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Is That Pirated Software?
underpar writes "According to this ZDNet.com article, Microsoft 'has launched a pilot program in which some visitors to the main Windows download page are being asked to let the software maker check to see whether their copy of the operating system is licensed.' The check is not required, but after the desired 20,000 users go through the program they might change their tune."
I just walked past a copy of WinXP Home Edition in a "Bargain Bin" at Costco, on sale for $299 CAD... so who are the pirates? Linux is free. I could see maybe $99 or something, but it's overpriced and bug ridden. So if you want to know why people are not paying Microsoft, it's a no-brainer. If it's overpriced, loaded with bugs and unstable in any way, paying for it seems like shooting yourself in the foot. Every time XP shows the blue screen of death, I get buyer's remorse.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
So once again the ones that Microsoft leaves in the cold are the unwitting consumers who had their grandson install it for them.
Common sense says to me that if I've purchased a copy of Windows XP Professional then I've bought a right to use Windows XP Professional, so therefore I should be able to install Windows XP Professional from any install CD, whether it is mine or not, and still be perfectly within my rights as a holder of a licence to use Windows XP Professional.
I'm sure the law doesn't agree with me, but I don't tend to take much notice of laws which don't align with my (quite reasonable) idea of right and wrong. In that situation, on my own machine I wouldn't bad an eyelid and on someone else's machine I'd inform them of the situation (after doing a little more research than I obviously have here) and let them decide, and I'm sure their expectation would align with mine.
Fortunately, I don't use Windows XP Professional, so this will not be a problem I will have to face in the near future.
I fail to see how asking me if Microsoft can snoop around in my PC is going to give me a "better experience". It will be a worse experience, if for no other reason than having the experience interrupted to ask the privacy-invading question.
The only upshot of this is that hopefully people will start to realize the hidden costs they are paying, and start to dislike MS. People might start to investigate alternatives. Once you get burned by this, you will always make sure that you have your licence key and install disks, or try something else.
This will only create a negative perception of MS in the eyes of people who see computers as a necessary evil in their daily lives. MS is doing themselves in with their own greed. I will take pleasure in watching these psychopaths slowly destroy themselves.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I bet microsoft is watching IP addresses. If they see you turn around and leave when confronted they make a note. If they see a cluster from some company then the BSA will get a phone call. Obviously no one with pirated software and a brain is going to let them search. But of course it might uncover some cases of "shared" software between several computers.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
..is windows piracy. If it WAS cheap enough, people would pop for the Cd and install it.
I got some nifty proof, too, a similar large company gives away it's disks, and has for years now-AOL. They afford it on the margin of a certain small (but still over-all large) segement of the population who will install their software and sign up for net service.
Microsoft could sell the OS on a disk for ten dollars or something like that, and charge another ten a year (something cheap) for updates, and still be billionaires.. Most folks would buy the disk and the legit key then. Note I said most, not all, but I think most would buy it, at least in western/industrialised nations with a decent enough median income.
Their price is not only ridiculous, it's outright scandalous. It's an affront to anyone who's thinking. If their products didn't come pre-installed on new computers, there's no way in heckfire they would sell for what they are asking. Keeping it as a "stealth" product via bundling and collusion with the vendors has been the ticket to their success, off the shelf sales are most likely no where's near where they make most of their money, at least with the base OS. 95 and 98 people were standing in line to get, by ME it slowed down, 2000 hit the doldrums, and XP although on maybe 1/2 the active boxes on the net came mostly with new machines when folks upgraded hardware. It's just lost any "new/shiny/gotta haveit" appeal, because we are 20 years into mass computer adoption now, 10 in a large way. People just aren't as gullible any longer. They'll upgrade with a new box, and that's it, as long as MS lives in delusion land where a simple computer OS is somehow "worth" well over a hundred dollars heading to 200$. Not happening when an entire new computer can be had for not much more than that..
IMO anyway-anyones MMV of course
That's the absolutely most insane thing that Microsoft is currently doing:
Forcing OEMs to include "restore CDs" instead of installation media.
That is absolutely, utterly, completely insane. That, in my book, negates any problem with "pirating" XP after purchasing a computer with XP installed, because they've taken away your ability to install XP by itself without all the bells and whistles the OEM throws in.
This is an important point, because I've worked with Sony laptops that fail to work correctly with mission-critical software unless you blow away the installation and then redo it all by scratch, skipping the installation of the problematic software that Sony does not let you uninstall from the default setup. And Sony's reputation for worse-than-worthless tech support is more than justified in my opinion (crap, at work we even bought a support contract and I swear we're talking to the exact same group of front-line naysayers).
So what do you do in those circumstances? "Pirate" XP so you can use the software you're already licensed to use? Or give in to the Microsoft hegemony and give them even more money by purchasing an additional copy of Windows XP? Which do you think Microsoft expects you to do? That's right, you must give them money.
Sorry, but my vote, in all of those OEM instances, is to "pirate" XP. If Microsoft doesn't like it - then they can change their OEM licensing. That whole "people are selling OEM CDs on eBay" excuse for hobbling every computer owner is not defendable. Punish the people who commit the crime, don't arbitrarily punish everyone who might possibly commit the crime at some future point.
As far as what information Microsoft can harvest? Come on, it's an ActiveX control. They could harvest anything. Office 2003 activation codes, Windows XP activation codes - anything, everything.
What are they going to do with this information? Hasn't history taught you enough about what they do after gathering this information? Seriously. Since this is all implemented through ActiveX controls they could forseeably corrupt your software installation after finding "pirated" codes.
So much for their overhyped "security initiative" - it's obviously back to business as usual in Microserf-land.
This brings up a good point. Software companys want (and get) their cake and eat it too. They get to treat software like physical property when it suits them - for instance, fighting fair-use backups. But then they treat it as information when it suits them - for instance, licensing an individual user, as opposed to a single instance of software itself. So which is it? I would lean towards information, and not physical property.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
As much as everyone here "hates" Windows, it seems *some* here actually use it? Windows and Microsoft have a lot of problems. But that does not give you the right to steal it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Obviously not many people, legal or otherwise, are going to click "yes". My guess is that Microsoft doesn't care. I think what they're trying to do is gradually acquaint users with the notion that these checks will become gradually more commonplace. After awhile, they may become compulsory. After all, if you heat the water up too fast the frog hops out...
1. They have a right to deny service to the folks who have pirated copies.
2. If you have a legitimate copy you have nothing to worry about.
3. If you have a pirated copy and have nothing against Microsoft go buy a legal one NOW.
4. If you have a pirated copy and are against Microsoft, then STOP USING WINDOWS instead of whining that it's overpriced, bug-ridden and poorly designed. There are at least TWO alternatives right now (MacOS X, and Linux), so there should no longer be any excuses.
Linux is not nearly good enough for general home desktop use as a Mac or WinXP machine is.
You have to remember that most of the millions of people actually using Windows would have no idea how to edit config files, init scripts or do kernel compiles etc to get their system and software working.
In no X desktop system I have seen there are enough GUI options in the control panel to manage your hardware and software.
Say what you want about Linux but usability is far from as complete as it would be needed for most people.
Hipocracy is nothing new when it comes to growing roots.
Hell look at Metallica, they wouldn't be where they're at now if it weren't for distribution of copied tapes (shudder). Then they go and sue the late Napster for getting their music out there even more.
$20 for a metallica cock ring... You know you're rich when you buy a car and it comes with a mexican house boy. - Quoth Lars from a certain flash movie.
Oh yeah, pick up a copy of WinXP Corporate, it is possible to find legal copies on the internet. You don't have to register with XP Corp.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
For windows and office, they have a market dominance and their goals should be to keep that. They may be "losing billions" to piracy, but that's all imaginary numbers because they assume people would pay for it if they couldn't pirate it. If someone is pirating it and they get scared, they have two options. One is to fork over hundreds for a real license, or try linux. If they try out linux and like it, then Microsoft is worse than when they starting this scare campaign.
Microsoft should keep to the goals of keeping everyone addicted to their software so they can't switch to something free.
I'm not condoning piracy, it's immoral and wrong. But Microsoft's strategy should be to keep people hooked, not get every last bit of revenue on their golden goose. Their biggest fear should be the one guy who switches to linux, not the five people that are using a copy they downloaded off the Internet.
if you're talking PC, why wouldn't you install XP? Win2k was an OS for the more technically competent.
I don't know about the OP, but I don't trust copy protection software any further than I can spit a rat. Back when I was on the Apple II, I was playing a game called Wizardry when the copy protection software decided that it was only going to let the program boot on one particular floppy drive... and that one was going bad.
I ended up getting a cracked copy written over the original master floppy. Cracked, so the copy protection wouldn't fire, but not pirated... I only had the one copy and it was on the original media.
I think I've used copy-protected software maybe two or three times in the intervening twenty-odd years. And that's only been games... I'm damned if I'm going to boot a copy-protected operating system.
Incidentally, I ran into one of the Wizardry authors many years later, and told him the story. He thought it was pretty funny.
