 RayW
Premium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
clubs:
 ·XMission
| Just assume you are a thief, and everyone is. If the US Government were to demand that Microsoft implement this to prevent terrorists from getting free 'high tech' software, then 99 percent of the people here would be against it. But since it is to prevent 'piracy' and Microsoft is the one invading your space, then a lot of folks here think it is ok.
I personally hate an unknown, potentially intrusive, babysitter program that assumes I am guilty of theft until proven innocent. I also have always wondered if this is just another step toward removing all traces of personal 'ownership' (yeah, I know, we really just lease the code for one price now) and going to a subscription/rental model and not the anti-'piracy' it is touted as?
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. | |
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Wolfie00
My dog is an elitist
Premium
join:2005-03-12
| Re: Just assume you are a thief, and everyone is. said by en102  :But of course it is... you don't 'own' a copy of Windows... you have a license to use a copy of Windows  Give it time, and it will be a yearly 'fee' to run Windows on the PC you purchased. With updates being pretty much essential due to the Microsoft model of shipping software that is broken and/or unfinished, we're perilously close to that already. But it's nothing new: IBM was using "software leasing" concepts ages ago, when they were the ones with the monopoly. Fortunately, and with special thanks to Vista, Linux is looking better all the time.
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"Against stupidity, the very gods themselves contend in vain" -- Friedrich Schiller
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antdude
A Ninja Ant
Premium,VIP
join:2001-03-25
| Re: Just assume you are a thief, and everyone is. said by HiVolt :said by Wolfie00 :Fortunately, and with special thanks to Vista, Linux is looking better all the time. Personally, I'll switch full time to Mac OS before I ever touch any flavour of Linux. What's wrong with Linux? You have to buy a new machine for Mac OS X.
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Ant @ The Ant Farm: »antfarm.ma.cx ... Please do not IM/e-mail me for technical support. Use the forum (I check often)! Disclaimer: The views expressed in this posting are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. | |
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KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·Cox HSI
·AT&T Southwest
| I love how people connected to get an automatic update, and Microsoft's WGA failed, branded their OS as a counterfeit pirated copy, and then (For Vista users anyway) the OS then started "Penalizing" the "Pirate user" by shutting down the features of the OS.
Wonder how many people's keys (Personal and Business) are now listed in MS's banned databases.
Way to go, MS. People hated WGA before, now you just confirmed their beliefs as correct.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| said by RayW :If the US Government were to demand that Microsoft implement this to prevent terrorists from getting free 'high tech' software, then 99 percent of the people here would be against it. But since it is to prevent 'piracy' and Microsoft is the one invading your space, then a lot of folks here think it is ok. I personally hate an unknown, potentially intrusive, babysitter program that assumes I am guilty of theft until proven innocent. I also have always wondered if this is just another step toward removing all traces of personal 'ownership' (yeah, I know, we really just lease the code for one price now) and going to a subscription/rental model and not the anti-'piracy' it is touted as? PPB(Pay per boot) is ultimately what microsoft wants. each license to windows will include a credit/debit card reader which installs in the floppy drive slot.
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
| | magusat999
join:2005-07-08
Oakland, CA
·Comcast
| We are being conditioned and coaxed into feeling comfortable with subscription models right now. The astronomical price of software wasn't just "pulled out of someone's butt" - it's high so that at some point people will rather pay subscription fees than put a second on their home to buy it. Wait until Windows creeps up to $999.99... Vista Unlimited is already close to $700.00; that's not price strategy - that's MS taking a bullet in preparation for what's to come... and it really doesn't hurt that much because the majority of users aren't buying Ultimate anyway.
Think about it - why is it you can buy a Dell system with Vista Premium, for the price you would pay for Vista Premium itself??? Because the retail price of Vista is not based on just "what the market can bear" - it's all a part of the MS prescription preparation program. And it isn't just MS who is doing it - they are only the tip of the iceberg.
There is more at stake with a prescription model than more cash... it's another chunk of your privacy sold off. But in this case it isn't just a snapshot - it's a continuous all access pass to your life - the key that opens the door being your friendly neighborhood banking account... and that's money + POWER. | |
| | axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Cox HSI
| Well duh, government shouldn't be mandating ideas that don't do what they claim to do, in the name of fighting terrorism. Microsoft is mostly a monopoly, but the other 10% of the market can grow bigger because of stupid decisions like WGA. If the gov made them do it, it would be unfair. | |
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LiamJunket
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Ocean City, NJ
·Comcast
|  Problem was fixed & cries for WGA to be eliminated are ....
»blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archiv···256.html
I think it owes them a copy-protection scheme that doesn't uneccesarily inconvenience them, never accuses them of having pirated software when they don't, cannot disable functionality on a legimate copy of the operating system...
In other words, "We're sorry and it won't happen again" is not going to be an adequate response this time around. If Microsoft can't make WGA work, it needs to eliminate it. In other words, if the software isn't perfect 100% of the time it shouldn't exist at all. If the same theory applied to this blogger's postings, we would never have to see posts by him ever again.
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Internet News
My BLOG
My Web Page | |
| | Ikarasu
join:2004-01-09
Port Coquitlam, BC
 ·ITalkBB
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·TELUS
| Re: Problem was fixed & cries for WGA to be eliminated are .... Thinking like this, is kinda idiotic.
How long did it take crackers to get rid of WGA? Not even a week. The only people who suffered because of this outage, are the legit users. The ones who downloaded windows, completely DRM free, didnt suffer at all.
Of course, MS shouldn't eliminate all software protection. But ones such as this, that ONLY hurt their legit users, should be gone.
Go look up whats happening with Oblivion. They put in so much protection, that they have thousands of legit users unable to play, and in 24 hours, it was available online, without rootkits, without instalation limits - Again, the only people to suffer? those who spent the money for the product.
People who pay $300 for windows, and has problems like this, when theres no reason at all too, kind of have a right to complain. Why pay $300 for crippled software, when I can spend 20 mins downloading a fully functional version, that wont break? | |
| | | | | | AnonShawUser
join:2006-06-17
Calgary, AB | Wrong game. You're thinking Bioshock.
Oblivion's only copy protection was a CD check, which is very easily bypassed for any reason at all. | |
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ph03n1x
join:2003-02-15
Sanford, FL
| The problem remains that activation systems such as this have the same blindingly obvious point of failure as the joke that is DRM. When something fails, it only negatively impacts those that have actually paid for the use of the product. Most of the people who knowingly crack said content are never going to be affected by these types of issues. | |
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JoeOnSunset
Doublethink Is Doubleplus Ungood.
Premium
join:2002-11-25
Ormond Beach, FL
| said by LiamJunket :... nothing but the wishes of those who think all software should be free for the taking. This post makes ME sleeeeepy.... | |
| | | | | IsdnWolf
Premium
join:2002-05-24
Cleveland, TN
| Can my family sue Microsoft if i DIE? oK..
Hypothetical situation.
I am in the hospital hooked up to some type of life support running windows xp. Do not laugh, I was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago and the machine I was hooked up to was running XP. (I was not on a life support system though)
WGA comes along and cuts my machine off because it thinks it is not legit. What recourse do we have?
Scares the crap out of me.. | |
| | Ikarasu
join:2004-01-09
Port Coquitlam, BC | Re: Can my family sue Microsoft if i DIE? I imagine hospitals have OEM licenses, which dont need WGA, so it wouldn't have been affected. This situation pretty much only hurt Home users, not companies. | |
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sivran
God Save The Suite
Premium
join:2003-09-15
Arlington, TX
clubs: | Re: Can my family sue Microsoft if i DIE? And even then it only hurt people with legitimate copies. | |
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jtudor
Xm 60's On 6 Freak
Premium,MVM
join:2002-12-07
Morganton, NC
| said by Ikarasu :I imagine hospitals have OEM licenses, which don't need WGA, so it wouldn't have been affected. This situation pretty much only hurt Home users, not companies. That is not necessarily true. My company has over 7000 pc's at multiple locations, and while all of them come with an OEM license, we are not using them.
As soon as we get a new PC, we use SMS to deploy a corporate standard image onto it, using a license from our enterprise license pool.
I suspect that we aer not the only business to do this, and that we are probably in the majority, so saying that businesses have OEM licenses and this does not affect them may not be totally correct.
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Best of luck
"Do, or Do not, there is no try!" Yoda
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sfromsf
join:2001-03-03
Sacramento, CA
clubs: | Re: Can my family sue Microsoft if i DIE? jtudor - I suspect that this is true with most enterprises. | |
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SkyBlue
join:2007-03-31
| said by jtudor :said by Ikarasu :I imagine hospitals have OEM licenses, which don't need WGA, so it wouldn't have been affected. This situation pretty much only hurt Home users, not companies. That is not necessarily true. My company has over 7000 pc's at multiple locations, and while all of them come with an OEM license, we are not using them. As soon as we get a new PC, we use SMS to deploy a corporate standard image onto it, using a license from our enterprise license pool. I suspect that we aer not the only business to do this, and that we are probably in the majority, so saying that businesses have OEM licenses and this does not affect them may not be totally correct. We have been doing this long before win 2k. Thats old school. What company would want there own tech's to do clean installs on each computer they setup. And wait hours for updates ect...
We just used a network boot disk and downloaded the image from our central server and all computers were the same Compaq same crap so it was easy.
