Malaysian Police Not Roping Longhorn Rustlers

Artifex writes "CNN/Reuters reports that an early release of Microsoft's next operating system, 'Longhorn,' is already being sold openly in markets in Malaysia, with local police doing little to stop it. Microsoft's response, of course, is that consumers should steer clear. I'm sure this chaps their hides, as crashing copies of this as-yet-unreleased product are sure to cause dilution of branding."

Comments

Buggy Leaks

[skajake]

Most of these are simply the same Alpha leak build 4015 that has been available on irc for months.
They do NOT include WinFS, WinFX, and are extremely buggy.

Re:Buggy Leaks

[Daengbo]

Are you in Malay? Here in Thailand, you see these disks everywhere. People apparently try to take them and use them as real production servers. It is beyond belief.
It is totally sick that I can always buy the newest build of some MS OS, but I have to scour the whole IT mall to find the six month old release of Linux distribution X, if it is there at all.

Re:It has to be said

[aborchers]

So how does that make the pre-release "Longhorn" version any different from, say, Windows XP?

I generally hate to jump to Microsoft's defense, but have you actually used Windows XP? Just curious. I run XP Pro with a major mismash of hardware and have crashed it maybe twice in the two years since it shipped, fewer than the number of times I've crashed X on the RedHat 9 partition on the same machine. Admittedly, crashing the UI system shouldn't nuke the OS, which is what usually happens w/ Windows, but IMHO XP was an incredible improvement in stability over Windows 98 SE, which crashed a couple times a week and would never even shut down properly...

Re:My 0.02 ringgit on the issue

[DNS-and-BIND]

No, it's because Malaysia is a repressive, prudish Islamic nation. Been there. They have newspaper ads like the following: "Apartment for rent. Females only, under 30, no children. No Chinese or foreigners." I'm not kidding.

Pirated software is quite openly sold on the streets and in shops. I loaded up on CDs when I was there a few years back. If the cops wanted to shut down illegal copying, they could do it in a heartbeat. But no, they'd rather enforce stupid laws like anti-porn and anti-drug laws, than actually do any good.

Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Longhorn is at least 24 months away (according to the presentation I sat through this morning) so whatever anyone buys and runs today is worlds away from the finished product...

Won't it be the PDC build?

[Zone-MR]

The latest build is 4051 not 4015. It was launched at the PDC two months ago.

Here is a little review I wrote: http://www.betaone.net/index.php?showtopic=29402

Re:Aww, that's a shame!

[Anonymous Coward]

MS really should sell a cheaper $40-60 OS for cheap PCs. When the OS is the most expensive component...there's a problem.

For those $3000 machines with the $500-700 CPU and the $350-450 video card...the preinstalled price (usually much less than $200 [that's retail]) of Windows XP Home is just a drop in the bucket. Frankly, I'm surprised some people who just want to run a single processor gaming system op for the Pro version (which is way overpriced for what it adds).

Re:Microsoft PR

[Tagren]

Microsoft gave away this version at the PDC for 'free' to all devs there to pound on and tell ms whats wrong with it as early as possible. I even think the offer it right now on MSDN for the Pro and Universal subsribers.

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Re:Rumour?

[advocate_one]

You're partly right...

MS/DOJ: Judge accepts most of settlement agreement

"The "remedy" ruling is in effect for five years unless the court chooses to extend it, and orders Microsoft not to retaliate against computer makers who offer competing software products with the PCs they sell."

Judge Goes Easy on Microsoft

"In a related matter, Kollar-Kotelly ordered Microsoft to disclose and license communications protocols used by clients running on Windows to interoperate with Microsoft servers. The company is also required to disclose APIs and technical information that Microsoft middleware uses to interoperate with the operating system, but the disclosure provisions fall far short of the states' requests."

DRM is not subject to the order

"Microsoft does not, however, have to document, disclose or license APIs (application programming interfaces) or communications protocols that would compromise the security of systems used for antipiracy, antivirus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication."