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Microsoft Blocking Wine Users From Downloads Site
IamTheRealMike writes "In January, Microsoft announced a new anti-piracy initiative called
Genuine Advantage. From this summer onwards all users of Microsoft Downloads will be required to validate using either an ActiveX control or a standalone tool. Yesterday Ivan Leo Puoti, a Wine developer, discovered that the validation tool checks directly for Wine and bails out with a generic error when found. This is significant as it's not only the first time Microsoft has actively discriminated against users running their programs via Wine, but it's also the first time they've broken radio silence on the project."
Is Firefox secretly paying for this great, new marketing strategy?
I hate parties with no Wine...
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Don't drink and download.
Unknown host pong.
"At Microsoft, security is our number one priority. You should turn off ActiveX controls and click 'no' to any dialog boxes. Service Pack 2 adds protection against these ActiveX controls, and with Windows Server 2003 ActiveX controls and other harmful content are blocked by default. This is for your own safety."
"Ignore all that, turn ActiveX on again, else you won't be able to download from us!"
What the hell?
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
"Read your EULA's closely people."
I can't. My kids clicked on the "I Accept" button, and there's no way to check on the EULA now.
Bill: "Hey Steve ! What goes with penguin, red wine or white ?"
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
What do you actually download via Microsoft Downloads? Updates to th OS? Updates to Programs? What?
If you're running Wine, and you are prevented from d/ling SP2 or something, well, so what?
On the other hand, if you're running Wine so that you can run your legal copy of Microsoft Office on your linux box, and you can't download updates to Office, then this is rather unfair.
Would someone enighten me as to what exactly Microsoft is preventing? I don't use windows so I'm not really sure.
... `till WINE won't run.
Good old Microsoft.
Same as it ever was.
...since I'm running Office on my Mac!
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
"Windows Genuine Advantage already helps protect millions of Windows users from an inferior computing experience, viruses and other vulnerabilities that can result from counterfeit software."
You should only have the inferior computing, viruses and vulnuerabilities that result from Genuine Windows products. Don't be fooled by immitations.
Wait there's more....
I hate parties with no Wine...
However, keep in mind too much Wine on a party might turn "it" Microsoft.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
When Windows XP was being coded they had a party and TOO MUCH wine.
I was forced to go buy Dos 6.0 and then it ATE MY DATA!
.. and concluded that FORMAT wasn't really a great tool to convert old data to the new standard.
Let's create a worm that creates this key in the registry and have fun: SOFTWARE\Wine\Wine\Config :)
You run 5000 web servers from your Gentoo workstation?!? Wow, I need to switch distros!
Beer users still have no problems getting to the site.
Brilliant move, Microsoft. Now some dweeb living in his mom's basement will write an ActiveX virus that creates the Wine key in the registry, then exits.
The next time you go to Windows Update, whether you run Wine or not...
It's another prod towards the apathetic that would be content to use Windows 95.
Apathetic? More like masochistic.
Oh the pain I endured trying to use that operating system. It was a brilliant training tool for the public. Years later when showing friends stuff under Linux or NT4, they would worry about me running more than 3 or 4 applications at a time.
"Are you sure you can do that? Isn't it going to crash?"
Flamebait it may be, but that is what they said to me.