When an employee screwed up and got a virus, we just cloned there computer back to the original image. It was covered under a license that they purchased 300 user or more. So if someone did stop buy asking which never happened all we had to do is just show our license and if they wanted to count the pc's we had.
To do otherwise is insane if your a corp or even a small business with 10 or more employees.
Home users have time on there hands.
But XP system restore is a joke. I prefer a product like Norton Ghost, it does a good job. Keeps all headaches at bay. | |
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quetwo
That VoIP Guy
Premium
join:2004-09-04
East Lansing, MI | Microsoft Windows XP and Vista are not licensed for "Life-Dependancy Applications".
The WindowsCE code-base has some exceptions for that | |
| | dave
Premium,MVM
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio
·Verizon Online DSL
| said by IsdnWolf :I am in the hospital hooked up to some type of life support running windows xp. Right. Because it would be a totally sane idea to allow a life-critical system to update itself from the Internet at some random time, without rigorous testing of the changes. Medical equipment designers surely permit that sort of thing all the time.
You recourse: sue the designers of that equipment for reckless endangerment. | |
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SickofWGA
@gulftel.com
 from:
StreetSpirit
| Microsoft Program Manager Losing Sleep Over WGA Ya know , I pay thousands of dollars for my software and I for one am sick of this "you are a thief until we prove otherwise mentality." If Microsoft can't get it right with all the resources and programmers they have....these lame excuses they offer just don't cut it....and WGA is one of the worst. | |
| rdmiller
join:2005-09-23
Richmond, VA | No problem on Saturday afternoon I accidentally ran a WGA update on an old XP computer early on Saturday afternoon with no problem.
Apparently the problem started Friday evening and was 'officially' fixed about 6 pm on Saturday. | |
| | Dolgan
Premium
join:2005-10-01
Sun Prairie, WI
·Verizon Online DSL
1 edit | Re: No problem on Saturday afternoon No, it was not fixed as I got the stupid validation prompt today, 8/26/07, when treid to boot up. The real annoying thing was that the product key was not recognized when I typed it in, then the numbers on the phone activation screen were incorrect so I got redirected to an agent. He only had to validate the first 6 numbers on the screen and asked if my software came with the PC and weather or not I was using it on multiple PC. Took about a total of 6 minutes, so was quick--it is still annoying I would have to go thru this crap with a legit copy, and will probably have to repeat on all 3 computers we are running at home{all OS came with each PC when purchased seperately}. | |
| | | TurtleFan
join:2003-05-03
Wyckoff, NJ
| Re: No problem on Saturday afternoon Microsoft phone calling has always sucked for me..
As someone who does not know the most advanced or even mid level program repair fixes, in the past it was just easier too reformat and get it running again with a fresh install. I had the time so it wasn't like I had something better too do.
However, while it was ten times nicer talking too english speaking reps, they where almost always rude, with a 'WHY are you re-installing this AGAIN?' type attitude that I remember one lady had. Think Lunch Lady Doris on the simpsons only meaner mannered. Now with the call centers overseas, they are nicer, but I STILL get strange reactions from them sometimes, and occasionally I just can't understand what they are saying with the thick accent.
Maybe someone can start a news campaign or phone campaign with angry users threatening too switch too Apple or something and that will get their attention. As someone else stated, I should not have too 'call in' each time I replace a CPU or motherboard. Although I would much rather buy a new copy of Windows than call tech support. | |
| | | JerryTongue
join:2003-04-01
Auburn, WA
| I have had no trouble with them Other than the fact most are hard to understand and hear I have had good fixes with them. I bought a PC for my son with Vista Ultimate on it, some of his stuff didnt work so I put XP back on it, well now some of his games coming out are Vista only and they made fixes for the things he had issues with so I went to reinstall Vista. Guess what? He took the key # off the tower so I didnt have it any more, I called Microsoft and after talking with 3 people I was all taken care of. I had to do this once before with XP because I was unable to reinstall, made a call and they fixed it for me. As of now I have had good luck with Microsoft. | |
| | RayW
Premium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
clubs:
·XMission
| Re: I have had no trouble with them (Or the shotgun theory) said by JerryTongue :As of now I have had good luck with Microsoft. Yes, some people do - and some people do not, just like a flock of birds in the pattern of a shotgun blast.
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. | |
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PolarBear
The bear formerly known as aaron8301
Premium
join:2005-01-03
Riverside, WA
·CableOne
| One guy?!? This is the second largest company in the world, with hundreds of thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of customers that could potentially be extremely negatively affected by this, and ONE GUY pledges to not sleep until it's fixed?!? Not an entire department, not a special group, just ONE GUY?
Reason #2 why I refuse to run *GA and show Micro$haft my papers.
