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WGA — Too Many False Positives
An anonymous reader writes, "Microsoft insists that its Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy program is nearly flawless. But that's not the impression you get when you visit the company's WGA Validation Problems forum. Ed Bott at ZDNet went through 137 problem reports submitted there during a two-week period, each one accompanied by the output from the official Microsoft diagnostic utility, and found that 42% of the people reporting problems were actually running Genuine software. From the article: 'One large group consists of people who, for some unexplained reason, were displaying cryptographic errors related to digital signatures. The problem is so common, in fact, that Microsoft representatives have a canned response they paste into replies to forum visitors who appear to be showing false positives caused by these errors.' In a related story, the first WGA errors from Windows Vista and Office 2007 have appeared in the wild."
42%? I guess that is why WGA should be described as "Mostly harmless" rather than "nearly flawless".
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
It's more than likely that one of the very few problems you could experience with this software is that it gives you a false positive--therefore a high percentage of forum posts are based on this problem.
Honestly, do you think that every person who used this with success went straight to the forum boards and posted "Success! Thanks Microsoft!"?
Wait, you're trying to tell me that a software program run on thousands of machines has failed in some cases!? No fscking way. That never happens--WGA should be error free--this is unacceptable.
In the software world, 137 problems on say 5,000 cases of average people using your brand new product is "nearly flawless." I would guess 50% are user error, 42% false positives and 8% other.
How is this news? Come on guys, I hate Microsoft as much as the next Linux user but I'm not blindly stupid about it
My work here is dung.
Think of it this way. 137 users in 2 weeks. How many users run Windows again? I am not defending WGA however it is not extreeme as it may seem.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Back in July(?) when Microsoft issued an update to the WGA tool, I figured I may as well install it (I'd be forced to eventually) on my one Windows box. So I installed it, and rebooted, and the login screen proclaimed loudly that Windows was not genuine. (Well, not literally loudly, it didn't shout over the speakers or anything -- which would be an interesting deterrent, now that I think about it.)
This came as something of a surprise, given that:
I logged in, did some searching on Microsoft's knowledge base, and found a link that said something like "Validate here." I clicked on it.
To my surprise, it told me my copy was perfectly valid.
I eventually concluded that Norton Internet Security had blocked the initial validation attempt. Because there was no desktop shell, there was no opportunity for it to pop up a notice and ask me if I wanted it to let the data through.
After that experience, I can't say I'm surprised that Microsoft found many of their false positives to be the result of security software. Admittedly, they were looking at registry changes, crypto problems and McAfee, rather than a transient error with Norton.
those who can read statistics and those who can't.
There is no way you can derive a headline like "WGA giving 42% false positives" from a statement like "42% of the users that reported problems with WGA ran genuine software". 42% of the problems sampled should not have triggered problems, but that's all, there's no insight how many attempts of validating your Windows license there are.
There are at least 10 people who don't understand this: One slashdot poster and one slashdot editor.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Did you know that 95.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I know people have attempted such a scheme with music. Has this been attempted (recently) with software? I'm not talking about weak protection -- Quake 4 can run without a CD/DVD by running on Linux, and without a (unique) valid key by adding one entry to the host file. I'm talking about none at all, like open source software, but for profit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
How many false negatives they have?
Does this mean that all MS-Windows computers MUST be connected to the Internet to run now?
Really, 90% of them are currently connected, but sometimes...for safety's sake, I like to keep one completely disconnected from the Internet and feed it updates manually via CD-media.
Wild guess here -- people with legitimate software are a lot more likely to submit problem reports than people with bad copies are to post "My 1337 w4r3z w0n7 w0rk! G00d j0b!"
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Just the other day, some /.er was trying to say that Linux isn't ready for primetime. While this might be taken out of context slightly, it doesn't look like Windows is ready for primetime either. More to the point, the differences between OS's is more a case of how many problems and what type of problems you are willing to put up with. I can't see this story as anything but a boon for the various Linux distributions, and of course, for Apple.
One facet of this comparison is that Linux (generally) does not claim to be perfect, or the best operating system to have. This, to me, looks like the playground bully trying to recover from having his pants fall down around his ankles.
While WGA is a plausibly good idea for someone that sells their software, the implementation of it has left a lot to be desired.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
How many false copies of windows pass as authentic?
Haha... Vista RC1 just decided to stop working one day, even though I had a legit validated key from Microsoft (I called to have it activated).
I just booted it up one day, and it said "Your copy of windows is not activated". The best part is that it refused to accept the unlock key generated by the automated phone system!
Good thing I didn't have any important information locked up on it!
-Tom
Hmmm, I wonder how long it will be before someone is able to get Wine to run the WGA utils well enough to get accepted as genuine.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
That's when WGA says the copy is non-genuine, and Microsoft's Genuine Advantage diagnostics tool disagrees and says it's genuine.
What I don't get is why they don't just take the flawless detection code from the diagnostics tool and put it into WGA.
WGA should not exist. It causes hassle for paying customers, that's all. Pirates find their way around. If it worked perfectly, it would be bad enough, but if even one legitimate person is locked out of his computer, MS has some serious explaining to do.
I heard that there is a class action case on this. What is the scoop on this? And if you disable WPA, what does that do to your machine (for WU updates)?
I've never had a case of a WGA false positive, and I've only heard of one through the grapevine. I don't doubt the modus operandi of this article and I believe that the 42% is valid, but one must rememeber that it's not 42% of PC's being dubbed non-genuine, it's 42% of all PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine, which is (relatively) small, probably something less than 0.01% of all Windows PCs.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
WGA -> Would've Got an Apple if I knew then.
