Microsoft Acquires Winternals and Sysinternals 471
SJasperson writes "In a move that will be good for Redmond but may have consequences for the rest of us, Microsoft has acquired Winternals and Sysinternals. This gives them well-known developers Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell as well as dozens of well-loved and much-praised utilities, both commercial and freeware. Though Mark says on his blog that the Sysinternals site will remain 'for the time being,' this would be a good time to download the latest version of essential Windows tools like Process Explorer before they can go mysteriously missing or be locked up behind the wall of Windows Genuine Advantage."
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
People who don't buy Win* because they use ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the "purchased version" part that I'm worried about but the "of Windows" part. I'm complaining that I can't use the utilities with Wine (an independent implementation of Win32 spec, commonly used with *BSD and *Linux) or with ReactOS (an operating system consisting of Wine on top of a reimplementation of the NT kernel).
Interoperability (Score:5, Interesting)
Now Microsoft takes over tools which enable interoperability with its plattform and puts them under their licensing control. What we will see next is a restrictive Microsoft EULA for it which discourages use for reengineering or interoperability for Ms competitors etc.
Worth to file a complaint at the responsible EU competition consumer liason office [europa.eu].
Looking for Windows kernel experts... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft doesn't get it. It's very obvious. They add features they would like, not what the rest of the world actually wants.
Re:Oh Boo Hoo (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I never understood... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, much of the complaint this time around, at least in regards to this, is not just that WGA sucks. It's that very good, useful, high quality software which has previously been available to anyone will likely be made available only to people who install useless DRM from MS. While MS may have the right to do whatever they want with the software now that they've purchased the company, it doesn't mean people have to be happy about it.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think their full of it.
The license dies (for me) with transfer of license ownership (ie: giving my disk / 4th generation pre-keyed backup to another person).
Meanwhile, I wonder if there's a market for pre-keyed windows installations? ie: purchase a windows disk, create a pre-keyed / slipstreamed / no question / extra utility (say, ClamAV and Spybot S&D, set to run silently at regular intervals at low prio)/ extra app (say, Openoffice, Firefox and Thunderbird preinstalled as well) DVD version, and sell both for slightly more than the purchase cost of the original. Since the license accompanies the disc, and since I'm not removing anything from the user, I think it would be a sweet thing to be able to buy. Microsoft's making their money, so they've no reason to bitch. Everything else is OSS...
Actually, lemme get started on the process for that; it should be relatively easy and potentially batchable (get a batch of WinXP discs of a set version, use one to create the base image, and change the key for each disc).
Call it "Windows XP - Not Lame Edition"
Re:Oh Boo Hoo (Score:4, Interesting)
Anything SysInternals did was the best... (Score:2, Interesting)
Anything SysInternals did was the best, and made the sloppiness of Microsoft software obvious.
Re:Lots of files to download... (Score:3, Interesting)
Good news, bad news (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, the Winternals utilities represent about 10% (IMO) of the utilities needed to really analyze and fix Windows when it malfunctions. I'm too old to do this myself, but maybe a group of ambitious analysts could step up and continue the good work. Even more important, maybe a good group of analysts could develop a methodology for analyzing the OS and then point the way toward needed utilities.
I'm actually feeling a little grief over the demise of Winternals as an independent company.
Just one more reason to switch (Score:2, Interesting)
(Yes I realize that Apple is just a mini-MS as far as being evil where they can, but that seems to be mostly in the iPod stuff and going after the press. On the desktop side 10.5 looks far, far more appealing than Vista.)
Not quite... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you just want to upgrade, though, and your old motherboard is working fine, then it's considered that you bought a new computer, and need a new copy of Windows.
That's assuming that said copy of Windows is an OEM version, rather than retail box.
Retail box you can transfer to your heart's content, as there's no restriction to a specific computer.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
Has that happened to anyone yet? I don't know anybody who had a legit copy of Windows and got screwed over with WGA.
Also, I don't think MS will actually shut down Windows machines just yet, too many issues with that:
1. They're scared of the situation mentioned above
2. If they do it they have to make sure you can't get around it (easily)
3. LOTS of their software is pirated in countries from Eastern Europe, Asia etc., and it's not clear what would happen if they all of a sudden can't run Windows. One thing is pretty certain, they're not going to actually purchase Windows.
Guess it remains to be seen, but until people actually have real issues with WGA, I think it's just the "bitching of the moment" and is not warranted.
wget syntax (Score:2, Interesting)
if you haven't, set up your http_proxy environment variable for wget:
export http_proxy=http://proxy.com:8080/
wget --proxy=on -i yourfile.txt
if you have no proxy, it's cake:
wget --proxy=on -i yourfile.txt
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Amen (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, at least the kill switch code has not been enabled yet.
But check out this article [computerworld.com] In it we have this quote:
So apparently there at 20% WGA validation failures that are not due to leaked or stolen codes. That seems to leave that they were actually valid.You might try googling for "WGA failure Dell"....
Re:I'm not so sure (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you do not realize that they also offer a pro tools kit, which has all of these tools and then some, and which has support. Until the support contracts run out, because Microsoft will not be supporting them.
Having the tools folded into the resource kit would be about the worst possible outcome for these customers, because not only would they be unsupported, but no one else would bother to provide tools that do the same stuff that are supported, because "official" microsoft tools would already do the same job.
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Interesting)
TOO LATE, they already changed the EULA. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Avoiding WGA with Auto-Updates on? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not totally on-topic, but, one "critical update" that showed up on my server a few weeks ago was to remove the swastika from a font. If Microsoft thinks that something of that nature is critical, then I'm sure they would be OK with calling WGA a "security update". <sarcasm>After all, they are doing all of this because they are really concerned about malware coming with pirated copies of XP.</sarcasm>
The SysInternals programmers are the finest... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am also very aware that Microsoft has no utilities at all for some of the Windows functions people need, and Microsoft employees have long been recommending SysInternals utilities for those functions.
Remember, the Windows Command Line Interface and command line utilities are upgraded DOS programs. DOS is shockingly primitive compared to the Linux command line interfaces, for example. And not all of the DOS utilities have been converted completely to 32-bit Windows; they fail in weird ways that have not been fixed even though the failures have been discussed thoroughly over the years.
The SysInternals programmers are some of the finest Windows coders in the world, if not THE finest, in my opinion. However, I don't think the SysInternals employees will stay long in the abusive and adversarial and socially backward and ignorant Microsoft climate.
I think what will happen is that Microsoft will embrace and extend and poison the SysInternals software, as they have done for the dBase language, or, much more recently, for Giant's AntiSpyware [giantcompany.com].
Microsoft began tinkering with Giant AntiSpyware, which became Windows Defender. Giant was considered the best in its field. Now the Microsoft version has problems. Sometimes, for example, it will fail, and re-installing will not fix the failure.
Of course, Giant AntiSpyware was only a bandaid for problems that exist because of Microsoft's sloppy coding that leaves huge numbers of vulnerabilities. Remember that Microsoft makes more money if there are more vulnerabilities, because people buy new computers as their old computer become slow because of infestation.
Anyone who thinks that an OS is complicated, and therefore must have vulnerabilities, should buy a secure OS like OpenBSD for $5,000 per copy. The really expensive operating system organizations can hire extremely skilled programmers who know how to eliminate vulnerabilities. Oh, wait, sorry, OpenBSD is FREE [openbsd.org], and is coded by volunteers.
Microsoft is a socially backward and adversarial organization, in my experience, but they aren't so dumb they don't know how to hire people who can write secure software. The reason for the huge number of vulerabilities seems to be that, when a company effectively has a temporary monopoly, more vulnerabilities make more money.
Re:TOO LATE, they already changed the EULA. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:EULA: for comparison (Score:3, Interesting)