Microsoft Talks Daily With Your Computer

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that it needs to better inform users that its tool for determining whether a computer is running a pirated copy of Windows also quietly checks in daily with the software maker. The company said the undisclosed daily check is a safety measure designed to allow the tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage, to quickly shut down in case of a malfunction." The EULA is suppose to disclose this daily call-in feature. Lauren Weinstein, who is co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, was one of the first people to notice the daily communications to Microsoft. Report from Yahoo.com"

Comments

Re:What kind of bullshit excuse is this?

[diegocgteleline.es]

I've an alternative: Buy a fscking windows license (it'll keep checking daily if you've a pirated copy but it won't annoy you because it's _really_ a legal copy).

Just because it's Microsoft doesn't means people should pirate it. Why people goes crazy when a company closes the code from a "hello world" opensource project but nobody says anything about pirated users? And don't tell me "Microsoft allows pirated copies on purpose". I don't care, using a illegal copy of windows is illegal and Microsoft doesn't matters, period. In my opinion, Microsoft should release a update to pirated versions which formats their windows partition.

Oh, hovv very Thoughtful of Them.

[twitter]

Microsoft wants a safety switch in case this tool starts causing PCs around the world to explode. Thus the program checks with Microsoft once a day to see if it should shut itself off.

Fan-fucking-tastic! M$ is finally going to turn off all their spambots and DDoS units that regularly explode their portion of the net. What? It does not do that and they don't care? Yep, no change detected.

Here's the quickest way to turn off this Gary and Ace "tool".

We at Micro$oft

[WolfZombie]

Dear Customer,
We at Micro$oft have decided that you have been driving in an illegal manner in your car. Therefore we have decided to disable your vehicle until you stop driving in illegal manners. No, we do not care that you are currently traveling 70 MPH on the interstate; you are going to be shut down. We are not responsible for any side affects caused by this disablement, or in the event that this is a false positive on your illegal driving manners.

Thank you customer, and remember you can avoid this in the future by purchasing our fully disabled Vista vehicle for a low one time price** of $X.
Micro$oft

**One time price is subject to the Micro$oft licensing policy and the vehicle may be disabled at anytime if the EULA changes with or without user notice.