In my neck of the woods two people in my family are thinking of a full out change and so are a few of my friends. It's obviously not just because of WGA. It's a lot about a growing feeling of insecurity and anger at a company that just doesn't seem to care a damn.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Just compute the md5sum of a bunch of critical Windows files and make sure that they match the genuine values. That will reliably tell if you've got a genuine copy or a cheap knock-off.
I see no advantage. Even if you have a perfectly valid copy of windows, there are really two possible outcomes:
1. System works fine, and your copy of windows keeps working just as before. No added benefits.
2. System stops working due to problem with WGA.
Given that there is no benefit and the possibility of a downside, I fail to see why you would choose to install or use such a technology if you know about it. It is a move with only a negative expected value.
SSL Certificate
Is Windows drug like in nature? It keeps doing things to people, that said people don't seem to like. Yet they keep coming back. I used Windows since 3.1, I never really liked it..but always thought that it was the best thing out there. As soon as I found that things could be better, I slowly moved away from Windows. I am now free enough of Windows that I don't suffer any of these problems that people seem to complain about regularly. It's like windows is the abusive husband, and you all , Windows addicts, are the abused wife....get help people.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
IBM pulls OS/2 from the market, recommends Linux.
Microsoft pulls Windows from the market, recommends FreeBSD.
IBM starts selling chips for XBoxes to Microsoft, who start selling XBoxes and make a living out of Age of Empires.
"IBM Personal Computer" market collapses, leaving Lenovo and Dell competing for the contract to assemble XBoxes for Microsoft.
Intel go back to making '4004' microcontrollers for the next moon mission.
As was proved based on the last hullaballoo about WGA, claims of problems are seriously exaggerated, generally by people who aren't personally experiencing problems or by people with illegitimate installations of Windows. I've deployed thousands of Windows XP workstations over the years, with extremely varied configurations and I've only encountered WGA problems on two of them, which were possibly caused by hardware issues. Excluding systems I've been responsible for deploying (both OPK/OEM, RIS and manually), I've yet to encounter a client network that has had problems from other manufacturers. This "news" has been reported ad nauseam on Slashdot... I call it BS.
Maybe this is a conspiracy theory but hey - this is possible so why not mention it.
Could it be that MS is hoping that some of users that aquired MS Windows legaly (as MS likes to speak - genuine) will see this warning and go buy MS Windows *again*. This could boost like 1% of sales - but it is still something in their scale.
On the other hand I administer few dozens of Windows boxes, they get all the patches (including WGA "patch") and none of these reported as non-genuine. And these are not all the same - some used boxes, some new from different vendors, some self-built, few on VMWare and so on. So I personally cannot share the "42%" experience.
But after all this MS Windows activation/codes/stickers/WGA - and so on - bullshit is only getting on my nerves. In my country what makes software copies legal is the license (which can force the way of use (commercial/home) but not something such stupid as stickers) and proof of legal buing. Not some stupid shit that is actually more pain in the ass for legitimate users than is for pirates.
Are you really that much of an idiot to not know that unless you specify the base, numbers are written in base 10? Don't you find it inconvenient to operate in society?
I spent a weekend fixing my brothers Dell computer that suddenly started reporting that it wasn't genuine. After fearing the worst (a spambot) and after much effort and some unhelpful calls to India for support and Windows activation I determined that M$ had pushed down an bad update that broke ActiveX which WGA apparently REQUIRES to run. After re-registering a bunch of M$ DLLs Windows update and WGA worked again and guess what the first update M$ wanted to push onto the machine was, you guessed it, an update to WGA. Probably to fix the problem they created in the first place. WGA is a joke and whoever wrote the code for it should be shot.
we shouldn't be complaining, cause everybody knows that the consumer is far from being as important as fighting computer piracy.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Galactic Civilizations 2 was shipped sans copy protection, and did rather well. Pretty good game, too. Shame it's not Mac compatible.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Way back in 2001, when I was in college, I purchased a copy of Windows XP legitimately through my school's student software purchase program. Because of the way the program was administered at the time, I received a copy of XP Pro Corporate with the University's volume key. The license gave me the right to install the software on one personal machine indefinitely, even after graduation.
Two weeks ago, while trying to update, WGA popped up and told me that I was a victim of software piracy and that my version of Windows was not legitimate. After 2 hours on the phone with clueless MS reps, I was "accidentally" disconnected by the tech without being given a resolution. 5 minutes on Google and I "resolved" the issue on my own. When a company makes it nearly impossible for someone with a legitimate copy to report an issue with WGA and have it resolved, they're just going to have more and more people take the actions I took. Morally, I'm convinced I'm right. I paid for the software, I acquired my license legitimately.
Here at home, out of my 3 PC's connected to the network and internet, 2 of the 3 PC's are currently running pirated copies of XP and have safely passed WGA and currently get their updates flawlessly via AutoUpdate at MS. The reason that is not 3 out of three, is last month I had to replace my HDD, reinstalled my legit, retail WinXP Pro cd, went to MS updates only to be barred from updates and activation because they determined my retail cd was pirated- have had it running on old HDD for 3 years prior with no problems.
The reason the other two are running pirated XP was an experiment after the legit pirated fiasco on this PC.
I decided I had had enough, booted into FC5, repartioned the drive to all Linux and haven't looked back.
Don't care what Vista is like, as I will not even reinstall XP anymore. This weekend, both of the other PC's will get their XP partitions deleted and go back to dual boot Win98se and Ubuntu only. The XP partitions are too small to be more than barely functional, so no sense in trying to leave them running.
So here is 3 sales/upgrades that MS won't get.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I worked in a small local computer shop for a couple of months this summer. The following happened to me two times during that period.