I set up my laptop recently and had to turn this ON from being off by default.
That being said, I don't get bluescreens OR reboots in XP in the whole time I've had the laptop, save once, and that was on the stock install. After reinstalling a fresh XP (day one), I have never had a single issue, and I keep my machine running for weeks at a time (not counting downtime for hibernation when going from home to the cafe).
If you get bluescreens in XP, check your drivers, update what you can, and see if there are any incompatibiliities, because on any hardware I've run, I've never had a problem, except from ATI drivers on an old All-in-Wonder Radeon.
I blame lousy hardware for pretty much every bluescreen in XP, because on good hardware, it's rock solid.
--Dan
The problem is that most hackers are rabid about Linux because it's phenonmentally powerful if you code a bit.
They don't understand why the average Joe doesn't get excited about Linux. The average Joe doesn't get the benefit of all the great CLI tools out there, so Linux is, at best, just a decent XP alternative, not something that quashes it into the ground.
If you just use the GUI tools on Linux and don't give a damn about the politics involved, it isn't *that* amazing of a system. It's just a decent OS without a number of commercial apps that people want to play with.
Naturally, every hacker looks at people that aren't using Linux and thinks to himself "what are they thinking?". For a programmer or a hobbyist or a hacker or a sysadmin, Windows is an infinitely worse OS. But most people aren't any of the above -- and Windows lets them navigate to the application that they want to use and open it.
I like Linux, and use exclusively it as a desktop system. Those of you familiar with me know that I like Linux quite a bit. I think that it might become the defacto desktop system in a couple of years. But it won't be because it's mind-bogglingly better and people are just reluctant to switch. For *hackers* it's mind-bogglingly better. For average folks, it's just another alternative.
May we never see th
That's why you just install a version that bypasses the activation scheme. I'm glad I've never had to deal w/ that unnecessary BS.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I used to upgrade bits and pieces frequently, but I learnt my lesson when XP forced me to phone Microsoft(tm)(r) when I transferred my OS from a 20gb to a 40gb hard drive (within the same machine) I felt like a naughty schoolboy explaining to teacher why the dog ate my homework, and any company which is willing to put computing professionals through that kind of shit is really, really stupid.
Recently I purchased an Athlon 64, new motherboard, dual 120 gig SATA drives. I ghosted my WinXP partition onto the new drives, rebooted and got through the 'activation' rubbish by allowing the machine to phone home and report its new config. (The old bits won't be running the same OS, they're destined for a Linux box) I lay awake that night, listening for the sound of the front door splintering as jack-booted thugs came to take me away. Fortunately, nothing. They were probably busy dragging away some old dear who really did install her copy of XP onto two computers.
To be fair to Microsoft(tm)(r), they have every right to protect sales of their software. To be fair to me, I have the right not to use it, not to recommend XP to anyone I know. I can spend my time burning and distributing CDs with OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird to Windows(tm)(r)-owning friends/relatives so that in a year or two their data will be out of Microsoft's(tm)(et-bloody-cetera) clutches.
It is a seriously bad move for a company to treat all customers like common thieves. Imagine if your employer made you turn out your pockets before leaving work each day, to make sure you hadn't stolen company pens or a valuable stapler. That's how this product activation rubbish makes me feel.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Microsoft doesn't care if you make fair-use backups of your Microsoft install media. In fact, you're often encouraged to do so
I'll have to give MS credit for that one, unlike those copy-protection Nazi gaming companies that geeks love.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Ummm...you lied. And when they check your HW ID, it shows that your HW has changed from the last install. A case swap wouldn't change any of that.
There is sense in the madness.
If you answer No, when the answer is Yes, you are guilty of perjury, and may be arrested/deported on that charge.
Simply having some communicable desease or being a drug addict is not enough for a deportation, since by themselves these things are not against the law. Perjury gives government greater leverage in these situations, for good or bad.
badness 10000
....is that Bill Gates gets his greatest wish. I hopethat both Windows and Office become uncopiable - I really do. I hope for this with all of my soul. MS is king because everyone got it for free - make them pay - and OS will rule the day.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Win2k didn't require activation but XP does.
Kind of ironic that only users who legally aquire their copies have to go through the activation scheme.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Baloney. The IBM Compatible PC was a cultural and economic landmark as significant as the Ford Model T. Microsoft rode that wave to dominance and never looked back.
I had an almost identical experience. On the first call, I got ticked off because I let my actual opinions guide my words. Typically, this is called "the truth" or "being honest." My brother just checks email and goes on the Internet occasionally. I saw NO REASON why I should spend money on an additional license for somebody that never uses their computer.
I called back and made sure my words were coated with honey. I was able to activate the operating system using that route. Basically, their stupid licensing games made me a liar and I HATE lying.
Now that I have a better understanding of my brother's computer habits(typical surfing, email, word processing), Microsoft won't get another lie from me. If I'm administering his system and Microsoft decides that his copy isn't legitimate, Linux will be the next operating system on the machine.
We aren't the only people that have figured out how to con Microsoft out of a serial. It makes me think of stories I've heard about Cuba. They let you get away with this and that like they don't know what's going on. Then one day, you try to get an employment or social position and somebody doesn't like you, they laundry list every offense against the state that you've ever committed.
Activation creates a nation of liars. Even if you are legitimate, you'll have to lie eventually to serve your household. Nice long-term thinking by Microsoft. Kudos to the mofo that came up with the scheme.
Laws are for people with no friends.
It's copyrightable like a book.
It's patentable like a mouse trap.
It can hold trade secrets, like a glass of Coca Cola.
The consumer has to "sign" a contract to use it, like a cellphone account.
Advertising pitches can be included for a captive audience, just like a movie theater.
It's artificially expensive, like a diamond.
It's a recurring source of support revenue, like a lawn service.
It's creator can disavow all liability for anything that may go wrong, and get away with it, like... I can't think of anything else like that!
Nothing else can do more than a couple of those things. Software is just too good to be true.
MS released a corporate version of Windows XP (along with Office XP and Office 2003), IMO, for two reasons:
1) Mass VLK rollout for large corporate networks where SysAdmins don't care to be bothered with an activation every time a new machine is installed/re-instralled/modified. This BY FAR the main reason MS did this.
2) corporate keys can be used to get the "file sharing effect" of illegally distributed copies as a mass marketing effect among those who would never have bought WinXP or its bretheren products anyway, but will have their friends/aqaintences become interested by seeing it in use. This idea is allluded to by you in your statement of "I believe MS likes having everyone use Windows, whether it's paid for or not."
And it is probably true.
But let me add that I believe that is a mere fringe benefit of software piracy to Microsoft. Microsoft would, IMO, fully prefer to have all of those who use its software aquire it in a LEGAL FASHION a-la sales or tranfer of ownership of a legally aquired product from a previous owner.
Before we all fully bash MS for its product activation I would remind those who will now mod me as troll that MS products did not used to require it. It was implemented as a response to truly massive and casual software piracy among Joe average users and people in the workplace. MS has stated before that Product Activation was never intended to stop pirates who are determined not to pay for their products in the first place, but rather to discourage casual piracy and educate users of what does constitute software piracy (for those who actually did not know, and they were quite a few). And if it pissed off illegal users in the process, well, I can't imagine how this could have caused MS to lose any sleep (there goes my karma again.)
Yes, the product actiavtion is a real pain. No, it doesnt stop illegal software sharing and distribution (read as: software piracy), but yes, it has, in fact, curbed casual piracy and was a legitimate, if not short sighted response, to illegal distribution and outright software piracy.
I don't mean to wholly defend Microsoft against it's nasty, Draconian, fairyland EULA agreements, Anti-Trust violations, Pac-Man Style if-you-can't-beat 'em-buy 'em aquisitions, breach of contract with its "affiliates" (read as: beholden subordinates), stifling of innovation via it's monopolistic sumo-weight throwing, or its sorry-ass excuse for a browser.
But they do, occasionally, have perfectly valid reasons for what they do.
If I had a real
You forgot one important piece of info-the BSOD still occurs! Automatic Restart does not prevent the blue screen from appearing, it just reboots the machine after the memory is dumped to disk. During the memory dump the friendly neighborhood blue screen still appears with the KMODE_ or whatever error message.
So you're saying that people sitting in front of their computer are not going to notice a blue screen, even if only appears for 10-30 seconds? Sheesh! Plus most users leave whatever appps they're working on running and just lock their computer overnite. You think that users wouldn't start to notice the long login procedure and that their apps are no longer running if their machines were BSOD'ing overnite? Double sheesh!
FYI, Win2kProf automatically reboots by default after BSOD's also.
That's what pirating is all about.. making it easier for the users. I think lot's of people outside the US are willing to pay for shareware apps that they use a lot but don't have a creditcard and going to the bank to transfer something like $25 is way too much effort.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think MS should allow updates for "pirates (arrrgh)", but this is just bunk. I would like to know just exactly _how_ this would "provide a better experience" for me as a legit customer?
