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Microsoft Piracy Plan Means Concerns for IT
coondoggie writes to mention an article on Information Week about possible unintended consequences of the Microsoft Software Protection Plan (SPP) discussed on Slashdot on Wednesday. The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software, but may cause major headaches for IT shops. From the article: "Microsoft will support SPP in current and future reporting and asset management tools such as System Center Operations Manager. 'On paper it might sound pretty good, but we have to see how it works,' says Jeff Allred, manager of network services for the Duke University Cancer Center. One of his concerns is that a reduced functionality mode kicks in three days after changing out a motherboard in a server if the software is not revalidated. 'That really jumped out at me. We change out motherboards in our servers all the time,' he says. The provision only covers a swap with a non-OEM motherboard, which Allred admits doesn't happen often."
Do you guys do that crazy thing where you, you know, verify the links in a story before clicking the Post button?
Protect consumers from pirated software??? What if I don't want to be protected???
To avoid all the problems with Vista, don't install Vista. Voila. Problem solved. It's like upgrading your OS every time Microsoft puts something new out is a disease that IT suffers from. There are companies who never upgraded NT 4 or 2000 who are doing just fine.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
I believe this is the correct link to the story: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100506-micro soft-antipiracy.html?t5
My work here is dung.
Why do you think you should have a say when it comes to protection on your PC when you don't have a say when it comes to protecting your life? After all, all those cams, that screening, that data mining, all's just done for your protection!
Do you want that? Did you agree to that? Does it matter what you want?
When your consent doesn't matter in things like privacy, why do you think it would when it's only about software?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can't underestimate the lowest rank of society, but I think a large portion of the general population would understand the issue a lot more if the mainstream press were to rephrase all those headlines by one word:
[
Uh, it sounds like you need to find a better vendor if you're changing out motherboards "all the time".
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
Yes. You've obviously never worked in corporate IT. When a server is down, the last thing you're worried about is contacting the frickin' vendor to get the OS activated. Servers in the corporate datacenter aren't likely to have Internet access. So to getting it activated is going to likely require a phone call. Every minute that server is down, it's costing the company $$$ in lost productivity. And what if someone forgets to do it? Ouch.
My blog
s/protect consumers/protect Microsoft/
there, fixed it for ya.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
...from pirated software"
Yes, Microsoft designed and built that to protect us hmmhmmm.
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
If it takes you three days to get your servers up and running you probably have bigger problems ...
Not to mention the staggering numbers of false positives the current Windows Genuine Advantage program for Windows XP has picked up.
Well, the article is Slashdotted, but I don't need any expert opinion or research to tell me what it means for IT. I'm the head of an IT department, and it means that I'll be avoiding updates to any Microsoft technology with any "Piracy Prevention", and when I do need an upgrade, I'll be looking for Microsoft alternatives. I have friends who head IT departments, and I'm getting the same sentiment from them.
Not because we pirate. We're too afraid of the BSA sniffing around to do that. The problem is, these things cause problems, artificially created by Microsoft, for no reason. To stop piracy? If I pirated software, then I'd know where to find cracks for these things. Microsoft's "protection" wouldn't stop me.
But I've made a general policy in my department that we've stopped purchasing or installing software that requires "activation" or any other kind of phoning-home. I've run into too many problems where an otherwise working computer breaks itself by the developers own purposeful code because I've done a normal, legal repair job. In a large organization, an instance of the IT dept. replacing some hardware or imaging a disk shouldn't trigger a flag as "suspicious activity".
In my organization, I think we're likely to have more Macintosh purchases. Users like them, they're easy to fix, disk imaging is INCREDIBLY easy, they're reliable, and they work great with our Windows and Linux servers. And we'll see more Linux servers. If Microsoft wants my business back, they can stop trying to limit their OS to do less for me, and start working on how they can improve it to do more for me.
At the college I went to, we have a security lab that is tightly locked down. (No outside machines allowed to connect, and no internet access whatsoever.) This means any activation has to happen over the phone, waiting on hold for a microsoft represenative.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
This was effectively punishing paying customers if they did not continue to pay as often as MS wished. This is a common practice, most products go out of data in a few years, but the MS disregard for paying customers tends to be a bit more extreme. This new proposal is the ultimate indication of that. Your software, that you paid for, has a time bomb that could jeopardize your business, and there is no way to guarantee that it will not affect you.
MS would say, just give us a call and we will fix it. But if I need something ready 10 minutes from now, I need to know that I will not have to call MS because they won't treat me as a paying customer.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So, basically, you're saying that Microsoft's software is turning into Shareware.
Crippleware, to be more accurate.
How... fitting.
Ignore this signature. By order.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100506-micro soft-antipiracy.html
Knowing my mother... I think she'd buy a license just to see what happened to Ballmer when he tried anything with my grandmother.
I'd make popcorn and sell tickets.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Let me raise a very viable scenario that may not have been presented. This is that the system reports a false positive for pirated hardware. Now, the person quoted in the submission works for the Duke Cancer Center; this might mean they get the same licensing deal that the university presumably gets. Now, let me use an example I am familiar with.
At Ohio State, one of the most populous universities in the country, they have a deal with Microsoft that gives students access to Microsoft software on the cheap. At the same time, this deal applies to departments and other machines for the university. Since this deal is based on mass distribution, and in many cases does not include permanent media, if any media at all (basically, students take the disks, install the software, return the disks), everyone uses the same key. This is the case for XP and Server 2003. It is also the case for 2000, in fact the key is "embedded" on the Win 2k disk, so no input is required from the user.
Now, let us assume that OSU has about 50,000 students (not too far off actually). And each student has this version of Vista installed. Now, let us assume each department is using Windows (actually very few at OSU are not), that is even more copies of the software being used. I would venture that it might not be too far fetched to assume that OSU could have 100,000 or more copies of the same OS installed on various student, faculty and departmental machines. Now, the server installations are quite a bit fewer; however, I do know the department I worked for already have several (as in 8-10) servers running various Windows versions. If all these were upgraded to the server equivalent to Vista, then that would mean 10 servers with the same key, and possibly hundreds (if not thousands) across the campus.
Okay, so let us assume none of this duplication creates a false positive. Instead, let us take the example where someone has offered these versions of Windows to the internet as pirated copies. We now hit a new dilemma. There is the potential for massive piracy in this. You cannot simply cut off every version with this key, since you would be cutting off thousands of legitimate copies. You also cannot do some sort of limitation based solely on IP, since students do not live strictly in dorms and since this would enter a new realm of privacy invasion. You see, there is a huge problem with this sort of re-activation issue. You risk hurting many people. Also, for gaming enthusiast who changes components frequently, this could also lead to issues. And what if your MoBo died? Will it be a problem replacing it with another copy of the same board? You should not have to activate this product everytime your system changes. Defeating piracy is one thing, but causing a lot of headache and issues for paying customers is not. In the end, they will only hurt the paying customers, since the hackers will defeat whatever stupid system they come up with anyway.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I agree that if it takes you 3 days to get a server up and running, then your disaster plans suck.
However, consider the following:
- Server crashes due to hardware failure
- Techs follow the existing standard procedure to restore (i.e. replace motherboard)
- Service is restored on time according to SLAs.
- The server continues to happily serve out data and requests.
- Three days pass and suddenly the server is offline *AGAIN* because it wasn't activated and is now refusing requests.
- Spend more time on the phone with Microsoft than it took to replace the motherboard.
Suddenly, that hardware failure had a MUCH larger impact than it had to.
So, eseentially, once you have everything registered to Microsoft, and then you say "you know, I think the mobo in this system sucks. I want to upgrade it for Doom 54" all of the software that you had will have to be re-purchased as the new mobo is not registered to the software. That sounds like a GREAT idea! Just like when the Xbox's were kicking people off of XBL when people had replaced their HD's, and the mobo and HD marriage number didn't match what MS's databse said it should... What a fucking disaster this will become. Bravo Microsoft. Bra-Vo.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software
Protect the customers from pirated software?
The customers? WTF???
Zonk, can I have some of what you're smoking? Microsoft is protecting themselves from pirated software, not you or me.
Sheesh.
On a slightly related note, it appears that my XP installation is on its last legs; every Windows update makes it slower and slower. As I type this, it keeps momentarily hanging, and there's nothing running but firewall, AV, Firefox, and Winamp.
Damn I am not looking forward to reinstalling it at all. I won't be "upgrading" again; I wish my vid card would get along with Linux. Maybe I'll try Ubantu this time. Anybody know how to get ANY flavor of Linux working with an ATI with an S-video out and a really old 14 inch HP monitor?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I guess we never learned anything from the mid 80s.
Software copy protection and DRM don't work. You annoy legitimate users who have a corner case (usually enough for them to buy a competitor's product) and the h4x0rz work around it. The few pennies you save are more than made up for with bad publicity.
I've had to call Microsoft about WinXP activation a few times ... and we lease all our machines from HP. The activation code is on a sticker on the machine. There should not be ANY problems with our activation. Particularly with me because we have two other people who do desktop support. And we have just over 100 desktops.
But between key generators and lazy co-workers who use the wrong codes on the wrong machines, I've had to call Microsoft to straighten this out a few times.
And I'm in a small company.
Microsoft's stated plan depends too much (entirely) upon the honesty/skill of my co-workers and the failure of key generators.
No fucking way, dude. Why should I waste MY time (emphasis on the fact that it is MY fucking time) because Microsoft is too lazy/stupid to figure out a better way of doing this?
Novell, way back when, used to link their licenses to specific companies and you could call them and they would tell you every license you had registered with them. If you lost a license disk, they would replace it.
Microsoft refuses to do the same. Even with the improved technology that we have today. They would rather put the burden on ME to:
a. Make sure that nothing does go wrong.
and
b. Call them when something does go wrong.
I used to work as a subcontractor in a classified secure facility. We ran into an activation nightmare not once, but twice. The problem was that the PC I was installing onto didn't have (and would never have) an internet connection, nor was there a commerical phone in the room where the machine was. The rest of the operation was all Suns and SGIs, but my boss insisted on a Windows machine, which had to be a retail version because we weren't supported by the facility host company and we couldn't use our company's volume license because of association issues.
What ended up happening is that we had to walk through the XP Pro "enter each line into your touch-tone phone" thing without the phone, writing everything down, leave the area, call, write down everything the phone system told us, then come back into the area. Something messed up the first time and it ended up taking over an hour to get it done and working. We had a similar (but not quite as frustrating) experience activating Macromedia Flash.
Given how bad this experience was (and this was pre-WGA!), I can't imagine what a nightmare it would be if Vista suddenly decided it wasn't legit in that sort of environment. I have heard from my former co-workers that they've basically abandoned that machine and are using linux for all their day-to-day work. It interoperates better with the big iron anyway.
Side note on the unintended consequence of this: I removed the windows software on the box and moved to a linux based solution because I couldn't activate. I am sure I am not the only one who has done so.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Too interesting. I'm glad I don't have to think about any of that stuff. I only use un-piratable software, http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/1869
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
This isn't for us, move along.
Your still reading? Fine. The truth is, it is just to instil confidence in the investors. To state that vista is not "Piratable (yeah right)" the investors will feel warm and secure to think that their product of 11110001010100010010010010010011111's has real cash value, and not just be something downloadable 15 minutes after it's release via your favorite flavor of P2P filesharing software.
INVESTORS STOP READING HERE!
The truth is, (don't act like you don't know it):
If you have access to it, its pirateable, reverse engineerable, and entirely copyable.
If you can see it, you can copy it.
If you can Hear it, you can break it's DRM.
If it has a registry, you'll find the key.
If you are a hot chick in a room full of nerds, one might try to converse w/ you.
If you can touch that, your a lucky man. etc...
Has microsoft put out one copy of software that wasn't pirated? Just curious.
Nothing [strike]I[strike] er my friend has ever used has been paid for!
(j/k) I |>0|\|+ |D!R8 N3M{}R3
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Yes, you did.
Say you are a home user with maybe two or three computers that you want to upgrade to Vista. Okay, you either do an Internet registration or you spend a few minutes on the phone with Microsoft activating your new O/S. No problem. Even if you have to reactivate a few times when you swap out components due to upgrades, failures, what-have-you, it's still not *that* much of a PITA.
Now, you are working desktop support for a small corporation with ~100 desktops. You are upgrading to Vista, you have a volume license for the O/S and you basically build an image for each type of desktop you have, then load the image on each individual desktop. Now, you have to walk through the activation process *100 times* to roll out the new O/S. And, every time someone in that company has a hard drive fail, or someone on the network picks up a virus that corrupts executables on their computer, or <insert reason to re-image here> you have to call M$ and reactivate again. THAT is a PITA.
Now, you work for a very large company with 5,000 desktops. How many man-hours is that company going to waste on product activation now???
IMHO, if Microsoft wants to drive their legitimate business to alternative operating systems, they are going about it the right way. I decided not to *ever* buy another MS operating system after Win2K when they launched the consumer product activation requirement in XP (and I've been quite happy with Slackware or Gentoo since). I expect more corporations will make the same choice now that Vista will be doing the same thing to volume customers.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Hang on... this is about doing activation when you install a new OS. If you're having to install a new OS on a machine, you're already having to spend a lot of time setting it up. This is an extra minute or two on the phone. This is irrelevant. If you have a server that is down because some software on it went haywire, and you need to fix it, activation doesn't come into play. So, I'd say that this is a completely moot point in the situation you're talking about.