Some customer would bring in a computer that wouldn't start. We determined that the motherboard was faulty, and replaced it with a similar one.
Windows starts up, everything works, except it wants to be re-activated again. Online activation fails, so I phone Microsoft, enter the forty-something digit number, reads the product key to someone, who then tells me that they are very sorry, but no, for some reason they cannot give me a re-activation code, so I will have to reinstall Windows in order to get it working with that product key. However, changing the product key works fine.
So I call the customer and explain the situation to them, and let them choose between:
1) me taking their harddisk out, attaching it to our backup machine, backing up all their stuff, reinstalling Windows, and all their programs, and all updates, then restoring the backups, and
2) buying a new xp home license,
they both chose option 2. That way they would get their machine back with their entire configuration intact, and if they chose option 1, all that work I would have to do would take so long time that they wouldn't be saving much anyway, compared to buying a new license.
This only happened these two times; most times when we replaced a motherboard, either the reactivation over the internet would work, or the phone representative would give a working reactivation code.
But these two customers payed for a new XP Home license even though they owned a fully legal one already.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
My question would then be: if it's working, how many of you even bother to visit Microsoft's forum to post "Thanks, it worked"?
Usually, when a fix works, people move on, and don't go back to forums to confirm things are working.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I've had exactly this problem - my copy of Windows is as genuine as you can get (MSDNAA Download) and yet WGA still reports it as being an illegal copy. What's stupid is that Windows Update, the WGADiag tool *and* the Firefox WGA Tool MS provide all identify it as Genuine.
I've used one of the many hacks (Removing execute permission for the Local System account to the WGA files and then deleting them) to remove WGA from my machine and now I only use MBSA for my patching. It's a little long winded, but it's infinitely better than the hassle of being repeatedly told that my copy of windows is illegal when it clearly isn't.
Whenever I see someone give a percentage for that, it's different every time. What's up with that? Is someone tracking these, or something?
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
It offers no benefit to me. Why would I want that installed when I have a perfectly good copy of XP Corporate Edition? I don't give a shit about the latest media player, or IE7. Sure, I take the critical updates when I'm offered them but that is all. I ran the WGA tool and of course I am not a valid user of Windows XP. Saying that though, I am a legitimate owner of an XP Home license. Which I haven't used in years, I keep the keycode safe though. I used XP Home for a while, but I found it restrictive for my needs; so I installed a bootlegged copy of the corporate edition which has always been fantastic.
If MS sold their software at a lower price they would generate more sales that would compensate for the low price.
I know so many people that say "I would buy windows, if it didn't cost hundreds!" If they sold the pro edition for a cheaper price then they would sell so many more that it would compensate for the few that did pay the higher price. I'm not in marketing, I'm in accountancy, so I know about economic curves and I think MS is just milking the corporate market for as much as they can. If they opened up their 'pro' systems for lower prices I am sure their sales would increase as well as their revenue.
MS alienate potential buyers with their WGA and high prices. Set your prices low, and sell a bundle. Look at your profits, M$, you're not "hard done by".
I am sick of Windows, but I'm even sicker of the geek who assumes that just because he switched his home computer—or even his office server—over to Linux that anybody should be able to ditch Windows whenever they feel like it.
There is a real world out here, and in it there are thousands of small companies that have to use computers to communicate with their customers and suppliers and to keep up with their competitors but that are too small to afford even a part-time IT guru. Companies like that have to buy their accounting software, their production software, their shop management software, their design software—and what's for sale out here in the real world only runs on Windows.
It's not, "can't be bothered to jump to a competitor". There is no competitor, not realistically.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
"nothing is as aggravating as realizing how many of the problems are intentional design decisions". You said it.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
I notice a decided lack of responses to this post. You know why? Because Linux users never have a real response for stuff like this other than "Run it under WINE!!!1!!"
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
What happened to WINE and Cadega? And don't forget the rumors about Apple implementing the Win32 API in Mac OSX...
Start pestering the makers of these programs to start working on porting them. The more people start making a racket about being tied to one OS and demanding that their money be given a choice, the more software companies will listen up and start working on giving us all freedom of software
The unexamined life is not worth living
After this post, you can almost hear the geeks sharpening their slide rules and gnashing their retainers together, can't you?
what is M$'s incentive to fix this when the bugs mean they sell more products?
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
While I won't claim that every company can move everything to linux I'd suggest that the vast majority can. IT Managers buy Windows because they always have, their users are used to it (hell, they're used to it)
There used to be a saying that no one gets fired for picking IBM ...the same is true for MS. Sure it has problems, but they're problems that everyone accepts now, and introducing linux will remove some problems and introduce some new ones...and one of those might get you fired.
Ernie Ball moved his entire organisation over to open-source. So it can be done. And he says the move is saving him money.
"I know I saved $80,000 right away by going to open source, and each time something like (Windows) XP comes along, I save even more money because I don't have to buy new equipment to run the software."
-- Ernie Ball
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Even when you call them on the phone and are 100% legit they dont do much for you. " Your only option is to reformat and install a freshly purchased copy" " have a nice day and thanks for choosing microsoft"
And no im not kidding, im heading out to 'repair' the very user that called microsoft crying for help. Its far to easy to just change your # then reformat..
Screw them and WGA.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's 42% of the 137 reported problems, not 42% of of all WGA installations.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Similarly, if you are locked in anyway, what motivation is there for Microsoft to fix anything? If you can't even threaten to jump ship then what are you? A galley slave. That oar you're chained to, it's called Windows.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Wine isn't perfect. Some Windows applications do not work well under Wine.
Linux with crossover office. WE run all of those PLUS the Crestron Suite of apps for automation programming under linux + crossover office.