This is a tough call, I wouldn't expect _any_ commercial company to support "pirates (arrrgh)" stealing their software. However, MS WinXP is not the most secure platform for the Joe-Average-Home-User. If Joe-Average-Home-User gets a "pirated (arrrgh)" copy, that just adds one more exploit for spammers, one more spyware, adware, virus infected PeeCeee out their hurting the net.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
You know, this astroturfing is getting pretty boring. "You should upgrade to XP...", etc, etc. The problem is, I PAID FOR MY COPY OF WINDOWS 98. That copy appears to be defective, it crashes all the time. I want a replacement. Where can I get a copy of that wonderful XP, which fixes 98's problems, at no extra cost?
OTOH, maybe that "upgrade" may not to be as effective as the astroturfers claim. Since they readily admit that XP crashes when it gets "spyware" or "improper" drivers, I'm not so eager to get XP. Because Linux doesn't allow spyware to get into the system and improper drivers are simply ignored by the system, rather than crashing it, I believe I already have my upgrade that really fixes Window 98's problems at no extra cost, after all...
Kind of ironic that only users who legally aquire their copies have to go through the activation scheme.
Well that depends on what you think Microsoft is. Viewed as a private club their actions make perfect sense. Only the members have to go through the trouble of joining. You can sneak onto the course and play night golf, but if you get caught there may be consequences.
I don't agree with those consequences or even the registration at all...just pointing out the way I think about Microsoft.
Now isnt that contradictory?
does any one know the XP serials that have been blocked by M$ coz they are pirated serials?
Why does yahoo do this
You forgot the best part about software - you can make copies of it almost for free.
I agree with almost all of your other points, but this statement is simply not correct. Windows backwards compatibility has always been excellent. Hell, it's one of the few systems where people expect to be able to run 20-year old 16-bit DOS binaries and scream and holler when they no longer work.
In fact, Windows backwards compatibility with x86 binaries is what most computer historians acknowledge as the vehicle for IBM-compatible PC dominance for the past decade. The fact that new versions of Windows would continue to run old binaries (without patches, without recompiles, etc) has probably done more than anything else to keep businesses buying Windows so that ancient, proprietary business software will keep running. This saves lots of money and hassle, believe it or not. I know businesses still running on 12-year old DOS software because it still works.
However, I think that today this legacy software is starting to see its demise in favor of web applications which are largely platform-agnostic. So Microsoft, IMHO, spends WAY too much time worrying about breaking old software.
I've heard it explained in many ways, but most people tell me that they're afraid of being sued. Real, for instance, sued Microsoft claiming that changes between Windows 98 and Windows 2000 "intentionally broke" their player. So now MS is paranoid.
XP, for instance, has this insane system loader that can actually PATCH broken apps before they are run. Just take a look under the registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol\Session Manager\AppPatches". Every key listed there gets special treatment when it is executed on your system. There are even some binary blobs that are overlayed at specific memory addresses on-the-fly.
Microsoft has an entire division in Windows that works on Application Compatibility (AppCompat). If a bug is found in a Win32 API, and the fix ends up breaking ANY vendor's app, then either an app workaround is created or the fix is backed out. I think that's horrible (backing out fixes because it might break some old program), but it amounts to putting backwards compatibility ahead of fixing bugs.
Contrast this with Macintosh, where for years people EXPECTED to have to purchase new versions of Adobe Photoshop whenever a new OS or new hardware came out. This has allowed Apple to introduce dramatic changes over the years that broke tons of apps, but improved their systems' capabilities dramatically. Ditching the 68000 for PowerPC, for one. Switching to OSX was another radical change. In both cases they tried to have a "compatibility layer" for old programs, but lots of apps still broke. The win, however, was to take a gigantic leap forward in platform capability.
I was going to mod you into oblivion, but I just HAD to reply.
If the entire Microsoft organisation (which undoubtedly employs some of the world's finest software engineers and quality assurance experts) can't make Windows run stably, what makes you think that a bunch of geeks on Slashdot with no access to the source code, and bound by a license that makes reverse-engineering and patching of Windows illegal are going to be able to?
I couldn't agree more - and here's my philisophical rant:
This page is 7-8 printed pages of the 'FAQ' for terminal services licensing. It's obtuse, complicated, not clear, but critical to get the damn stuff to function properly. Not one word on that page has anything to do with making my business more efficient, better, easier, anything... it is all about maxmizing Microsoft's revenue stream.
Excuse me, but I obtain tools to perform MY objectives, not someone else's.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Microsoft has a database which has a list of all valid keys sold
Oh yeh, and they employ Uri Geller at the backend to detect (using the mind-power) when the credit card sale goes through, before quickly typing it into some Access form...