Paul Thurrott Bitten by WGA

suntory writes "Paul Thurrott, one of the most important Microsoft advocates, has been bitten by Windows Genuine Advantage. As some Slashdot users have reported, Paul installed a bunch of updates in his machine and now Microsoft thinks that he is using pirated software." From the post: "Truthfully, I can only imagine what triggered these alerts. The software was installed to a VM a long time ago and archived on my server. I no doubt used a copy of XP MCE 2005 that I had received as part of my MSDN subscription. If the WGA alerts are to be believed, it's possible that Microsoft thinks I've installed this software on too many machines, though that seems unlikely to me. I can't really say. Anyway, that's what it looks like to be a suspected pirate. Like many people who will see these alerts, I don't believe I did anything wrong. I'm sure that's going to be a common refrain in this new era of untrusting software and companies. Ah well."

Comments

That's a shame

[Rik Sweeney]

I think it's a shame that Paul what's-his-face got busted by MS but

Oh forget it, I'm so drunk I can't think of anything intelligent/funny to write

hypocracy

[Clockwurk]

People bitch and moan about a Microsoft software program that is designed to stop piracy, but when Apple ties its OS to specific machines via a treachorous computing module, people are strangely silent.

Doesn't MS need to recover their R&D costs too??

If MS tied OEM versions of windows to OEM computers via "trusted" computing would people defend them?

Why is pirating windows good and pirating OSX bad?

Microsoft bad, Linux worse

[PHAEDRU5]

I'm forced to use Linux on one of my work boxes. As long as I don't have to do anything to its configuration, I'm ok. When I do have to change its configuration, I'm screwed. Mostly because I'm surrounded by a collection of clueless Linux bigots.

Typical conversation:

"I need to install an update."
"Use apt."
"What's that?"
"Look it up."
(much looking up, installation of rpms)
"apt doesn't work."
"Sorry, can't help you. Try yum."
"yum? What's that?"
"Look it up."
(much looking up, installation of rpms)
"yum doesn't work."
"Sorry, can't help you. Try apt."
"apt? Already tried it."
"Sorry. Can't help you. F*in' newbie."

or

"My access to CVS is running really slow."
"Try iptables --flush"
"Why?"
"I don't know, but when I do this, CVS access is much faster. F*in' newbie."
"O......k...."

In my experience, Windows works out of the box, pretty much all the time. And when I have a problem, most solutions are only a google away. Linux may be a better OS, but it's not the better-supported OS. Had I the chance, I'd never use it. Well, I'd be happy to hand over .ear files for deployment. That's about it.