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Microsoft Sued Over WGA

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the phoning-home dept.

Hope Thelps writes "The Seattle PI is reporting on a lawsuit being brought against Microsoft in response to their WGA spyware. Groklaw is also covering the story. Although there are a lot of similarities to Sony's rootkit, the actual harm done is less concrete. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out."

18 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Cytlid · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I just only wish there was an alternative..." typed the man in his slashdot repsonse on his Linux workstation.

    --
    FLR
  2. Turn & drop trowsers please by HotBlackDessiato · · Score: 5, Funny

    How can an official component of Windows be spyware? It's their operating system, they allready own you if you use it. Pull down your pants and get it over with allready.

    --
    "If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
  3. How do Microsoft Programmers sleep at night? by jonr · · Score: 4, Funny

    A: On a pile of money.

    1. Re:How do Microsoft Programmers sleep at night? by asuffield · · Score: 3, Funny

      How do Microsoft Programmers sleep at night?

      Microsoft programmers sleep during the day. At night they go out and prey upon the living.

  4. jokes? I love jokes by MrSquirrel · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey, at least the Sony rootkit comes with music!... this thing comes with worse: Windows!

    --
    A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
  5. Re:Is the bias necessary? by shodai · · Score: 2, Funny

    You seem to have missed the bandwagon.

    Turn around boys, we missed one!

  6. I'm confused by mark-t · · Score: 2, Funny
    Since when does Microsoft have spies in the World Golf Association?

    DOH!

    Oh... was I supposed RTFA? But wait... this is slashdot.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  7. Re:Interesting... by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 4, Funny

    Me too. I love when lawyers teach people a lesson by getting rich.

  8. NOT SPYWARE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Look everybody wga is NOT SPYWARE. I ran Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware Beta on WGA and it came up CLEAN. So drop it okay?

  9. In other news Jack Kevorkian sues dev of "killall" by Netw0rkAssh0liates · · Score: 5, Funny
    Frankly I don't care who's suing them. I hope that many people jump on the bandwagon to sue them. I would like to see them fight it out to the end, instead of taking a settlement. I want a verdict against Microsoft. Something that stops them or other companies from doing things like this in the future. However, most people are only after the money, and hence will just take a settlement. Nobody is in it because they think MS is a bunch of assholes and should pay.


    In other news, Jack Kevorkian sued the developers of the POSIX-compliant 'NUX commandline program "killall", citing that the application didn't really kill "all" the programs on the computer but instead should be renamed to "killnothingbut". This intellectual Advantage(TM) of Kevorkian stemmed from his introduction of the oft'quoted uber-leet commandline tool "kevork" which injects null pointers into the code and data segments of all programs that are non-responsive to the "TERM" and "KILL" flags. Kevorkian was unable for comment on whether this is a closed or open-source application, though it was rumoured by his assistant that it is a simple library replacement with a namely-fassioned symlink to killall that the library determines based at runtime with argv.

    Sincerily,
    John "kill'em'all" Dahmer
  10. Won't work! by one_red_eye · · Score: 4, Funny

    The thing is my hijacked copy of Windows XP won't even download updates because it has an 'invalid key', so how are they going to deliver the WGA?

  11. Re:Remove WGA by Xtifr · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here's a better article on removing WGA. :)

    (I actually prefer this article on removing WGA, or this one, but I freely admit that they're not for newbies.) ;)

  12. Re:Interesting... by twitter · · Score: 1, Funny
    Personally, I'm more interested in seeing justice served than a particular outcome (i.e., Microsoft getting slapped).

    If you don't think M$ deserves a slap, you have no sense of justice.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  13. In Soviet Russia...... by kicks-ass · · Score: 3, Funny

    ............You own Windows

  14. WGA's ok by me by musther · · Score: 2, Funny

    I really don't see what all the fuss is about, if MS want to make sure your copy of windows is legit, then fine, after all, you bought into their crap. And for all of those people who actually did buy into it, getting rid of the illegal copies makes forking out the money seem a lot less painful, for those who didn't, how can you expect it to work, you stole it. Nobody would mind if Ford introduced some tracking gadget to help stop car theft... ...well, maybe they would, but I'm sure not so many would. I hate MS as much as the next slashdotter, but the endless moaning about WGA is really starting to get to me.

  15. Re:WGA unable to detect bad keys with legit COAs by caluml · · Score: 2, Funny
    Now, a few years down the road WGA is going to force me to reinstall--now that I have many important business apps installed.
    calum@womble ~ $ uname ; echo Ha Ha\!
    Linux
    Ha Ha!
    calum@womble ~ $
    --
    Get your own free personal location tracker
  16. Re:WGA removal utility? by Darth · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey - I thought you'd been "Window$ free for over 10 years...."!

    maybe he meant he's been using windows for free for over 10 years.

    --
    Darth --
    Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
  17. Re:What is WGA? by /dev/trash · · Score: 2, Funny

    Windows Genuine Advantage.

    You know because that Pirated version doesn't crash as well as the good version.