain updates and that I need (for $200) to update my product key.<\/p>\n

I suspect my \u201cEbay Dude\u201d has sold multiple copies of the Key and MS was just now able to sort it out. I always thought it was too good to be true. Of course I am not going to spend the $200 on the \u201cPlayground\u201d OS. I just loaded Fedora 13 Linux<\/a> and am using the Free OpenOffice.org<\/a> to write this text.<\/p>\n

OpenOffice.org is what I had and was using in Windows 7 so really there is no change in how I use the machine. Sorry MS, I do run a legal copy on my main business computer but I don’t need it on my hobby machine. I have taken off my pirate hat and patch.<\/p>\n

I am not upset at all. When something is too good to be true it usually is. I am amazed it took so long.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a computer (I have many computers) that I use for just experimenting and trying new programs. It has a network name of \u201cplayground\u201d. That should tell you something. I use it with my ham radio right now so it is not a critical machine. I have written about it before in this blog and have described the special small keyboard I bought to go with it. I had a SUSE Linux OS installed...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,16],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computersoftware","tag-computer","tag-hobby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}