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There comes a point in your life when you get tired of fixing everything and wiping everyone's ass. But it’s not giving up. It’s realizing that you don’t need certain people and the bullshit and drama they bring to your life. | |
| | Ikarasu
join:2004-01-09
Port Coquitlam, BC
·ITalkBB
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·TELUS
| Re: One guy?!? 1 guy, posted on his blog saying personally he wouldn't sleep. I'm the furthest thing from a Fanboy, and hate Microsoft with every bone on my body, but you cant take one guy saying he personally wont sleep, as he's the only person working on the problem... :P | |
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PolarBear
The bear formerly known as aaron8301
Premium
join:2005-01-03
Riverside, WA | Re: One guy?!? Good point. I just would have expected Microsoft to make a statement saying that NONE of their *GA guys would be sleeping (or a similar guarantee that they are on top of it) until it is fixed. | |
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Sterling
IP Support Tier III
Premium
join:2003-05-30
Pittsburgh, PA
| Re: One guy?!? No kidding I would have thought they would have pulled the team off of Windows 2015 x128 to make sure this gets done post haste. Plus they and other company really need to stop using there customers as beta testers, unless we are going to get paid for it. For example a recent update earlier this month prevented a decent amount of people from being able to get on the internet. Companies need to start becoming a bit more careful when implementing changes that can cripple cause problems on someone system. | |
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Johnny
Premium
join:2001-06-27
Atlanta, GA
·Comcast
| Why? Windows users are leaving in droves. The Apple retail stores are packed. Apple had 17% of the notebook sales last quarter. Apple forums which had almost no switchers for years now have several switchers every day asking for assistance.
I will never understand why you people continue to put up with this nonsense. | |
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FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD
1 edit | Re: Why? ^lol. ooooooooooooooooooooooooook.
(as I type away on my PC)
WGA server issue minor problem; you bought the OS legit, still have the box, proof. Still have the case, proofer. Still got the DVD, proofest. Installed, activated key only to get shafted, hot fix coming right up. Its not the end of the world. I can compare this to the steep learning curve of switching from one OS to another, be it wackintosh or Linux.
No biggie, didn't hurt me in anyway. | |
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Johnny
Premium
join:2001-06-27
Atlanta, GA
·Comcast
| Re: Why? I understand if people are stuck; what I don't understand is why people would voluntarily subject themselves to this crazy stuff. Mac and Linux have none of this copy-protection, registration, calling in, re-registering for changing a computer, malware, etc. It's the most amazing thing to watch.
By far the most common reason given by recent switchers, though, is that they were just fed up with the whole Windows mess. | |
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Not_Wealthy
| I will never understand why you people continue to put up with this nonsense. One word: Price. Apple systems cost waaaay too much compared to the systems you can buy at the big box stores or office supply stores (and there's usually one on sale every other week or so).
But I will say this, Linux only has to get a little bit better for me to boot Windows to the curb forever. I'll spare you my diatribe on what Linux needs to do differently to attract Windows users *cough*stop telling people to use the command line, it's not the 1980's*cough* but I am so sick of Windows that I'm seriously thinking that the next time I have to do an OS reinstall, I'm going to see if I can live with Linux. If only Wine supported a few more programs... | |
| WangFubar
join:2003-10-02
Paradise, CA
·AT&T DSL Service
| WGA had its desired effect here Since the patch du jour always tries to slide WGA in I just turn off auto update altogether and then disable the warnings on every computer I touch. I got tired of removing the WGA crapware which offers nothing beneficial and hurts performance in more cases than not. Id rather be exposed to exploits than be hobbled by worthless background processes. | |
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Woody79_00
join:2004-07-08
| oh well it happens
everyone crys about WGA...look i don't like wga, but it is neccesary...
see up in this thread a kid talking about "ripping off" Windows?
Its his and people like him fault not Micrsoft's!
if people would be hoenst and "pay" for the OP system instead of ripping it off WGA would not be needed...
look when Windows XP was released, pirated copies made up less than 5% of all copies, in 2006...that number had risen to over 22%!...Microsoft had "No choice" from a business perspective...but to institute WGA...to protect their interests.
So don't blame Micrsoft for WGA...Blame the gentleman above me in this thread and others like him that rip things off and expect everything to be free...instead of paying for it! | |
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Razzy
join:2002-10-29
| Re: oh well Yep I wish people would understand that failing WGA makes sure their O/S key is not a stolen one. Not to fuck with you. Failing WGA in Vista just makes it lose AeroGlass, ReadyBoost, MS downloads and Windows Defenders auto protect. XP would lose MS dl, does it has the other 3 options? Both will display banner at bootup.
It does not log you off. It does not shutdown. It does not stop any of your usage. You can still play your silly games. Only non-activated system will. There are two different reduced functionality modes - »support.microsoft.com/kb/925582
I do agree this shouldn't happen though. | |
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Microsoft Program Manager Losing Sleep Over WGA
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Re: One guy?!?
