Microsoft WGA Phones Home Even When Told No

Aviran writes "When you start WGA setup and get to the license agreement page but decided NOT to install the highly controversial WGA component and cancel the installation, the setup program will send information stored in your registry and the fact that you choose not to install WGA back to Microsoft's servers."

Comments

Re:time to modify the hosts file

[xtracto]

MS assumes everyone is online.

Hmmm. Sorry /. crowd to be the "anti Linux" guy here but every major desktop oriented Linux distribution also assumes you are online all of the time. For example, the marvelous Synaptic (Apt) or Yum (rpm) or any other package manager *requires* a live internet connection in order to install any program. Of course you could go to the repositories and download such .deb or .rpm but then you would have to *try* to install it and then download the dependencies and try to install the dependencies and download the dependencies of the dependencies etc.
Whereas with OSX o Microsucks you only have to download one installer file and thats all.

With several Linux distro's being easy to install and use, when WGA came out, I stopped MS upgrades and started moving to Linux. Love my Ubuntu box.
Do not get me wrong, I hate WGA also and I really love APT (it made me migrate from Fedora to Ubuntu) but please do not spread FUD just because you do not like. I mean, really looking at what Microsoft does by itself there is really no need to spread this bullshit, and on the other hand, you look bad.

Re:So?

[dthable]

You spoke against the government of /.
1984 anyone?

Re:Like the GPL?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Not at all, the GPL is a response to copyright law that is more restrictive than some copyright holders would like. If there were no copyright laws there would be no GPL because there would be no need for the GPL. The GPL, however, takes away no rights, it merely restores some (but not all) rights restricted by copyright law.

The GPL isn't a respond to copyright law. It's entirely dependent on it. The purpose of the GPL is to make sure source code is redistributed in software releases, so if there were no copyright laws, the GPL would be violated because nobody would have to redistribute that source code. Therefore, the GPL takes away the freedom to do whatever you want with the source code you download.

I see, so by your definition shoes remove freedom because they don't let me walk through the bars in a jail cell?

Um, what? You walk through physical matter when your shoes are off?

Shoes don't grant me the freedom to do anything I want (although they do grant me the freedom to walk across broken glass without injury) but since they don't help with lava or jail cells they remove freedom?

This is one of the most bizarre metaphors I've ever read. The fact shoes let you walk on broken glass has nothing to do with the GPL restricting what you can do with source code.

Your logic is very broken.

You're one to talk, fella.

You are quite simply wrong. Just admit it and demonstrate that you're a rational person, rather than reacting emotionally and trying to illogically defend your indefensible and factually incorrect argument.

You're right, let me just slip my shoes off and walk on out of this jail cell.