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Microsoft Misrepresenting WGA's Functionality?
Legal Ethics writes "According to an article on Groklaw, Microsoft is misrepresenting what the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool is to pressure people into installing it. It comes with no uninstall, it fails to disclose many pieces of information it provides to Microsoft, and it misrepresents itself as a 'critical update' when it does not address any security vulnerability, although it remains to be seen if it can create one. ZDNet has a series of screenshots so that you can see exactly how badly it misrepresents itself. Oh, and it also checks for updates, so Microsoft can presumably execute arbitrary code on any machine with it installed, merely by making that code part of a WGA update."
what crap...
Of course, Microsoft can already execute arbitrary code on any machine, merely by making that code part of... Windows.
#define SLASHDOT_STATUS_WHYISTHISNEWS 1
I fail to see why legit users of xp should care.. pirates.. yea, sucks for you. But hey, you shouldn't have stolen xp in the first place. oh well, it bit you in the ass.
So what?
This is America. With absolutely no exaggeration, if you do something that's illegal, it's just fine if you're sufficiently large.
Nope. Linux is far from having all the functionality of Windows. Sure, if you use it for work, or for school, then you can find programs that can do most things, but you will not find Quake 4 or World of Warcraft on Linux. Gimp is no paintshop killer, and WINE is nowhere near as robust as a real Windows system.
The mods must be dabbling in the crack again. The above was modded flamebait. The truth hurts, doesn't it?
The truth is, the software may be out there, but getting it to actually work on Linux is a different problem altogether. Did you check to see if your video card has open-source drivers? It doesn't (and most of them don't)? Tough. Even if it does, you'll spend hours upon hours editing config files, installing packages, and generally mucking about trying to get it to work before it actually does. If you post to any of the online forums, you'll likely be met with a loud chorus of "RTFM!!!" Of course, all of this will involve recompiling your kernel multiple times, etc. These are things that are difficult for techie people. My mom could never get it going in a million years and nor would she want to spend the time trying.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Linux by any means, although I do think there exist far superior FOSS operating systems. I just think many Linux people don't appreciate the amount of dinking with it that is required to get it to effing work. "I just want it to work, I just want to watch my stupid DVD!" was a common laement of mine.
In the interest of effeciency, I skimmed out the parts of the original post you don't really need to read. Now you don't even need to RTFA (though I'm sure you would have otherwise).
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
This is going to be hard to say, but I'm afraid I'm leaving you. I've been reading about WGA for a couple days and I've decided we just can't continue our relationship. I'm going to do the hard thing and wipe Windows from that beautiful featherweight Dell laptop I bought last year, you know the one. Exasperated when trying to install the security upgrades a few weeks ago, I gave in and let you put WGA on it. At the next boot, I had to wait a really long time to actually use the machine. I knew I shouldn't have caved in, but it was late and I was feeling kind of lazy. I hope you enjoyed your visit.
So now it will Linux. I'll have to do some research on which flavor installs easiest on an X1. (Maybe someone here has a suggestion.) I didn't want to make the switch because it's only my travel laptop, and it didn't seem worth fussing with the drivers and the power management and the idiotic hotel connections. But I can't take this anymore.
It's been swell.