Oh wait, you did not even try did you.
I guess I'm late to the party... when did they implement WGA on Office? That doesn't make any sense, does it? Windows I can understand... nearly all computers come with it, so gone are the days when people would bring home their copy from work to install. They are basically trying to collect from the no-name vendors that were selling PC's with pirated copies. Now, Office, on the other hand is too expensive for most home users... it doubles the price of your PC! I always assumed that this pricing was deliberate to milk the corporate market, and that they wanted to encourage people to take it home to increase their market share. The move to enforce WGA on Office completely nullifies that argument, doesn't it? Do home users actually buy Office?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I was upgrading a friend's notebook with a freshly purchased OEM WinXP Pro disk (he needed to be able to get on his company's domain & WinXP Media Center Edition didn't cut it) & had a similar problem, the Product Activation wouldn't accept the license key. Oddly enough using the original WinXP MCE license key on the bottom of the notebook worked fine.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
If your requirement for switching your OS is that everything else on your computer has to be exactly the same, your requirement is that your OS stays the same. Have you actually called any of your 3rd party software venders and asked if they provide a Linux client? Have you asked them what it would take to provide a Linux version? Have you looked to see what other software options are available, open source or otherwise?
I certainly agree that Linux isn't the same as Windows. Making the switch isn't as easy as downloading your distro of choice. And for many companies, it certainly may not be cost effective to make the switch. However, I have the good fortune to work for a company that doesn't arbitrary assume Windows is the default OS for every computer. Yet it was because I bothered to ask the difficult questions and go the extra mile when required that my company finally started looking at the cost of the software it was running, and the questioning the actual value it provided.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
But you make a few points I'd like to answer:
All of the IT consultants we've found are: 1) Windows specialists; 2) incompetent; or 3) both. These are probably the same choices facing many other small companies in many other small cities like ours.
Again, I'm talking about companies that are too big or too technical to do everything with foolscap and quill, but too small to have an IT manager.
I'm happy for Ernie Ball, really. But does Ernie Ball use CNC programming software? linux.org doesn't list that many choices for CAD/CAM software. In fact, the only listing for sheet nesting software, PN4000, links to a dead site. If we switch to OSS, what guarantee do we have that a critical specialty application won't go unsupported next week?
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
And below, not a minute after your post, as if to prove your point, "Run it under WINE!" ;-)
That's a great article - thanks for that.
Best. Analogy. Ever.
Um, not to be a jerk but does it make sense that most of those who are tring to pirate windows software aren't going to report their WGA problem? The only way to get a real result from this is to know every single incident in a timeframe.
This is like 42% of heroin users reporting that they got ripped off in a buy to the police.
Just two percent of the 5+ million people with camera phones could capture 100,000 of the little "XP 1-2 processor" Product ID stickers in plain view on the sides of computers at banks, government agencies, small businesses, etc.
2% is probably a low end figure for the public engaging in piracy via multiple S/N.
If the false positives were indeed "too much", you'd watch it on CNN, since Windows is used aggressively throughout the world in homes, hospitals, businesses, schools and so on.
Instead, you read about it here on the Slash-haha-Microsoft-sucks-dot blog. Therefore, nothing major to worry about as of yet.
Now of course WGA is a major annoyance. It can also be argued that Microsoft inflicted this on themselves by allowing piracy flourish under the table while whining about piracy in their official channels. Now that Windows basically owns the world, they are here to reap the rewards by taking active measures to protecting their IP.
But Microsoft doesn't want us to be so annoyed with Windows so the majority of us consider to move. So if the WGA turns out to be a disaster, a guy should flip a switch at Redmond, and the WGA around the entire world will deactivate in less than 24 hours (this is a built-in protection).
Not my topic, but what the heck...
You know, OSS does not need to mean free. Why not donate part of what you save on lincensing to those OSS developers? Or fly them out on a junket? Or give them a leftover PDP POS in your storage that you've not fired up in years?
You are not a fool, so what guarantee can you expect from the developers that give their work to you open and free, at their loss, without any reward, often not even trivial thanks and appreciations.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Some???
Your joking right.. In my humble opinion, wine is a piece of shit.
Computers aren't many thousands of dollars anymore, buy a $300 emachine, and run windows on your office computer if you need to. Come on, get real.. who can't afford to buy windows that needs to be running it?
I can go down to Walmart and BUY a computer with windows and be just fine. If I need to run Peachtree. I have a small business myself (Am a partner), we have about 6 Linux servers.. 1 is running PGSQL, one is running Resin/Java... the rest are running Asterisk. We put them into a 1/2 rack that we pay $400 a month for. We have a office full of windows workstations for our Customer Service, though all of them are using Windows & Xten phones for SIP taking incoming calls on Asterisk from a phone provider who has a sip gateway. Yes , we are windows friendly... but shit.. come on!
We have an accountant that keeps our books in order, taxes in line.. she uses Peach-tree. if someone thinks a -real- business is going to have a hard time paying $375 for a low end dell, with windows.. to do NOTHING but run Peach-tree... they have their head on backwards. You will spend more than that in man hours trying to get some linux goon trying to get whatever wacky-ass hack-accounting package to work.
Windows is a commodity, cost of doing business. Running Linux or Mac is nothing more than a luxury, being a linux/java programmer myself.. I don't see any savings at all, I find nothing more than comfort in working in my own familiar environment (My Mac doing Java programming and voiceapp work on Asterisk for Linux servers).. but that's just as expensive as a MSDN membership and paying for windows licenses on servers...
I was at a computer gaming place called Zero Hour near my home today, and one of those pesky messages came up. Now one of their machines will be down for quite some time. The manager said that it has happened before and hopefully windows will be less stubborn than usual.
My family has been adamit users of the auto update tool for years, as was I. During my junior year of High School my now 10 year old Dell crashed and died. A couple of my friends were nice enough to fix it for me and they put a legal VLK copy of Windows XP Pro SP2 on my system (they asked to borrow the High School's VLK image CD and they were given the OK). 3 months before my Dell's video card started to die, I got the WGA pop-up. Being in college now and having no time for a WGA shutdown, I busted the security by restoring to a pre WGA time frame and had no more problems. I then preceded to turn my auto updates to notify and continued the download process like normal. After the video card in my Dell died, I built my first ever PC and Windows XP Pro SP 2 Retail showed it's true colors to me. After a month and 12 reformats Windows finally works, but the WGA isn't on this system because I found out from a very reliable friend that after only 2 installs a Windows copy (same disk and key) with WGA gets shutdown. So for those of you out there with WGA on your system beware.
There's the innovative new secret web site called 'Google'. The first page of results returns half a dozen commercial fully supported linux CNC solutions.
If you actually wanted a linux based solution you would've taken the five seconds necessary to do that, but you'd rather just tout the MS line "There's no software for it, and if there is it might not be supported tomorrow, and if it is you can't trust those dirty hippies." Which is basically what they said about Apple for the last 20 years as well.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Don't worry everyone - once Tusted Computing becomes standard, Microsoft should have no trouble locking its software away from precisely those it wishes. See, technology really can solve everything.
Since, according to its name, the tool's goal is to identify genuine copies of Windows, finding a pirated copy is a negative. When that copy is really genuine, that's called a false negative.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Lol. With a username of "Fortran IV" you must have way too much experience with legacy apps that can't be ported to modern systems.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Strangely enough this type of behavior can be related to 1959 cuba....Check out this FAGS!!! myspace.
I see this all the time... boo hoo hoo I can't run my windows software on such and such OS. I'm not here to consult but man, there are other options. The choice is yours and yours alone. There are other platforms which can do the same work. Yes, Autodesk does not make software other than for windows, but then again they are not the only game in town. Will others meet your needs? No idea. Im not offering consulting services.
I have company records and data, accessible and useable, which date back over 10 years. I have one of the original IBM 8088 and DOS 1.1 and a few files that date back till then. Text, old programs that have value only to me. You know I no longer need DOS 1.1 to access my files. The programs don't all work, but there are newer ones which can. The same goes for all the files I have today. They are based on solutions where more than one company has software that supports the format. My business is not dependant on any one other business for its success.
By your own comments you are so locked in to more than 1 company and you fail to see that you have options. There are many companies who don't use windows, some older than me (and I'm an old fart). Windows is a tool not your business, it's Gates business. Maybe you need to grow up and enter the real world because even today there are business which operate with pen and pencil.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
I own a computer store and I can NOT say it enough, but WGA has issues.
The most recent issues I had was customers telling me that the IE7 page does not allow them to install the latest release. Followed by the common 'this is not a legal copy' popup.
Of course, the REAL world. I am always hearing about this 'real world'. I myself run no Microsoft software, and I make a living. What world am I in? How do I visit the 'real world'?
Look man, your point is valid, but leave off this BS about the 'real world'. Millions are able to function just fine without Microsoft and civilization would not collapse if they dissapeared. In the grand scheme of things it would mean sweet F.A....
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
If you actually read the EULA for this program, the license is invalid when the contract with the school ends... (2-3 years).
IANAL, but it appears you have to graduate *before* the contract expires...
box.
Bill and his UCTIA/ UCC2B BS is *MORE* annoying than my constant crashes with Win-98.
I've long since gone all Mac OSX & *nix - just the one MS box left in the office.
Bill and Melinda found something that they are good at: giving away money.
I'm looking forward to being Microsoft-free in 2007.
I'm tempted to box up all of their software and original manuals that I have accumuated since 1982 and mail it back with a "shrink-wrap" license that I have returned all of my MS-licensed originals and request a formal waiver of liability from the unauthorized use of their licensed originals (just like the 'early" EULAs require).
I wonder if I can have a refund?
I think MS Bob was really the brains behind the company.....
"Genuine" my muscular buttocks - I have the original and receipt but I have the unauthorized nagware installed and nagging.
Bye, Bye Bill & Steve and Redmond. A long, misery-filled run (DOS isn't done till Lotus won't run...) is well past over...
BSD for me.
Really?
Try http://www.windizupdate.com
Not exactly a competitor, but close.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
...but leave off this BS about the 'real world'. Millions are able to function just fine without Microsoft...
Grandparent's point: A subset of people require windows.
Your "response": A subset of people do not require windows.
So what "BS" are you accusing the GP of, exactly? You said nothing that would contradict the GP, which anyone familar with basic rules of logic can quickly see.
Sure,it isn't free like a lot of distros out there,but to have it run everything I need "Out of the box",INCLUDING my wireless card,really sold me.I even tossed my Vista RC1 partition because compared to Xandros it was just too dog slow to be productive.And even having to pay at $79 for the home premium(what I'm running,they have a business edition for $129 with Staroffice and Active Directory support) it's still cheaper than even OEM Windows and not having to worry about Virri,malware,spyware,plus all the zero day exploits really makes it a nice way to work.
If you're a Windows only shop,try it on a tester box.I think you'll be pleased at how easy it is to set up and run your "Windows only" apps in Linux.Hell,I even have IE 5 on my desktop(installed along with Office 2K) and it runs fine.Probably the only "safe" way you could run IE,LOL! I'll think I'll stick with the Firefox Xandros came with.