That has been a problem from Worries for Windows onwards. Changing a piece of hardware requires a very precise process or you end up with an unusable system, and it hasn't improved since other than Windows now at least knows more devices and won't totally collapse in a heap if you get it wrong.
But despite all that, companies will switch to Vista in droves.
The argument: other lemmings use it..
Insert
What I don't get is why they force individual consumers to activate.
Large companies are they're main business (as seen by who MS panders to), so they should be activating via an AES key pair on first boot in Vista server.
Vista professional should need the same, but with an administrators' license key pair; ie: you need to log in via your AD name. The AD server activates that copy of windows itself, using the key pair.
Vista home should need no activation. It's an inconvenience to the users least likely to know what to do if it fails.
The other Vista flavors... well, I don't know. I'm not particularly interested in Vista, mostly because of MS's stance on... virtually everything.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
One of his concerns is that a reduced functionality mode kicks in three days after changing out a motherboard in a server if the software is not revalidated. 'That really jumped out at me. We change out motherboards in our servers all the time,' he says. The provision only covers a swap with a non-OEM motherboard, which Allred admits doesn't happen often."
Time to spend a little more and get quality hardware.
Looking through the WGA trounleshooting forums, it appears that MS is already blocking VLKs (Volume License Keys) based on their IP address. The most common way to block VLKs by IP address seems to be by region. For example, there's little chance that an OSU license would be legitimately used in Chna, so it'd block that VLK from Chinese IP addresses. If there is a legitimate need to use a volume-licensed copy there, either a VPN would work, or MS could easily issue a seperate key (and they have big incentive to do so).
It isn't even an allegation, it is a suspicion, because nobody is claiming you're a pirate... they just lock you out if they suspect it. Generally, you get the chance to respond to allegations before shiat happens to you.
Anyways, what's with all this bullshit of trying to tie your license to the hardware?
That isn't how licenses work anymore in the real world. You buy a license (a piece of paper) that says you can use 'foo' for 'bar' users/processors/whatever.
Since when did any broadly distributed piece of consumer software ever have licensing that ties it to a specific piece(s) of hardware? And in mean in current times, not during the dawn of the age of computing.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I was being sarcastic. . .
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Very true. But a lot of times we do rolling hardware upgrades where we build and configure new hardware offline and then bring the old server offline and bring the new server online. We currently have a volume license agreement where we keep track of the machines we have online. We decomission the old hardware after we remove it. The new Longhorn model is that either you have to phone home to "mother" for your machine to be validated. The other choice is you have to install a license server on your network to validate your own servers. I'm not sure how often the servers have to phone home to be validated but if its anything like WGA that license server becomes a critical asset that can't go down. More expense for a business to operate. And this truely is a waste of money just to keep your systems functioning.
Just wondering as I have not seen anything official on this, but what happens when a product that requires activation is EOL'd by Microsoft? I understand that support and patches will stop, but that is often less of an issue for large businesses with internal tech suport and decent security in place, but what happens if you need to reactivate a product? Will the activation system still be available or is this yet another method of forcing corporate and home customers to carry out periodic upgrades?
Anyway,
Thanks
After listening to growing concerns that his "Developers" act was growing stale, Steve Ballmer has announced a 50 city tour to promote his as-yet untitled album. This reported was able to convince Mr. Ballmer, who now prefers to be called "Grandmaster B", to give a sneak peak:
"Are you down with SPP? Yeah, you know me!"
"Are you down with SPP? Yeah, you know me!"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
And then you fire the tech that did a half-assed job getting the server up, and hire a competent person that will activate the freaking thing at the time he replaced the motherboard. That way you have three days to work on it if there is a problem, not minutes of scrambling to fix an easily preventable problem while the hire-ups are rightfully pissed at the IT department for screwing up. For crap's sake, it takes about two minutes on the phone with MS's indian tech support to accomplish this. Sure it's an extra step that you'd rather not be bothered with, but damn, cross the Ts and dot the Is before you call it a day.
Volume license doesn't get activated (ours doesn't anyways).
We just load our image, hit newsid and connect to the right domain and the machine is in buisness.
Ohh and doing something on alot of machines isn't exactly hard if you know what you are doing, even changing the serial if the volume license key somehow gets banned, MS has even made an example script to do this here.
The software vendors have their "BSA". It's about time all corporate IT customers need to form a new consumer trade association that looks out for protecting their interests above the interests of the software and systems vendors who've been shafting us for far too long now. Part of this new trade association would require that all members boycott purchasing all software products from any vendor who is unwilling to fix nasty problems in their products or who imposes cumbersome copy protection measures upon their software. Every software purchase needs to become a contract with terms agreed upon by both the vendors and the purchasers or no purchase shall take place. We need to turn the tables back around to where the customer is more important than the vendor. Back in the good old days, there used to be a saying: "The customer is always right". Nowadays, software vendors in general, treat their customers like enemies to be conquered and abused. That's wrong and needs to be fixed. The only way to fix it is for us to gang up against the vendors because we have allowed them to get too big and powerful.
The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software . . .
I'm so happy microsoft is looking out for me. I'm tired of turning on my computer and finding someone loaded a suite of Adobe programs on my computer that I haven't paid for.
Can I bum a sig?
The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software, but may cause major headaches for IT shops.
I hate to tell ya, but Microsoft's licensing has always been a major headache for IT shops.
An operating system is a piece of software. If you don't install the software correctly, then of course you will have problems.
I ASSUME that the tech will connect to the server desktop at least once (install patches, drivers, etc), so i think the activation warning would be noticed. Not performing the activation is the fault of the tech, not the OS.
If the tech is following a standard procedure (replace motherboard), that procedure needs a singe sentence update: "Check if OS is raising activation warnings. If so, call 1-800-____ and perform activation procedure".
Businesses have already voted with thier dollars and told MS that they will put up with this shit. As much as I would hate to have to do this on a large scale, the bean counters and decision makers that decide what software to use will never have to go through any of this crap and don't think it is an issue... Luckily I work at a University, and we have a corporate volume license key, so activation of all my systems is not required.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Microsoft has already set up a huge problem with keys. Single copy OEM editions of Windows require that the OEM tag is affixed to the outside of the computer. Great now the validation key is in plain site of anyone who wants to steal it. A pissed off employee could copy them all down and post them on a message board...
The local grocery store has registers that run windows (this already seems like a dumb idea), the CD key is stuck to them in view of the customer. Just whip out your cell phone cam, and you have another cd key.
What is the solution, I'm not sure, but I do have a theroretical idea, though I wouldn't do it because its probably not legal. Copy every cd key you see and post them to the internet. Make product activation such a huge problem that businesses look to other operating systems for relief.
I would like to draw attention to the phrase, "The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software".
HUH?
protect consumers from pirated software? Protect? Are unathroized copies of Windows raping and pillaging towns along the Atlantic coast?
To my knowledge there has never been any harm to, "consumers".
The measure is intended to protect Microsoft from losses from authorized copying.
Maybe it was simple incompetence. I have seen similar fom Microsoft (performance problems when accessing lots of files from a network share in XP. Windows 2000 is MUCH faster, and Win98 even better). Sometimes it seems that Windows is getting worse not better with new versions.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I think the phone activation is automatic today.
I had to phone in activations on about 30 XP instalations spread over several months. In the beginning, there was an operator but towards the end it was automated. That was back in 2003/2004.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
But my dilemma is this: It would cost more in man-hours to re-educate my users than it would be to just buy new machines+vista. I'd like to give MS the finger but I know I'll get smacked down.
Microsoft has already set up a huge problem with keys. Single copy OEM editions of Windows require that the OEM tag is affixed to the outside of the computer.
Yeah, isn't that the most fucking annoying thing EVER?! We build high end workstations and servers for small/medium sized business and industry customers. When we first started getting OEM boxes of Win2K years ago, and I saw the massive red warning signs in the OEM box stating we had to attache the CD Key sticker to the case, I laughed my ass off. Yeah, right, we are going to do that. NOT! No, instead we simply attach the sitcker to the back of the Win2K OEM booklet, right over the damn warning that says the sticker needs to go on the case.
What sucks is when we have to work on other peoples cheap crap boxes, like Dell or IBM, and we have to re-install the OS. Most people like to cram their workstations between the desk and the wall, or in some corner. So you have to practicaly disconnect and pull the damn thing out just to get at the CD Key! THAT IS ABSURD! Our customers simply grab their Win2K CD booklet and hand us the CD Key for re-install.
And who the fuck does MS think they are to try and force us to put sticers on a customers computer? What if every software company did this? Business computers would be covered in all kinds of ugly stickers! No, this whole sticker on the case issue is absolutely unacceptable...
When people ask me about the future for operating systems I tell them Microsoft is quickly moving themselves into the #2 spot behind Linux.
The time is now to start educating users about the advantages of Linux. In the last five years Linux has become more streamline, easier to install and manage, with more and more native software applications available. Compare that to Microsoft's development--Microsoft seems to have bloated the OS even more and in the proces made it more prone to problems. Anyone looked at the system requirements to run Vista? Havig to replace desktops to run Vista is not a compelling reason to switch to Vista...
Does anyone know of a reason to upgrade to Longhorn and Vista?
this year I had to do a MB swap on XP, and it puked as already installed on a different system. So they transfered me to a live body. Took almost an hour to get both of us to understand the 25? characters on my liscense and the 25 she read back to me for the activation. Got to love outsourcing to a country that doesn't speak English but the company tries to teach them to speak with a specific English accent.
I wonder if Ford or GM could get away with saying if you didn't fill out your warranty registration papers on your newly purchased vehicle and turn it in within three days, your new car will be operate in reduced functionality mode?
Seems that if crippling a piece a software against the user's wishes is a violation of the DMCA. Just because Microsoft tells you about it upfront doesn't make it okay, so did the April Fools Day virus.
I would predict that if too many legitimate purchasers are impacted by this tactic, that it won't be long before a a state AG takes action. Remember, the courts still hold that Microsoft is a monopoly.
Let me say in advance that my scruples are rather small when it comes to stealing from Microsoft... ...but it still won't be very attractive. Because as a typical Microsoft system, it will require frequent security patches, each of which can smuggle in a new anti-piracy feature. So I expect that it will be a race between crackers and Microsoft, and maintaining your illicit version might be more annoying than the activation.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Eh? What's that? You don't have an exit strategy? My God man, have you been paying no attention at all for the last four years? You've slept through all the warnings? You didn't think through XP Registration and where it was headed? You slept right through WGA? Maybe you should panic. Best get cracking on a plan. The rest of you slow down, take your time BUT GET THE HELL OFF THIS SHIP BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO STILL BE HERE IN FIVE YEARS
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
1) This is the best thing ever for Linux.
2) There will be a crack out soon. My guess perhaps a month. Six months tops. If it takes more than a year I will be very surprised, and exceptionally happy. Why happy? See point 1.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Some years ago I read that downtime can cost a business as much as $8 MILLION per MINUTE in lost revenue. I'm sure the figure is higher now, but maybe that'll put it in perspective. It's not even remotely akin to the bush-league loss of productivity that an individual user experiences.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You misspelled "Wii". Now might be the time to jump ship to that console with the funny-looking remote. You are likely to get more enjoyment out of such a "sidegrade" than you would by going to a newer Microsoft product.
If my understanding is correct, virtual machines do not suffer from this problem.
In a VM, you never have to "replace the motherboard", the NIC card always appears to have the same MAC, etc.
I wonder if MS's tougher rules for Vista will help to drive significantly more people to use virtual machines.
And what if your MoBo died?
Well, if it's an OEM copy of Windows, as far as Microsoft are concerned the license lives and dies with the motherboard.
The only exception is for warranty repairs which result in the exact same model of motherboard being used. Not too much of a problem with large OEMs as they keep motherboards around for years to cover their warranties, but smaller shops probably don't, and good luck getting the exact same model of motherboard 9 months later.
According to what I've read here http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=26, that's not necessarily going to be the case. Even if http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?Headli
I stand by my original assertion: Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot in its attempt to curtail piracy, and will only annoy its legitimate users--not, generally speaking, a good business tactic.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
When talking with friends, the policy of any given university that we went to was that product keys, as in individual product keys, were associated with your student id and you could just jump on the school website, log in, and pull up all your keys and/or download the oem disks to install.
... for everyone.
I suppose you could compare a large school campus with a business and justify vlk, but the environment is so different that i can't fathom how someone could sell people on getting a shared key
And why can't I find any torrents for 'OSU STUDENT ONRY!' programs, eh? eh? For validation purposes of course.
I think you didnt read the post.
The scenario is that they replaced the motherboard.
No OS install required.
emt 377 emt 4
Why do I keep hearing MS users insist filesystems need to be defraged constantly? Real OSes have fragmentation prevention built in. The prevention is not perfect, but it beats runing defrag every day. Even linux has had it since ext2 came out at least a decade ago. If MS hasn't done this by now, then they should be bopped in the head. Then again, they make their own users afraid to upgrade. WTF???
The need for defrag on modern systems is a myth. Read here and here
I mean does anyone really care about this anymore. If it really causes a problem ,MS will get rid of it (They've thrown out these trial balloons before). But for consultants and everybody else they'll just throw it into the mix of costs.
I used to argue with my boss about the crap MS was making us do and the problems they were creating and he would just nod his head and say "What does it really matter, we just pass the cost onto our customer or charge them for the extra hours to jump through the hoops, MS's crap is our bread and butter". He was right.
Hey and with these kind of hidden charges, you can milk your clients dry, just squeeze one teat after another.
It's like the price of gas. The price of gas goes up, UPS charges more to deliver a package.
So from an IT manager business perspective, what does it really matter? They warned us about the problem, we allow for the problem in our plans, case closed. No big deal.
I may be slightly biased though I make my living from MS products.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
This *MAY* result in the end of mainstream use of windows as a desktop (and probably any existing servers) simply because that if some people who previously owned xp but couldn't afford vista with aero, go and get one of the linux desktops (with or without a cool gui like xgl) then MS could have a problem on their hands hopefully, this could potentially make vista a flop. I mena what do the affordable versions of vista have that xp doesnt at the moment? - not aero - not winfs all they have is a locked down kernal so you cant stick AV and have MS "protecting you" sounds like you would be phoning MS a lot And how are they going to manage corporate lisences?
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
"protect consumers from pirated software, but may cause major headaches for IT shops"
/puke
Somebody got this story backwards.. a good pirate makes your life easy. MS has caused every major headache i can think of in reguards to IT. pfft
long live pirates.
Kill your TV
Sure, or if you used free software, you just wouldn't have to deal with all of that licensing crap. Money should be paid for support, not licensing, and efforts like this are crude attempts to fix a broken business model. The only pro-MS argument people can come up with here is that it's not that bad, but there's no way anyone can construe "Reduced Functionality Mode" as a feature.
"The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software"
I know these guys, see, and they might be able to keep out any pirated software that might, you know, just happen to drop by your hard disk. Youse don't want to surf the internets without protection, you can't be too careful. I mean, this is a nice computer, it'd be a terrible pity if something happened to it.
In a lot of cases you can just put the drives into a new box or copy an image onto it. A sendmail mail server recovery plan is trivial in the way - but as for MS Exchange OMFG! That full ecosystem of third party software you need to keep the thing running needs to be installed as well so it may be more than one phone call. Even commercial software on *nix doesn't have the problem - even if it is locked to hardware and the licence says you can only run it on a single computer with a paticular hostid then you just change the hostid to match the dead box and everyone is happy - no waiting on hold for thirty minutes while thinking of all the dollars per second of lost production on a critial box.
Form the story summary:
The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software
Could the Editors please spend a little time coming up with a summary rather than regurgitating press releases? Pretty please?
Protect consumers (customers?) from pirated software my ass. If I want marketing doublespeak, I'll go to the site myself, but please, typos and broken links aside, Slashdot is much better than this.
Amen to that!
It's not hard:
- Call Dell tech support (talk to an indian)
- Wait for replacement part
- Replace Motherboard
- Boot Server
- Check everything is working, and step up monitoring on the server.
See that last step? It's a step that any half-worthwhile sysadmin can do at the end of a 16 hour shift with no sleep.
If you've got a problem with software not working after a server change and nobody noticing, that's not a technical problem, that's a STAFFING problem.
Time for your favorite sysadmin to spend some time back in the call centre from which he came.
erm... just while I think of it... This antipiracy thingy... it's in Vista... like, Windows XP's replacement... so, WHY THE F*CK ARE YOU RUNNING A SERVER ON VISTA?!
I see. So when you make a major hardware change, you just do it and don't bother to make sure its working properly? Install or otherwise, i would hope that you at least log onto the system and check that it works.
By the way I see a lot of call to the M$ support. :)
I hope M$ is weighting this fact: they need to have a very GOOD call center, or a storm of customer will stop using theri software.
Is it worth for some anti-piracy control?
How much corporate are used to install pirate copy of Windows?
(...ouch Linux can be pirated
-- Giovanni Daitan Giorgi http://gioorgi.com http://www.siforge.org
Why should MS be checking my hardware?
Who gave them that right?
