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Options for 'Fixing' A Pirated Copy of Windows
PunkOfLinux writes "My parents are running a pirated copy of windows that my mom received from a teacher at school. My parents want to go legit, and buy a copy of Windows, but they are afraid of deleting everything and having to reinstall all their programs. Seeing as I know you guys will have an answer, I'm going to ask you: What would you do in this situation?"
Buy a Mac?
Just install debian.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
first post? or did i arrive too late?
1 - get a Mac or install Linux
2 - if parents insist on Windows (and I understand them, I'm not a rabid OSS fanboy), get a computer professional to do the backup/reinstall if they can't do it. Seriously, when people lose file, they usually wish they had forked off a bit of money to get it done properly
3 - Whatever they do, don't ask the neighbour's teenager "computer expert", or the wife's brother's cousin who works at IBM: firstly it's embarrassing to ask, secondly it pisses off computer professionals to no end, and thirdly the teenager is, well... I wouldn't.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Whoop, there you go up above. You can change the key. That's what I get for being a Linux user and out of the loop.
Your post advocates a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) An enormous amount of spam will initially go undetected before your idea is effective
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Your idea proposes a solution that only large corporations could deploy
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) The large amount of resources needed for implementation of your idea that small companies don't have
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
(x) Your solution is nothing more than a conceptual remanifestation of a solution that already exists
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) I think it is a creative concept, but there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
I'm stuck with the WGA screen when i turn my computer on. Anyone have a work around?
Haha, funniest comment I've read on /. in a while.
1) The MS way: Buy the new copy of 'winders But beware of the new statement by the "Software Police" [BSA-Business Software Alliance] that "You need an 'original' receipt with 'your name' on it otherwise = PIRATED. That means if you buy it from the local BigBox 'Puter Store for cash = PIRATED, with your bank/credit card = PIRATED. They need to go and make the purchase and ensure that their name is on it. 2) The QUICK way: Download SimplyMEPIS [http://www.simplymepis.org] which is based on Ubuntu with the best eXPee look/feel. Purchase a new 80 gig harddrive [less than $50us on www.newegg.com]. Install MEPIS on new drive [note it is hdb not hda ['winders'] and set GRUB to dual boot. Disable 'winders from the intranetz, just for doing those special programs and games where there is not an alternative for Linux 3) the BEST way: Save all data to CD's or USB Flash. Do a full install of MEPIS and copy data into the home folders 4) the ULTIMATE way: get MEPIS, CentOS 4.3 [http://www.centos.org], get VMware Server [www.vmware.com], create all cd's back up 'winders data to cd's or flash usb install CentOS - be sure to do "development programs" and use Gnome Desktop nothing else is needed. install VMware create VM for MEPIS [use Ubuntu base and set HD for IDE -- NOT SCSI] install MEPIS into the VM create VM for 'Winders - I will not discuss the "license issue" install winders and the "speical needed" games and apps
Must be a slow news day.
This just in: Local man dies of natural causes
God Be Gone
I know most folks hate computers and just want to get whatever they're used to so they can get their work done with the minimum amount of thought. For those people shelling out the money to get legal with Microsoft is probably the best way to go.
But there are a lot of Windows users out there, let's call them "cheapskates," who can't see the sense in paying twice as much for software as they paid for their entire computer. I bet Microsoft's cracking down on piracy will drive a lot of users to Linux. Especially as they learn that Linux is so polished now that it's as easy to install and use as Windows. And it doesn't have to cost a dime. No piracy checks. No phoning home behind your back, no locking you into proprietary file formats. No spyware. No viruses. No other unacceptable bullshit.
There are many excellent Linux distributions, but I happen to use Ubuntu. It's free, it's fast, it's stable, it's secure. It's just better. XP is a bloated, creaking pig. How can it be worth anything when the superior alternative is free?