Xandros is truly an easy to use Linux for all us Windows refugees and I hope that they'll do good and maybe get some OEM support in the long run.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Nobody ever said it'd be easy. But it is not impossible. Trust me. Linux is Turing Complete TM!
Seriously, though, I'm just as sick of people saying "Oh, it is soooooo hard! I would switch if I could, but it is impossible!" Hard and impossible are not the same thing. If you're sick of windows, then make the effort to switch. If you don't want to make the effort, then quit whining about it. Fish or cut bait. That's what a grown up will do.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
I disagree that running Linux is a luxury unless you add that running any computer is a luxury. Last week I bought a new pc with linux preinstalled. The lowest priced Windows PC was twice what I paid for mine. And they all had XP installed, because of Activation and WGA I had decided years ago I wouldn't buy another Windows OS unless I absolutely had to or until MS got rid of Activation and WGA. Now I did have to get a card of ram because the pc didn't come with enough and a second harddisk, again for the same reason, but even then I was able to pay less than the cheapest Windows PC.
I haven't tried Wine so I don't know how well it works. But for those Windows apps I may want to run in Linux, the only one I know right now is XMLSpy, has been tested to run in CodeWeaver's Crossover. I agree with you in that as with any other tool you should use the computer system/OS that works for what it's supposed to do.
Should there be a Law?
Who needs to be running windows that can't afford something else?
How do you do italics here?
Yes, Autodesk does not make software other than for windows, but then again they are not the only game in town. Will others meet your needs? No idea. Im not offering consulting services.
Autodesk does make software that runs on Mac OSX, maybe not all but Autocad does. Some programs even run in Crossover for either Linux or Macs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For the past few years I've used PC with Windows exclusively. However last week I bought a new desktop, er tower, with Linux preinstalled which was half the price of the cheapest Windows PC I saw. However as I need, well really want as nothing is "needed", a new laptop I plan on getting a MacBook Pro but I'm waiting until Apple releases them with Intel's new Merom or Core 2 Duo.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They may have a phone but that's just another expense for paying customers.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh, please just grow up. What competitor? What other OS runs MasterCAM, Autodesk Inventor, JobBOSS, Quickbooks and all the other software companies like ours depend on to keep revenue coming in and the IRS satisfied?
Great, you gave a valid reason for 10% of the office to run a paticular vendor's OS. How about the rest of the office? It's time to get something that is reliable.
The truth shall set you free!
Therefore a small percentage of people will have problems, even if their Windows copy is legal. A small percentage of people from the total of Windows users only in the US is a lot of people! Let see, I am working with my absolute legal and paid software and the manufacturer one day says "Oh, sorry you can not use your computer, your software is not genuine"
I see a class action coming....
Who had this bright idea in MS, I wonder?
Working in a big company.
Our computers have windows installed by IT department.
Typical project with no time to loose.
Download commercial software badly needed.
Oh! You mus download last patches for that and that.
Go to MS download area.
One moment, to download this software your computer must be verified.
Run WGA..
Bingo! Your Window copy is not genuine!!
Enough time and nerves lost with stupid thing, forget it!
Hhhhmmmm.... Where did I leave that LINUX CD.....?
Some time ago (something like a year) I did buy three copies of Sygate Personal Firewall, I did install just two at the time since I didn't have the third computer
A few days ago (we are on sept 2006 now) I did try to install the third copy and I discovered that Symantec bought Sygate and they "merged" Sygate firewall somewhere in their bloatware.
The end result is that I cannot manage to "activate" my copy of the program and Email to Sygate have no effect
So, I paid good money and I have a non working program ?
The whole "activation" process is a screw for the customer, it works now (maybe) but in a whim you have lost your property !
Let's say you have to reinstall a machine, let's say that ome component does not activate, what happens of all the software you have BOUGHT ?
I love the way Microsoft use the phrase Genuine Advantage. The last time I was called Genuine, I was in London and I got conned out of £120.
UGS NX4 and Pro/Engineer are both available for Linux.
Thanks to Windows network printing being horrible and HP and Oce not having paticularly good windows drivers for their horribly expensive 42 inch plotters the ones where I am don't. It often takes a few tries just to get the page size right, I'm not sure why it often doesn't believe me the first time. The funny thing is you can actually dump a graphics file in the things by ftp and get better results than printing from MS Windows - it will print it and trim to the right size. Collected with many other things I've come to the conclusion that printer drivers generally suck and you are still better off just getting something that understands postscript inside the actual hardware - then you don't care what operating system is talking to it or if the vendor will bother to make signed Vista drivers for it so you can actually use it if you upgrade.
As for looking like 1997, yes that's about when Enlightenment was stable and looking almost as good as Vista is supposed to be but with far less overhead than gnome metacity.
Here's an idea: quit fucking whining on Slashdot, you pussy. If you're sick of Windows, stop using it. It's that fucking simple. If the software you need doesn't run on Linux/OSX/whatever complain to the manufacturer and deal with it. Complain a bunch. Let them know you really need their software on non-Microsoft platforms. Yeah, it'll be a bitch for a while, but it'll pay off in the long run.
Do you think all the software you need is just going to magically start running on Linux? If everyone uses your logic your situation will never change. You'll be locked into using Windows forever. Stop bitching on Slashdot about how much you hate Microsoft, and start bitching to the people who actually have a hand in creating the software you need. It may not be as fast and effective as you like, but it's much more effective than bitching here, and a hell of a lot less annoying.
Either way, bite the bullet, deal with it, and leave the whiny sob stories for somebody who might give a fuck. Nobody here cares.
Oh, and as for the "real world", I work for an incredibly huge company, and they use Linux. A lot. The "real world" is huge, and not all of the companies in it are as idiotic as you make them sound.
Maybe not
``I am sick of Windows, but I'm even sicker of the geek who assumes that just because he switched his home computeror even his office serverover to Linux that anybody should be able to ditch Windows whenever they feel like it.''
Having said that, there are probably a _lot_ of computers that could be switched over, but aren't.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
See Put end to MS-Word attachments".
So how come I am modded +5 Insightful for repeating one line of the parent's post, while he is still at his default score?
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
So, I don't know CNC, and maybe your company is going to be the exception that can't switch. That's ok - it's not a perfect world
But on the off-chance that you do find some OSS software (or find yourself working somewhere else some day) I'd just like to clear one MS FUD from your post:
Support is something you pay for. And even if you've bought some commercial closed-source software you've no guarantee that they won't close their doors tomorrow, or (what *every* company does: de-support your version, forcing you to either pay for an upgrade, or become de-supported.)If anything, the support questions should be pushing you *towards* OSS, not away from it.
Assuming that the developers decide to quit, with OSS, you can hire anyone to support the application: you have the source code and you can fix the bugs. Pay for it out of what you would have been paying for support.
With closed-source/proprietary software when the developer folds (or de-supports) you're f*^! because even if you *could* fix the bug yourself you're not allowed to...
paying for a license != guaranteed support
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
What guarantee do you have that a proprietary application won't go unsupported next week?
You have no guarantees either way, but at least with opensource you have:
a: A chance of someone else picking it up if the original authors drop it
b: If it's really that important to you, and you can afford it, you can pick it up yourself
c: You can still run the last version you have, and install additional copies on more machines if you need to
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
back in the days when i did construction work (91-97) _all_ professional CAD solutions were sold for some sort of a *nix (we used hp unix, and some sun workstations back then). When the millenium changed, a lot of these programms were also ported to windows. Nowadays, most of them are available on windows, some not anymore for unix.
CAD workers are tech savy people. Out of all of them i have met which have worked on windows and *nix for doing their construction work, none of them favoured windows. why ? lack of stability and flexibility. The X-Windows system (to start with) gives the admins and the user much more flexibility over their desktop than windows. It gives much more choice about hardware (you are not tied to x86 and derived architectures), etc. Stability; i haven't seen a CAD system which was available on windows and *nix which was running more stable on windows.
But maybe that was not your point ? Personally i don't think that a professional CAD system, which costs eg. $2000-$10000 on windows, should be automagically available for free on linux just becasue the OS is free. So i'd rather compare apples with apples, go check for professional solutions.
and btw: how many CAD solutions are listed on windows.com ?
How much does the average corporation spend on Windows though? I'm going to make up some numbers to illustrate a point:
Say, each Windows license costs about $100. That works out at $10,000 for a relatively small company that has 100 machines. Now, you could buy a few months of developer time with this. For a larger company, you could easily employ a developer or two full-time (especially if they live somewhere cheap, like India or China) for the price of a year's expenditure on Windows. Now, over five years, how much would you save if you contracted someone to ensure that the business-critical-application X ran under WINE? How many other companies use application X? Would they be willing to foot some of the bill?
The real problem is that most companies treat Free Software in the same way as they treat off-the-shelf software. Free Software is better thought of as a cheap way of building bespoke software.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
We use only HP desktop systems, all of which come preloaded with XP. One day after MS pushed this malware out (and WGA is malware by any definition, so sue me Gates) via a "critical" update that came via automatic update, several of our recently installed HP DC5100 PC's came up with the WGA trojan virus (sue me again Gates) and refused to allow a login. Microsoft told us to call HP who told us to call Microsoft. No remedy was offered.
So, we wasted two days reloading a bunch of PC's that most definitley had legal software, in two of our divisions.
The result? Windows Update service is DISABLED on our domains, and I am looking into some sort of update deployment program that will allow me to choose which updates go out to PCs.
Microsoft, I guess thinks it can operate like the RIAA, assume that their customers are thieves and treat them like criminals.
I can tell you this much, I don't see myself deploying Vista anywhere until it's absolutely unavoidable.
Corporatism != Free Market
"I've never had a case of a WGA false positive, and I've only heard of one through the grapevine"
I bet you've never got a virus either.
"it's not 42% of PC's being dubbed non-genuine, it's 42% of all PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine"
Since people who don't perform updates don't get false positives your point is totally specious. Most people don't get falsely diagnosed with cancer since most people don't get tested.
The real issue is that out of a sample of reported problems WGA wrongly reported 42% as running pirated software. The point is the WGA is faulty.
specious reasoning ; "the spurious inferences from obsolescent notions of causality"
was Re:That's 42% of a small selection
davecb5620@gmail.com
Did you know that 99.9% of people being treated for cancer have cancer?
42% is surprising - but it's not surprising because it's high, it's surprising because it's low. Wouldn't you expect that 100% of the people complaining about problem with WGA would have genuine software?
paintball
I am not saying this is a good reason the hate WGA (I get tagged for a reason and I ) and maybe I don't really know how to use Symantec Ghost. I started at a Private school a few years ago and when I arrived the school just purchased all new 200 IBM computers with an individual copy of XP Pro for each machine with the CD Key sticker on the side. In order make a master image I had to use one of the keys for the master install and now a year later I get a WGA notification every once in a while. My work around is to turn off Windows Update and use GFI LAN Guard to roll out all updates and that seems to work fine. I don't think MS has a solution for me and forces me to work around their software. PS, Does anyone have a simple solution for me without buying a site license?
I've seen it proven over and over again since the old CP/M days:
There is no copy protection system that saves as much by preventing piracy as it costs in terms of legitimate customer dissatisfaction.