Many people around here are saying loud and clear that if you want to continue to own your own computer infrastructure in your own terms, you should not be using MS stuff. If people don't listen I hope they do enjoy it when they bend forward.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is very easy for you to say just do the frigging pohne call and get done with it.
But if you have any sizeable amount of machines those 2 minutes in the phone (2 minutes, yeah, sure, whatever) are time imposed as a cost to me. A cost that I did not need. A cost that accumulates with each hardware problem I have. A cost that is eating on my profits.
Any responsible datacentre administrator or desk support manager should make a big stink about this kind of nonsense, I would consider it a professional responsibility to scrutinize a provider when protecting them from piracy costs *me* money.
If MS is so worried about piracy they can pay to companies to be audited for example, or they can hire PIs to tie lose ends (hmm, these chaps have 200 old boxes but have never bought a Windows license. Panic alarm). But the cost should be absorbed by them, not by me or my company.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
With Microsoft's legendary reputation for software that works perfectly and never falsely identifies legitimate software as pirated, how can you be sure that the software was activated even if the computer SAYS it was? Or even if the Indian in New Dehli tells you it was activated? And if the activation in Vista has the same failure rate as WGA, then some large number of windows servers are going to go into "reduced functionallity mode" because the software activation is faulty. As I have read in various articles, it seems that the simplest and easiest way to re-legitimize your software is to re-purchase a liscence, and that would also get the serverup ASAP. So, spend a long time (days perhaps) arguing with Microsoft, or pay them the cost of the server software liscence. The business decision is one made on what it costs you to be down for the time that it is going to take your company to convince Microsoft to fix the problem. How much extra money is this going to bring to Microsoft? Why would Microsoft be motivated to reduce these additional sales? Given the Microsoft's reputation in the industry, as exemplified in the illegal leveraging of their monopoly on computer operating software into the browser market, and now into the computer security and antivirus market, why would such piratical (extortionary?) practices be anything beyond business as usual at Microsoft?
It seems obvious to me that with Microsoft entering the computer security and anti-virus market, that there is now a NEGATIVE business motivation for securing Windows and related Microsoft software. The cost of the operating system is not going to decrease, but if you want to use it without getting your system hosed on a regular basis, then you have to buy the "protection plan" that Microsoft sells. This is, in my mind, exactly parrallel to the extortion racket used by the mafia and exemplified in so many movies. The criminal organization creates the crime and then sells a protection plan. In this case, Microsoft creates the crappy security, and then sells its "protection plan"--antivirus and security software.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
Of course you need to make sure it is working correctly.
And it does make sense to log into the system, but if it
is a server, and the services running on it are responding
as expected, one might ( unwisely ) decide it is working
without logging onto the machine directly. Especially
if the issue was something that affected other machines,
and they all need to be brought back to life.
emt 377 emt 4
- And what if your MoBo died? Will it be a problem replacing it with another copy of the same board? You should not have to activate this product everytime your system changes. Defeating piracy is one thing, but causing a lot of headache and issues for paying customers is not. In the end, they will only hurt the paying customers, since the hackers will defeat whatever stupid system they come up with anyway.
Already is.WinXP Home OEM won't validate if you replace a motherboard with any other than the exact OEM part. I've had to deal with this several times now, and it has involved long conversations with Microsoft reps, who cheerfully inform me that legally, the license for Windows OEM needs to be renewed (i.e. buy another copy of Windows) if you replace a part as important as the motherboard.
Since for some computers, duplicate OEM motherboards are not available at any price, this creates a very sticky situation. So far, I've been able, as a Microsoft Partner, to jawbone the reps into eventually providing a validation code that works. But it isn't an easy or pleasant process.
It's clear to me that this is where Microsoft wants to go with licensing of Windows, at least for OEM stuff. Licensed directly to the parts in the box at time of installation. Any changes result in a renewal fee. This is part of the process of changing the overall license model from ownership to leasing. Microsoft wants a steady income stream from Windows, and is sick of having to keep updating its software to get it. They just want the customer to keep paying on a yearly basis for the same thing.
With the problems I've already experienced with Windows XP Home OEM, I am very nervous about what we'll be seeing with Vista. I'm afraid they're going to make it impossible for me, a small Handyman shop, to do equipment upgrades for people, because I won't be able to afford to tack on the licensing fees and stay competitive with the national outfits that buy volume licenses and slap them onboard cheaply, while us little guys are forced to buy them at or near retail.
Dell and Microsoft win, everybody else loses...
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity