Microsoft Withdraws Vista's Kill Switch 635
l-ascorbic writes "In what they are calling a change of tactics, Microsoft has removed the controversial 'kill switch' from Vista in SP1. This feature is designed to disable pirated copies of the OS, but had led to numerous reports of it disabling legitimate copies. It will be replaced with a notice that repeatedly informs the user that their OS is pirated. '[Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert] added: "It's worth re-emphasizing that our fundamental strategy has not changed. All copies of Windows Vista still require activation and the system will continue to validate from time to time to verify that systems are activated properly." Microsoft said it had pursued legal action against more than 1,000 dealers of counterfeit Microsoft products in the last year and taken down more than 50,000 "illegal and improper" online software auctions.'"
If made you bitch... (Score:5, Funny)
Did this____kill____switch
How 'bout__a______pitch
In a_______fine____triptych?
Burma___________Shave
Why stop there? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Funny)
XP?!? Bah! I'm trying to "upgrade" to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups!
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Does anyone know where to get a copy of CP/M that will run reliably on newer hardware and with clean drivers for larger HDDs?
-nB
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Re:Why stop there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Until they want to install something like say...oh, the Flash plugin. Or install software easily.
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
In windows, they have a semi-appfolder oriented design (except most apps either must or choose to dump some crap in system wide directories). As a result, they started out without anything resembling decent package management, and left it to third parties. Now you have a number of InstallAnywhere, MSI (microsoft's eventual 'standard'), Nullsoft installer, dozens of one-off installers for specific applications, and a bunch more I'm forgetting that are semi-standard). Most are moderately to severely anti-unattended and inconsistent. They have the 'add/remove' programs control panel, but largely it's relegated to just remove software, and even then some software ends up mangling the list so that different 'components' appear independently on the list, but uninstalling one breaks the uninstaller for the other, so you should have used the uninstall icon which a lot of programs put right next to running the application. It's horribly mangled and ugly and if the world wasn't so damned used to it, it becomes painfully obvious how piss-poor Windows has dealt with this.
Meanwhile, Linux was 'stuck' with the need to provide an alternative view on which pieces of software owned which binaries that were mixed in with everything else. To get out of a relatively messy situation that was undeniably there, they rolled the most sophisticated package management for a platform ever (mainly deb and rpm). With that, installs *knew* in a standardized way what other programs needed to be installed to work right, and things kind of 'just worked'. It was beautiful.
Then, recognizing the power of the package management, repository management emerged. Apt and Yum are the two prominent things. This above anything else is an *incredible* framework for software installation and, *CRITICALLY* updating. Not only does the *extremely* rich platform 'vendor' provide 99.9% of packages most common people would ever need, the architectures are pluggable so that third-parties can smoothly integrate their updates with your process. Using your flash plugin example and, say, Fedora Core. Adobe provides a yum repository. The low-level mechanics is that a file gets dumped in
Now, compare that to the MS side of things. Well, you got Microsoft update, which generally cares only about the low-level windows stuff (though I can't remember if Office would tag along for the ride or not..), which also wants to WGA the hell out of clients, but we'll put that aside from now. I install Java, and what happens, a freaking java update checker/manager starts (it can't hook into the running MS update architecture). I install quicktime, Apple's software updater starts running (same as Java). I install Half Life, suddenly Steam also needs to run to manage updates for games. I install Warcraft and Blizzards software starts checking for updates independently. Repeat for Bioware, Symantec, etc. Oh, my video driver, well, I'll have to go to a website somewhere and manually check for updates. And that *still* omits a ton of applications for which they never implemented an update management solution. I
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Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Informative)
(c) click install when firefox prompts you to install flash
(d) automatic updates for all software on the system, not just the OS.
No having to find those downloads buried somewhere on every manufacturers site, occasionally having to locate the right version of additional runtime DLLs, and keep them all up to date yourself.
Windows isn't quite as easy as Linux, eh? When you can do that in Windows, it'll be ready for novices!
Btw, I have been a DOS / Windows user since forever, and I'm now a very happy Linux user too. Some things are better in Windows, some are better in Linux. Your comments just show that you're not really familiar with anything except Windows.
But not an oddball (Score:3)
Can you tell me honestly that Windows makes installing software easy intrinsically? Let's use the plugin example...
I browse to a flash site without a plugin install. *Firefox* helpfully points me to where to install it (note, Windows did not help me and Firefox had no Microsoft provided framework to assist/hook into). Adobe provides me a binary to run and install (retrieved through firefox) that takes
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You forgot to mention that he also paid $99 bucks for Elements. How much did that GIMP install cost?
Re:Why stop there? (Score:4, Insightful)
He got it with a new laptop and claims to have no problems.
Then I ask if I can use his laptop to burn a iso with Nero.
His response? Nero isnt compatible with Vista.
He didnt realize at all what he just said. It was perfectly normal for him for programs to not work.
There have been plenty of things like that.
That one was just the most recent being from yesterday.
Someone claiming that Vista has no problems is completely different from Vista having no problems.
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, it's a direct application of identical logic. Parent said:
Seems to me that parent is stating that the problem of an app supporting an OS is the problem of the app vendor, not the OS provider. Yet, I would wager that the app vendor's lack of support of Linux would be used against Linux by said parent (generally couched in the dressing of "Linux sucks because xxx doesn't run on it!")
Ther
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux: plug in the hardware, application opens.
Windows: plug in hardware, find driver CD, now, am I Admininstrator? no: OK, run-as........
The fact is that for a lot of hardware (cameras, music players, etc.), under Linux, it is simply a matter of plugging it in; while under WIndows, I have to go through the process of installing some drivers from a CD. I don't see how that makes Windows easier to use.
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Granted, the instructions, should you happen to read them, will probabl
Re:Why stop there? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is my opinion that Vista is a good idea badly implemented, poorly presented and inappropriately pushed out.
It's a good idea because Windows and security are generally considered to be diametrically opposed. Windows and stability are generally considered to be diametrically opposed as well. Vista is a good idea because it's actually trying to address those problems.
It's a bad implementation because it causes people to feel very lost. I can't say that plainly enough. But frankly, moving from Win98 to WinXP was a similar experience although perhaps not as intense.
It's poorly presented because it has problems with backward compatibility and support for older software. I don't consider this a "problem" except that Microsoft did not adequately warn the public of this issue. Part of the problem with Windows is that it supports a LOT of broken behavior in older apps. This comes largely from software being written for broken, badly implemented or undocumented Windows API calls, but also to keep good software running after Microsoft updates their API. Getting rid of the burden of backward compatibility is a step forward for Microsoft and part of why Vista is a good idea.
It is inappropriately pushed out simply because it's not ready for prime time in the sense that prime applications and average hardware cannot be supported under Vista and it hasn't been stated clearly or loudly enough that to run Vista, "off the shelf" isn't good enough. Microsoft hasn't spelled that out well enough for the consuming public. Sales people want to sell. Consumers pretty much buy whatever is offered to them. (Though consumers are actually starting to wise up about that bad habit!) I recall when WindowsNT was being introduced. It had a set of requirements well about those of Windows 3.1 and was considered to be apart from mainstream Windows. It was accepted that it would run slower on old hardware and was intended for only the most powerful machines and the most advanced of applications. WindowsNT wasn't simply pushed out to consumers saying "Here! This is new! Use it!" It was offered and relatively slowly adopted by IT and eventually by consumers in the form of Windows2000 which even then was pretty much presented to business.
An appropriate push for Vista would have been to create "Elite Computing" status for Vista users initially and make WindowsXP usage appear to be legacy. It would have provided incentive for consumers to "strive" to be good enough for Vista. It would have provided incentive to software makers to update their software for Vista. We're not seeing that. Instead we're seeing "I'm sorry, that computer only ships with Vista... if you want that machine, we cannot support you under XP... you have no choice in the matter." How dark is that?! More than dark, it's inappropriate.
It's true that the whole truth isn't being told. But mostly, the truth that needs to be told isn't being told by Microsoft to the consumer.
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I think that the main issue most everyone with Vista is not how bad it is but why they need to use it. There isn't a compelling reason to use Vista (other than DX10) for most End users if they have WinXP.
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Funny)
I wanted to download PuTTY so I could SSH into my machine from their house. Simple enough. It doesn't get any simpler than PuTTY - it doesn't even have an installer, you just unzip the files and run them. I'm not exaggerating when I say the whole thing took 10 minutes. For a 2M file.
It went something like this:
Windows: I see you're trying to access the Internet. Would you like to allow this?
Me: yes. [navigate to the PuTTY site and click the zip file download]
Windows: I see you're trying to download a file. Would you like to allow this?
Me: yes. [file downloads. Fine. That's about 1 minute right there.]
Me: [Navigate to the file and drag it to Program Files with the intention of extracting it there.]
Windows: I see you're trying to extract this file. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks. 30 seconds later.]
Windows: I can't allow you to do this.
Me: WTF? [Try it again. Same result].
Me: Fine. [I navigate to Program Files and create a directory named PuTTY].
Windows: I see you're trying to create a directory. Are you an administrator?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: This action will require administrative privileges to run. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: You are attempting to create a directory. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Fuck yes. [Windows sits. And thinks. And suddenly there's a new directory! Yeah. I rename it. 5 minutes has gone by.]
Me: [I drag the zip file and attempt to extract it to the folder I just created.]
Windows: I see you're trying to extract a file. This file is unsigned by Windows and may be hazardous to your health. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: This action will require administrative privileges to run. Are you an administrator?
Me: yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: [Starts extracting the first file.]
Windows: This file is unsigned. Would you like to allow it to be extracted?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks. And finally extracts the file.]
Windows: [Starts extracting the second file.] This file is unsigned. Would you like to allow it to be extracted?
Me: WTF? Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: Would you like to apply these privileges to the remaining files?
Me: WTF? Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: [Starts extracting the 2.2M zip file. AT 2K PER SECOND. FOR A FILE EXTRACTION!!!]
Me: WTFZOMGBBQ?!?
Me: [Click on the PuTTY icon.] Finally...
Windows: I see you're trying to use an application.
Me: BANG!
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Open Browser (lets use IE For sake of argument) No UAC prompt
Search for Putty No UAC prompt
click link for putty website No UAC prompt
Click link for download No UAC prompt
Save the file No UAC prompt
Open the file No UAC prompt
Extract the file No UAC prompt
Launch the file - This file is unsigned/untrusted. Mark the checkbox that indicates "Always trust this executable"
Done.
No UAC prompt.
Imagine that.
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Why doesn't Vista know? If I'm not an administrator and answer "Yes", will it say "Liar!"?
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At any rate. This coming from a guy who had his 5 home computers + 1 laptop running SuSE 10.2 / 10.3 for the past year, and SLED 10 on his work machine for the year before that.
Truth be told, there is a lot of great stuff you can do with Linux. Things I e
So Desperate (Score:5, Interesting)
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---
I think the method in my madness is a mad method
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eNjoy
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Re:So Desperate (Score:4, Insightful)
Amount of computers 2002 = X
Amount of computers 2007 = 5X
Yes, I'm pulling numbers out of thin air, but you get the picture. There are lot's more potential customers of Vista then there where of XP.
What I'd want to know is:
1. How many percent of older MS-systems have upgraded to Vista.
2. How many percent of OEM computers come with Vista relative other systems.
3. How many percent of non-MS users have switched to Vista.
3. How many percent of those who have switched/upgraded are happy with Vista.
Then compare the same percentages to those of XP after the same period of time.
Market share? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've seen a lot of games that say things like "System requirements: 1GB RAM, 2.4GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent. Vista: 2GB RAM, 3GHz Pentium 4, dual core recommended."
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Oderint Dum Metuant--Lucius Accius
"Let them hate, so long as they fear."
Now it's: "Let them pirate, so long as they remain locked in to our crappy architecture", which I'm not really Latin scholar enough to mangle into the classic tongue.
Strategy not changing? (Score:5, Funny)
i.e. We're still gonna bend you over. The big guy named Bubba is still employed with us, but now we've taken away his lube.
Re:Strategy not changing? (Score:5, Funny)
Fat lot of good this does me (Score:2)
Re:Fat lot of good this does me (Score:5, Informative)
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Let me think... (Score:4, Insightful)
OS/X : Hereround 155$. Probably nicest user interface, at least at Panther level very stable, rock solid foundation (BSD) a real shell and real scripting. Oh and it gives me fanboy privileges.
Vista Ultimate: ~700$. Nothing really to offer, exept maybe this floating waterfall background, which must eat a ton of resources. Requires activation, abuses 30% of my resources for Hollywoods satisfaction. Oh: And by default I'm a criminal software thieve pirate.
I'd wager that if i really chose option three I must be a blistering idiot, too.
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Re:Let me think... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I can't really buy games off the shelf, nor printers, or a lot of other hardware, and have it work. Oh, and Linux does have its own problems, weird things breaking, spending hours figuring out what exactly is wrong, and then diving into a text file to change some obsure setting. Most of those 20,000 apps are shit. Sorry.
OS/X : Hereround 155$. Probably nicest user interface, at least at Panther level very stable, rock solid foundation (BSD) a real shell and real scripting. Oh and it gives me fanboy privileges.
People knock Linux / Windows UIs; I find Macs to be infurating. Why exactly would you want to be a fanboy? Fanboy is just another word for zealot.
Vista Ultimate: ~700$. Nothing really to offer, exept maybe this floating waterfall background, which must eat a ton of resources. Requires activation, abuses 30% of my resources for Hollywoods satisfaction. Oh: And by default I'm a criminal software thieve pirate.
Surely you mean only ~$260 [pricegrabber.com]? Not very computer savy if you can't find Vista at a good price.
I'd wager that if i really chose option three I must be a blistering idiot, too.
The other option is that you're a smart professional that just wants to get things done. Since I ditched my Linux desktop and server, I spent more time doing the things I want on the computer, instead of trying to figure out what text file I got wrong and then being told to RTM (which doesn't exist).
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That doesn't discount the fact that there are dozens of high quality, professional, industry grade apps available, which would cost 1000s of $ in addition to the OS.
Name a few of them, please.
I get very bored of reading comments like the above, yet never seeing specific examples. I defy anyone to name even one dozen native Linux apps that really are as good at what they do as serious commercial apps that cost $1000s. Off the top of my head, I can think of perhaps three or four that are at least comparable, but they're all toys for geeks rather than toys for your average end user who might be looking for an alternative to Vista.
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I guess we have different perspectives. I would argue precisely that it is precisely the commercial heavy-hitters like Microsoft's Office and Exchange Server, Adobe's creative apps, recent PC games like Supreme Commander, various heavyweight business management applications, and specialist software like CAD that set the Windows world apart from the Linux world.
Sure, Linux has apps like OpenOffice, Scribus and the GIMP, but for serious professional use, they really are only toys by comparison. If you just
Re:Let me think... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And let's be honest her
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Vista Ultimate: ~700$. Nothing really to offer, exept maybe this floating waterfall background, which must eat a ton of resources.
Come on, I know you love Linux even above your girly JPG's, but please. This is getting old, fucking old even.
Windows Vista disadvantages over XP
- Lacking application compatibility.
- Lacking driver compatibility that only recently seem to start being resolved.
- Added resource requirements, although some can be mitigated by deactivating Aero Glass.
- Added system services to improve performance over time, that may actually do things works. YMMV here.
- Further tightened antipiracy features that sometimes lead
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- Decreased battery life when using Aero Glass.
- may actually do things worse
At least I put them in the right categories.
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Oooh where to begin.
Re:Let me think... (Score:5, Interesting)
First let me say, I'm not really a Apple Fanboi, but hardly anti Microsoft. I'm using MS at home (for gaming mostly) and my work computer is a Mac Pro tower (Developer/admin/etc.. small company so I do a LOT of different things).
I don't find Vista bad, or Mac perfect. I think both are fine if used in the context of what they where designed to do, but I digress. I'd just like to add a few things to what you said.
> Gutsy Gibbon is not an option for some people, due to its lack of some key software (games, 100% MS Office-compatible suite, driver support). That's not saying anything bad about GG, just that it's not a panacea for those wishing to ditch The Beast
I tried installing it at home on my Dell XPS-710 H2C. It didn't work.
I ran into problems with my video cards (Dual 8800GTX boards). The raid card wasn't read right off the bad, so I tracked down a cheap single SATA drive and the OS was able to see it.
After installing, countless playing with the video drivers, twiddling with different tools to configure X I gave up. Granted I use Linux for all our office servers and our datacenter, it was just more than I wanted to mess with. To the credit of Gutsy, it did install perfect on a couple of office machines and it seemed pretty slick. I haven't used Linux as a full desktop machine since the old Redhat 8 / 9 days, and I was more curious to see how far they have come. (I'm very happy with linux as our server platform of choice though
Gutsy is probably good for most people, but definitely not everyone.
>OS X is not as stable as you think. Sure, it's BSD underneath, but on top it's still an operating system. It still has drivers that are not 100% fantastic. It still crashes. On some peoples' machines, frequently. You also ignore the cost of the hardware, which is greater than for those wishing to run either GG or Vista.
OS X isn't infallible to problems, that's for sure. I've had a few over the years.. but I still measure my uptime on my Mac Pro at the office in months. (Usually only rebooting to install software updates). The OS is rock solid from my experience. Some things that kind of annoy me about it are the lack of real options on 3rd party hardware. If you want to upgrade the video card, forget it.. unless you want to buy Apples outdated and overpriced ATI board (Which i did for a second display that required Dual-DVI). For apple to ship that computer with a NVidia 7300 is just offensive. There are so many decent cards out there that are cheap and fast, I just don't understand the reasoning other than maybe wanting a passive cooling card.
Now price rant:
The hardware is expensive, but I make my living on that machine. I find that I am more productive on what I consider to be an elegant user experience. Maybe it's silly, but that's just how I am. It's the reason I don't drive a 79 Renault to work, it's not because the car wouldn't get me there and it's cheaper.. the car is just not something I want to be driving, and I enjoy nice things. Practicality does not always trump, and in my case I spend too much time behind the machine to not be using exactly what I want. I know that a lot of people don't have the option to even make the choice, but I do and I've never regretted picking up my mac for the office.
>Vista Ultimate (which is not $700 but about $200, depending on the dealer) offers a lot more than just a waterfall background. I can't believe I have to go into this, but I will anyway. It has a 3D-accelerated desktop, which means it can move a lot of the processing of windows and redrawing into the GPU, which would otherwise just be sat there, doing nothing, thereby increasing performance of your CPU (which also allows the "waterfall background" to not eat lots of resources). It has far more aggressive memory-handling techniques, which load apps into and out of memory at certain times to increase their loading times. It can use the hybrid HDDs, external flash memo
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It's less secure (Vista is too, but we won't go into that...).
It's more resource intensive.
It takes resources away from my system to enforce the media company's "rights"- of which, I largely don't use their crap any more.
I have to buy all sorts of things to make it more robust, secure, etc.- things that shouldn't need to be there or should have came with the OS in the first place.
With Linux, I don't have those issues- and it's not because it's
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Lots of room for improvement, but everything I do on it works perfectly, games, pic/mov editing, multimedia all without a hitch.
I know Vista succes stories aren't that popular here, but they are out there.
How soon... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't confuse "falling in love" with "choosing the lesser of two evils". For all the nasty, ridiculous, and lame qualities that XP manages to invoke, Vista is simply far, far, worse. As a software vendor, Vista has been a TRAIN WRECK for us, despite fairly extensive testing with Vista B2. It's as though the O/S is specifically engineered to prevent you from actually doing *anything* with it. For example, it requires some SEVEN "Yes, I approve" clicks to install our application from the website.
Yes. SEVEN. "I agree to download the executable". "I agree to save the executable". "I agree to run the program" "I know it's an installer and might install something". "Yes, I'd like to install everything." "Yes, I agree to let the installer install something in Program Files" "Yes, I agree to let the installer update the registry".
Only ONE of those prompts is ours, the "I want to install everything". This is not security. This is teaching your users to frustratedly click "OK" on every dialog box they see without reading them.
Which then worsens problems for us. We now find many of our tech support calls involve users complaining about a problem that has a fix they've already been notified about.
Example: User calls, having problem claiming attendance, saying that "they get an error" and that's it. The error that they saw briefly and clicked "OK" on as quickly as possible (without reading) said something like: "You set the enrollment dates incorrectly in your program, and so we cannot find the school calendar to claim attendance on. Please check the student's enrollment date and try again.".
Training your users to ignore notice boxes by throwing lots of meaningless ones up does not improve security, it increases human/machine interface tension and results in frustrated, ineffective users.
Porting our application to OSX originally took us a month. Porting it over to Leopard was done in a day, with no complaints. The only change since 10.3 for us has been that Leopard removed the requirement to call X11 expressly. Now actually EASIER to write X11 apps for OSX, our application bombed after hunting for X11 binaries and not finding them.
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Read this on ZDNet (Score:5, Insightful)
A blog on ZDNet [zdnet.com] has this interesting bit:
This is software explicitly designed to make your computer less useful. It does nothing else for you. Why would "improving its back-end systems" ever make me trust it the least bit more?
Notice (Score:2, Funny)
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Dear Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I install a new motherboard in my PC that is not piracy.
If I format my old hard drive and install Vista on a new PC I built that is not piracy.
If I have to call to take down that nag screen then you must hire enough people that I never have to wait more than two minutes to get the nag removed. You must also offer a world wide toll free number so I can call no matter where I am and you must keep that number staffed until the sun goes nova or you go out of business.
Only then will any type of "activation" be acceptable.
Never mind OpenSuse is working just fine as is Ubuntu. Or maybe I will just buy a Mac.
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But if you built the original pc with an OEM version of Windows because you could get it cheaper and you then try to upgrade then tough. Though Microsoft should make this point a lot clearer.
Re:Dear Microsoft. (Score:5, Informative)
What if the motherboard fails? Why should I have to get a new OS if I replace a part? Nope same rules should apply.
Frankly since Microsoft is a convicted monopoly they should be under all sorts of control as far as things like OEM version and such.
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Remember the magic phrase: EULAs are not valid!
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Re:Dear Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only then will any type of "activation" be acceptable.
No, not even then in my book. I use my computer for relatively important purposes, and the real purpose of the OS is to stay up and running and allow me to access my data and applications. That's priority number 1, and in fact most of what I care about.
Therefore, in my opinion, When I see an OS vendor who spends their time trying to figure out how to make their OS not-work and how to make it disallow access to my programs and applications, I must assume that they don't understand the first thing about what they're doing.
I know that explanation might sound too clever by half, but I am dead serious. When Microsoft should have been spending their time figuring out how to keep my system running at all times, they were instead engineering a kill switch. It's like if a shoemaker was trying to engineer a shoe so that it could easily be made uncomfortable or made to fall apart.
So my message to Microsoft: as long as you're spending your resources trying to figure out how to make my computer less useful and less reliable, I will not buy your OS anymore. Spend your immense resources on making an operating system that does what operating systems are supposed to do, and I may reconsider.
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but... (Score:2, Funny)
Without that kill switch customers will be left with a slow, buggy OS.
Kill switch is still there if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kill switch is still there if... (Score:5, Funny)
Uh oh, I see a shadow heading your way, and
*rubs the crystal ball vigoursly*
Ah, and it is wielding a chair.
Must be a fun way to conduct a DoS (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose they realized that it would be just a matter of time before someone outside of Microsoft discovers a way to use the kill switch. And then every Internet-connected computer running Vista will die instantly. Hmm... Doesn't sound like such a bad idea after all...
Re:Must be a fun way to conduct a DoS (Score:4, Insightful)
Viruses used to written by basement hackers who wanted to be elite and cool and to show what they could do, and visibly damaging people's user experience drew a lot of attention to them. Now, viruses are authored by hackers payed by organized crime, and they are used to mail spam, steal credit card numbers, and blackmail companies for cash under threat of DDOS attacks. Today's hackers won't bother going after the kill switch, it's not in their interest. They want those machines online, unknowingly marching to their orders like a good little botnet bot should.
End the Era (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent Microsoft, keep destroying the wide spread use of your own OS, frustrating your end users, and alienating the next generation of system/software engineers.
We'll be that much better off.
Coincidence or Related? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have they also somehow altered WGA in XP?
Oh! Shucks. (Score:2)
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Ordinary home users at least in the west will mostly buy big brand machines and get bios locked media that does not need activation.
The people it really hits are enthusiasts who build thier own PCs and modify them at lot, small time PC repair places that must have either have loads of different types of bios locked media or convince
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the kill switch really working? (Score:2)
cut MS some slack (Score:2)
Just to
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"Illegal and Improper" (Score:3, Interesting)
So that means that Microsoft have been getting perfectly legal auctions taken down because they deem then "improper" then.
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Secondly, the quote said:
Microsoft said it had [...] taken down more than 50,000 "illegal and improper" online software auctions.'"
Because English is imprecise, that can have multiple valid meanings.
If we break the sentence down we could get:
Microsoft said it had [...] taken down more than {50,000 [("illegal) and (improper")]} online software auctions.'"
Meaning a number of illegal auctions were taken down and a number of improper auctions were
Shouldn't they be more concerned... (Score:2)
Microsoft probably can't win but must act (Score:3, Interesting)
People can bitch about the apparent tunnel-visioned business model that they adopt with WGA. The fact of the matter is that if the tables were turned and Apple were the most dominant and pervasive OS, there would be similar tactics employed. You bet your life that Apple would hunt you down with their 'iCanDoNoWrong' activation software. It's just that way it is, being a monopoly, good or bad.
Microsoft is in business to make money and do the bidding of its shareholders, period. If one accepts that fact, then expect that they have to do something to protect their interests because it does affect their bottom line. Again, /. people might not care but then again, it's not your bottom line, on the line.
Not so many years ago, Steam arrived on the scene in the PC games world. Everyone moaned and complained. Groups formed to try and find ways to circumvent it (and I suspect they still do). Everyone said it was organised spying because the software had to 'phone home', nobody wanted to activate their game on-line. Now, Steam does a whole lot more than just phone home, it's practically Borg! Yet, I don't really have a problem with it. Maybe Microsoft could use their model instead? It certainly doesn't treat legitimate customers as potential criminals as far as I can see.
I accept that WGA is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. However, if one accepts that there is a global piracy problem for Microsoft to deal with, how would /. people solve it? Don't bother to chime in 'Make it free' or 'Make it Open Source and then I'll pay for it' or 'sell it for peanuts because no-one will pirate it then' - yeah, right. Business is business.
I'm actually thinking of upgrading to Vista today (Score:3, Interesting)
I just upgraded my main machine last month (from athlon 3000xp / nforce2 / 2G ram / 6800gs, to core2quad q6600 / nforce 680i sli / 4G 800Mhz ram / BFG 8800GT) I felt I was reaching XP's limits on what I wanted, namely:
- can't access 4G ram, or higher. Maxes out around 3.25G
- can't run DirectX 10 (this is the total killer, for games)
- also, I'd have to reinstall if I wanted XP-64, so may as well go the whole hog
I use my PC for gaming, and music production (Cubase, etc). Over the last few weeks I've been painstakingly contacting the manufacturers of every peripheral/software I use, ensuring I won't lose the use of anything I currently am used to. That takes care of the driver issue.
The other main issues seem to be memory (4G should be enough for now), and general resource usage. I've looked into it a bit and found a bunch of services that are useless for me and will speed things up when disabled (ReadyBoost, Search index services for example) - but to be honest, this was always the way with any Windows installation - msmsgs, anyone? A bit of tweaking will always be necessary.
Right now, it seems hard for me to find something that doesn't work under Vista, and the new device driver stack, directx 10 and expansion to 64 bit seem worth it to me. Anyone been through a similar upgrade recently and have a story to tell?
No big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
With today's computers and today's work environment who DOESN'T work with or Manipulate multimedia content at some point? How could we possibly rely on an operating system that treats all multimedia content as special requiring extra inspection attempting to verify that I'm not trying to circumvent some nonexistent copy protection.
Windows Vista truly is the longest suicide note in history.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hence the ramrodding of OOXML, which, while painfully boring, is really under-reported in the geek press, like most imortant issues.
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It sucks, but at least the laptop will be usable in the interim. I really hate it when my sister bugs me about her brand new laptop and the fact that Vista has questions about the veracity of the sticker on the bottom of the laptop.
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Re:Slightly better (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah it is strange, you'd think they'd just have the Vista upgrade installer to do a fresh install but ask you to insert your XP CD and type your XP product key for verification. I guess MS just aren't that smart.
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God dammit, I only just got the cottonwool and KY out of my hair from last time.
Re:Microsoft responds with... (Score:5, Funny)