Thank you for proving this once more, Microsoft!
As if the average office manager in a small business even has a clue what Wine is, aside from something he drinks. I'll admit that I haven't really used Linux in a while, but is Wine even anywhere near as compatible as it needs to be in order to be able to replace Windows? The last time I played around with Wine was in 2001, and I seem to remember it being quite a pain to get software to effectively run under it.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
How about Exchange and Outlook? I can tell you right now that the execs I work with would throw all kinds of fits if they couldn't access their old PST files. Last time I checked, there wasn't a FOSS email reader that could do this.
The other factor is the human factor. I'll swap somebody out to a newer computer and then have to spend two days listening to them bitch about their icons "moving" on their desktop between computers and how their address history isn't there anymore and how their home directory looks "different" and "did you delete this file becuase I had it 6 months ago, but now it's gone?". I for one would seriously not want to perform desktop support in an environment that has just switched from Windows to Linux. A large portion of these users have a hard enough time adjusting to Windows. You through them a curve ball like Linux and suddenly the whole office goes to shit as nobody can find the start button anymore, their "Word" and "Excel" documents don't "look the same" and various other nitpicky comments. The productivity in the office goes to shit, and the IT manager is left to answer for why revenue decreased by 5% last month becuse nobody could use their computers. IT manager gets sacked and company brings in a consultant to switch them back to Windows.
I'm not saying that it's impossible -- just that most companies are so vested in Windows and 95% of users are so computer illiterate that a switch to any other type of IT infrastructure would likely have a very noticable impact on productivity and an immediate negative impact on the company's bottom line. Sure, they would probably save money over time on Windows license fees, but this is modern corporate America where nobody looks to the future and management is only concerned about the bottom line right this very instant.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
You say that your Linux PC cost less than half of a comparable Windows PC. This intrigues me. How much and where did you get it? I'm looking for a good cheap hardware solution to a current problem I'm working on.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
a false positive indicates a healthy person is sick. A false negative indicates a sick person is healthy. Obviously the former scenario is a lot more preferable
Rather OT, but sometimes being diagnosed as sick with X-condition, then being treated, is just as bad as being diagnosed healthy-when-sick. There are quite a few cases where misdiagnoses has had a person taking expensive and sometimes potentially damaging (if you don't have the condition in question) medication, operations, or more. Pills and medications aren't a magic bullet, and sometimes in a healthy person they'll cause serious harm. There are also plenty of cases where the situation is like the opposite of a , the supposedly "sick" person will develop actual symptoms, either from improper medication or the psychological aspects thereof.
But to topic, WGA causes harm to legitimate users. It diagnoses them as "sick" when they are not. This can cause the user to blame their PC supplier (who did in-fact supply a legit copy), or call their technician (in my case, I've had to spend time, at my hourly rate, to *fix* systems where WGA failed). In the end, if costs the supplier reputation, the customer time, and the customer/company money.
Did you know that WGA will fail if the date setting is wrong? WTF! There is nothing illegitimate about having a bad clock setting. Sure, it's incorrect, but sometimes there are reasons for that (testing apps for date-errors, etc), and it's just plain wrong to declare an entire machine as invalid due to an incorrect clock. Last time I dealt with this it required several reboots and continuous runnin of the WGA check after the clock was fixed before it finally realized the "problem" was fixed. Does that sound reasonable to you?
I for one would seriously not want to perform desktop support in an environment that has just switched from Windows to Linux. A large portion of these users have a hard enough time adjusting to Windows. You through them a curve ball like Linux and suddenly the whole office goes to shit as nobody can find the start button anymore, their "Word" and "Excel" documents don't "look the same" and various other nitpicky comments. The productivity in the office goes to shit, and the IT manager is left to answer for why revenue decreased by 5% last month becuse nobody could use their computers. IT manager gets sacked and company brings in a consultant to switch them back to Windows.
Same excuise I hear for not wanting MAC's, until a few workers get them in an office, then everyone wants one.
The truth shall set you free!
Have you checked out www.winehq.com ? they give the latest information on the wine technology - NOT Cedega's version but the original. Part of that website is appDB - a categorized listing of all windows applications that have semi-decent functionality under Wine - the amount of function is listed for each application.
One thing: Mac's have the advantage of having MS Office support. I'm not sure, but I would think that would go a long way towards making macs a little easier to accept in the workplace.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
You say that your Linux PC cost less than half of a comparable Windows PC. This intrigues me. How much and where did you get it? I'm looking for a good cheap hardware solution to a current problem I'm working on.
The computer I got was a Powerspec 1406 from Microcenter. As it says here, I paid $250 for it but there's also a $50 mail in rebate, I haven't mailed in mine yet. Now when I can I want to get a firewire 400/800 card to install. From what I learned the company that builds them is owned by the same company that owns Microcenter.
FalconShould there be a Law?
True, i blame the chicken and the egg :P
One of them has caused the problem i bet!
I am sick of Windows, but I'm even sicker of the geek who assumes that just because he switched his home computer--or even his office server--over to Linux that anybody should be able to ditch Windows whenever they feel like it.
But let's agree that anybody should be able to switch/ditch.
One thing: Mac's have the advantage of having MS Office support.
Ever heard of WINE?
http://www.winehq.com/
The truth shall set you free!
Bullshit.
This is slashdot. Why on earth does it matter that i dont proofread?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about informing yourself about the law of your country? You're not required to pay the IRS. While you're at it, you can stop acquiring licenses for that software you mentioned needed to pay the IRS as well. Meanwhile, shove the money you're saving in a savings account meant for legal expenses should the IRS decide to come -without legal merrit- after you.