Windows Genuine Advantage Servers Out

krewemaynard writes to let us know that Microsoft has been having major problems with its WGA servers since at least Friday evening. Quoting Ars: "Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service... The Microsoft WGA Forums are full of problem reports, and Microsoft WGA Program Manager Phil Liu has acknowledged that there is a problem, and that MS is investigating." Update: 07/25 22:10 GMT by KD :Microsoft has identified and fixed the problem and posted instructions for anyone whose system mistakenly failed a WGA check. (The link posted earlier was to a 2006 article.)

Comments

HaHa

[jo42]

> "However, the sense we get from Phil Liu is that Microsoft is pretty much in the dark right now."

Nothing new here. Move along.

Re:HaHa

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it's time to switch to Linux Genuine Advantage instead.

Re:HaHa

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funny is that the servers came back up about 45 minutes prior to this being posted.

Re:HaHa

[Aliriza]

No worries Windows Genuine Advantage Servers Sp2 will solve all the problems , just wait.

whoops

[p51d007]

Of course, anyone that knows anything about hacking, already knows how to get around the WGA servers. Although a business really "can't" do that, but, I guess if you were really mission critical, you could do it until they figure out what is messed up on their WGA servers.

Re:whoops

[iminplaya]

...I guess if you were really mission critical...,

you should be fired if you made the decision to use commodity hardware and software. At the very least, you're being a cheap so 'n so.

Re:whoops

[Anonymous Coward]

you should be fired if you made the decision to use commodity hardware and software.

So the admins at google & youtube should be fired? More and more companies are realizing that commodity hardware can be just as reliable as the overpriced stuff (in certain senarios).

Re:whoops

[iminplaya]

Google and Youtube are hardly what I would call mission critical, unless we're talking strictly economics. I'm talking about hospitals, banks, air traffic control, etc. Things that can have a real effect on one's life. Google and Youtube are only mission critical for advertisers and Hollywood.

Re:whoops

[Bert64]

In this case it's the software which is broken, not the hardware...
Google at least runs software that they have full control over, on their commodity hardware.
However, google simply use a large number of commodity servers, so that if one fails it has no effect on the overall operation. The really critical bits are the bits binding all those thousands of servers together, and i doubt they run on cheap lowend kit.

Re:whoops

[jimicus]

Google and Youtube also have two major thing in their favour which many hospitals, banks and air traffic control systems don't have:

1. The problem they're trying to solve lends itself to their architecture.
2. They don't have to integrate with a bunch of legacy stuff, which could very easily introduce potential failure points.

Re:whoops

[Heembo]

People who really do mission-critical computing go for IBM big iron and/or SUN hardware. They have redundancy capacity as crazy as build in redundant motherboards. Mommy, can I borrow 300,000 for a new server? http://www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?cat=Sun%20Fir e%20High-end%20Servers&tab=3 I want one for my new workstation!

Re:whoops

[Anonymous Coward]

I can guarantee you that if Google goes down it will be world news and there will be lots of damage.
When your local hospital servers go down it will maybe make a local paper, and could be on the news when someone dies. But that probably won't happen.

WGA sucks

[The Bungi]

I like and use Microsoft software, especially the development tools and servers, and I've (almost) always considered they are worth the money. But WGA is the most stupid thing Microsoft has ever done. I could understand product activation to a certain extent - it's really no different than most commercial software protection schemes in most respects. But WGA needs to be killed off. WGA is a hell of a lot closer to treating customers like criminals than WPA ever was.

Personally I've never had problems with WPA or WGA, but this incident pisses me off just thinking about how pissed off I would be if that would ever happen to me. Microsoft needs to understand that there are limits to how much bullshit people can take, even among people who appreciate some of their software.

On the other hand it's not like I'd switch to Linux anyway. Ubuntu completely screwed up my X configuration after an apt-get upgrade that took two hours (6.x to 7.4) and I just shut the thing down. I need to move my FreeNAS to a better box anyway so that's what I'll probably do after wiping it. If I had a dime for every time I've typed su vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf I'd get me an iPhone or something.

Lack of choices suck too.

Re:WGA sucks

[MicrosoftElitist]

As someone who also objectively likes Microsoft products I have to agree with you here. WGA makes the legitimate customer feel like a criminal.

"need to move my FreeNAS to a better box anyway so that's what I'll probably do after wiping it."

Perhaps you should pick up Microsoft Home Server? It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work.

Here is a good video.

Funny, I was starting to think that there would be a single day on Slashdot without an anti-Microsoft story.

Re:WGA sucks

[pallmall1]

It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work.

Will it validate?

Re:WGA sucks

[iminplaya]

A real solution would be a hardware dongle. And it wouldn't require an internet connection. But bootlegging keeps Microsoft in business, so it's not very likely they will implement it.

Re:WGA sucks

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Ubuntu completely screwed up my X configuration after an apt-get upgrade that took two hours (6.x to 7.4) and I just shut the thing down. While that sucks, you do understand that an entire system upgrade like that is almost certain to have problems no matter what the OS? Any chance it was an nvidia card? Their damn closed drivers have fucked me over a handful of times too.

Re:WGA sucks

[arth1]

On the other hand it's not like I'd switch to Linux anyway. Ubuntu completely screwed up my X configuration after an apt-get upgrade that took two hours (6.x to 7.4) and I just shut the thing down. I need to move my FreeNAS to a better box anyway so that's what I'll probably do after wiping it.

This prompts the question of why on earth you're running NAS on a box with a head anyhow? If you're going to use a box for a NAS server, hooking up a graphics card to it is counter-productive, and using a typical GUI-based distro likewise. It's something that people brought up in the Microsoft way of thinking might do, but if relegating an old PC to become a NAS, the first thing I would do is get rid of anything I don't need, including graphics cards, whose main purpose in a server is to collect dust and increase heat.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The scary thing is that someone who goes "oh, noes, I lost my pretty GUI after a complete system update!" is running servers.
  You use vim but have trouble editing xorg.conf? And never thought of making a backup of the file (not that it's needed, there is always an automatic backup). I smell a troll.
  Btw, I haven't compiled a kernel in a couple of years, even on my 32MB of RAM laptop I run a vanilla kernel.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

This post had it all!

Windows pragmatism and loyalty, Linux cred and frustration, and Apple longing and desire. Well done!

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is not debian. Using apt-get upgrade isn't a good way to go from dapper or edgy to feisty. They did produce an upgrade tool, which it seems you didn't use. If you didn't want to use their upgrade tool, they said to do a fresh install. If you go about your upgrade without reading up on how to do it, expect some problems. You wouldn't expect an "upgrade" from windows2000 to vista to go well without doing some basic research first would you ?

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I think in a high number of cases, people who "upgrade in place" are morons.

There are obvious exceptions...freebsd, debian...and when it comes to servers, well the devil is in the details.

still, a lot of people do it, to save a little time up front...and man do they pay for it down the road.

stupid stupid stupid.

my captcha for this post is "inform"....good call imo.

Re:WGA sucks

[SendBot]

I have a multipurpose headless server that I use for things. I does literally have no video output whatsoever, but I did once have to plug in a agp vid card long enough to find out why it wasn't booting (a bios thing), so it's not completely useless to have video. Makes me wish you could still pick up a pci video card for $5 at places.

Re:WGA sucks

[malraid]

I would much rather deal with a broken X conf than with the crap I have to put up with WGA. It was a NAS server, I'm sure it was still serving even without a GUI.

Re:WGA sucks

[jimicus]

This prompts the question of why on earth you're running NAS on a box with a head anyhow? If you're going to use a box for a NAS server, hooking up a graphics card to it is counter-productive, and using a typical GUI-based distro likewise. It's something that people brought up in the Microsoft way of thinking might do, but if relegating an old PC to become a NAS, the first thing I would do is get rid of anything I don't need, including graphics cards, whose main purpose in a server is to collect dust and increase heat.

Do not underestimate the pervasiveness of the Microsoft way of thinking. It has created an entire generation of sysadmins and IT managers whose solution to every problem is to buy the first product which claims to solve it, rather than actually engage their brains.

I don't hold with that - the argument that "it's cheaper because it takes less time and time is money" doesn't hold much water in my experience. Few commercial products are as quick and simple as the vendors claim, and the argument that you can instead spend your time doing "more useful, productive stuff" is complete guff when the entire purpose of your job is to solve technology problems.

I don't debate for one moment that there is a place for Microsoft products - but I really don't have a lot of time for the "Throw money at everything" attitude they seem to encourage. I much prefer the "Think about what you need to throw money at" approach.

Re:WGA sucks

[jeevesbond]

It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work

Are you just horribly mis-informed, joking, trolling or shilling? The missus and I have been using GNU+Linux on our laptops, desktops and servers (2 laptops, 2 desktops, 1 home server and one dedicated web server) and have never compiled the Linux kernel. The only times I've ever bothered compiling anything is if I want cutting-edge, not-even-released-yet software, and what's wrong with that?

Funny, I was starting to think that there would be a single day on Slashdot without an anti-Microsoft story.

Here's a deal for you: when there is a single day where Microsoft don't cock things up, shill standards organsations or act as an abusive monopoly then there will be a single day on Slashdot without an anti-Microsoft story.

Re:WGA sucks

[aichpvee]

They'd just be creating a market for knockoff dongles. A real solution (for microsoft) would be to just accept the shitloads of cash they're making and stop thinking that they need to act like assholes when they're not rolling around in huge piles of it.

For the rest of us there's always the real solution of just not using it. It's been working out pretty well for me.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I just upgraded from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 without any notable problems -- even though I have a Broadcom wireless card, I switched my box off (oops) halfway through the upgrade and 7.10 is still in alpha.

There's no problem upgrading in place, it's just that the gp is a moron who shouldn't be let near a real computer.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slightly off-topic, but you might want to have a look at Novell SUSE the next time you try out Linux, or openSUSE if you consider yourself a more advanced user. I haven't had to edit my xorg.conf file on most of my systems, though I should admit that I edited it on one laptop to turn of tap-to-click on the touchpad (that should really be GUI-configurable, and might be by now..). Using YaST to edit your system configuration, setting up and maintaining a Novell Linux system is almost entirely point-and-click. I can't see myself ever going back to the likes of Fedora Core or Ubuntu.

Re:WGA sucks

[The Bungi]

I can get my hands on MHS for cheap since I have an MSDN Universal subscription, but I got FreeNAS running on a Fedora box for the challenge. Sometimes (not very often) I do like to tinker a bit.

Get ready to be modded down for the suggestion though :)

Re:WGA sucks

[The Bungi]

No, my NAS is a headless Fedora server install running on another, older box. The one that was running Ubuntu is beefier, so that's where I'm going to move NAS to.

That box also has my SVN repo but not much else, so it's never had X installed at all.

Re:WGA sucks

[iminplaya]

They'd just be creating a market for knockoff dongles.

Yes it would, but it would still have a huge effect. It's still much easier to download a serial number. The point is that bootleggers made Bill Gates a very rich man. The Mac is Apple's operating system's dongle. I don't see that many knockoffs. Do they have 10% market share yet?

Re:WGA sucks

[Computershack]

The only times I've ever bothered compiling anything is if I want cutting-edge, not-even-released-yet software, and what's wrong with that?

It's 2007. I use cutting edge software on Windows, to the point of daily builds. Never needed to compile one yet.

Re:WGA sucks

[GPL Apostate]

Apple ran their 'cloners' out of business not that long ago.

Earlier, they sued anybody with a similar GUI out of business (except Microsoft. They essentially 'created' Microsoft's market for them by running all GUI-on-x86 competitors out of the market for Microsoft)

Earlier yet, they sued anybody with a machine similar to the Apple II.

Apple has a long history of 'Innovation by Litigation.'

Re:WGA sucks

[vranash]

Maybe someone didn't pay attention to their 'config file updates' and accidentally overwrote their xorg.conf file? Or yeah, had the nvidia drivers installed which broke due to a xorg major number change. (I don't think either of those *SHOULD* happen, but backwards compatibility has never been a linux strong suit... Hell the BSD's are generally much better for that (although pray you remember to update your core utilities that use kernel level system calls, nothing like finding out you can't in fact just swap the kernel and be 'upgraded' :) FreeBSD I had that problem (whether it was kernel first, then utils, or utils first then kernel, I can't remember, WAS fixable, just got lots of errors from all the kernel specific tools.)

Re:WGA sucks

[jcr]

Earlier, they sued anybody with a similar GUI out of business

Name one.

-jcr

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with Microsoft, if people want to pay a couple of hundred bucks every few years for the exact same program and be treated like criminals, that's their choice.

It's like musquitos, they exist because they can.

Re:WGA sucks

[bcmm]

Sssh! Don't say you want an iPhone! They'll mod you troll!

Re:WGA sucks

[hairyfeet]

Get Xandros. I upgraded my laptop over the course of two years from 3.0 to 4.1 business and it has never given me a bit of trouble. Plus it is the only one out of the 60+ distros I've tried that was hassle free when it came to my broadcom 4318 wireless card.

Re:WGA sucks

[The Bungi]

I do, as long as it's unlocked and carrying a T-Mobile SIM card. And looks like I might just get my wish now :)

Re:WGA sucks

[bcmm]

*Woosh*

It was a joke. The real reason you got troll mods was for liking Microsoft, not Apple.

Re:WGA sucks

[MicrosoftElitist]

"Get ready to be modded down for the suggestion though :)"

Yeah, it's a crime that anyone suggest a Microsoft product.

Re:WGA sucks

[hairyfeet]

While it's agp and not pci,most boards made in the last 10 years have an agp,so here you go. http://www.surpluscomputers.com/store/main.aspx?p= ItemDetail&item=CRD10801

Re:WGA sucks

[arth1]

That, and doing BIOS setting changes, including turning off on-board audio/parallel/serial/usb if not used, and allowing boot to proceed without a keyboard/mouse, is a good reason to keep a nice sturdy PCI card around to temporarily put it in a box if ever needed. Old Matrox Millennium cards are my favourites -- they seem to be reliable (working well a dozen years after they came out) and not conflict with anything else.
I hope that for quite some time to come, motherboard manufacturers will continue to put at least one PCI slot on the boards, and allow the BIOS to work with a PCI graphics card.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:WGA sucks

[Ajehals]

Makes me wish you could still pick up a pci video card for $5 at places. It cant be just me who has a shelf full of pci video cards. Or maybe I should start throwing legacy kit out (my current laptop is a 500Mhz Dell, simply because its little, light and just keeps going - 2 batteries give me 5-6 hours of usage, and there are two bays...) but I just cant bear to get rid of stiff that could be useful to me or someone else...

Hell the pile of semi working laptops I have sat here very from a powerbook 100 (still works) through a dell latitude ( I think a 166 Mhz processor) through to a High end HP laptop with a busted screen (runs headless).

But as for PCI video cards, they always come in handy, like whenever I feel the need to add another monitor to my desktop - I was up to 4 for a while but the S3 card I used on monitor 4 was less than worthless at 800x600, (I'm back to a 15" a 19" and a 21" all on different cards, one of which is AGP). In fact on top of a stack of pci video cards I also seem to have a pile of 15" LG monitors that have been retired..

Forgot the point of the post now, but I haven't had a coffee since 6 so its probably OK.

Re:WGA sucks

[watchingeyes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notable_litigation_of _Apple_Inc

Doesn't exactly prove his point, but Apple is known as a litigious company.

Re:WGA sucks

[arth1]

Ah, that explains it, then. From your original post, I understood it that an Ubuntu upgrade made your NAS box stop working due to an xorg.conf change (which didn't make much sense to me)...

Re:WGA sucks

[arth1]

I tend to keep at least one of each type of hardware -- and usually the most reliable one, and not the fanciest one. I just tossed out a couple of ATI 9600 XT and Pro 3D cards, while keeping an older plain 2D card. Likewise, I keep a sturdy old clonker keyboard around, but will gladly toss away anything that came bundled with a computer.

Re:WGA sucks

[LiquidFire_HK]

You missed a spot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notable_litigation_of _Apple_Inc.

Re:WGA sucks

[jcr]

Excuse me? What does an empty Wikipedia article prove?

-jcr

Re:WGA sucks

[mattpalmer1086]

moderators: parent is not a troll. You may not agree with his opinion, but it's perfectly valid.

Re:WGA sucks

[SL Baur]

GEM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notable_litigation_of _Apple_Inc.

There appears to be some thing wrong with that link, which I got through google (search for apple look feel lawsuit).
Try this one: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:dE9LIfMY7VAJ:e n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notable_litigation_of_Apple_I nc.+apple+look+feel+lawsuit&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl= us&client=firefox-a

Interesting that I'm having trouble cutting & pasting that link on a Mac.

Re:WGA sucks

[BlueParrot]

Ubuntu completely screwed up my X configuration after an apt-get upgrade that took two hours (6.x to 7.4) and I just shut the thing down.

So let me see here.

a) You didn't read the upgrade instructions but simply assumed Ubuntu = Debian and tried to manually switch versions using apt-get.
b) Even on Debian upgrading between versions is done using dist-upgrade rather than upgrade.
c) You got lazy and interrupted the process halfway through
d) The only problem you had was that you had to reconfigure X

Now, let us hypothetically assume that Windows had a package manager that let you upgrade from XP to Vista over the net. Let us further assume that instead of following the instructions for how to use it, you run a low-level tool with incorrect command line parameters to do it the way you would have done it on a completely different system. Let us finally assume you interrupted the thing halfway through. How much do you want to bet that fixing your display settings would be the only problem you would experience as a consequence?

In a word: PEBKAC

Re:WGA sucks

[SL Baur]

They sure do. I remember the FSF boycott and etc/APPLE in Emacs (which I agreed with at the time).

Re:WGA sucks

[watchingeyes]

It proves I made a typo. Get over it. Use Wikipedia's search feature, or Google, and you could, within 5 seconds, find the article I meant to link to. Or, even better, read the post above yours that was also in response to mine.

Or, if those 2 options are too difficult for you, you could always merely ask me for the correct URL.

Re:WGA sucks

[Blakey Rat]

I use my "NAS" as a home media server. It has a monitor so I can use it to watch movies on if I feel like. But go ahead and assume that there's no possible reason to ever want a monitor on a storage server. I apologize for pointing out a flaw in your tidy little worldview.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that I'm having trouble cutting & pasting that link on a Mac.

It's not your Mac, it's slashdot inserting spaces in long strings to prevent page-widening. Had you given it a short name there'd have been no trouble.

Re:WGA sucks

[arth1]

What flaw? What prevents you from watching those movies at a different box even though they're stored on the NAS? Why do you have to watch them ON the NAS? Watching media on a remote viewer is pretty much the definition of how a media server works (outside the Windows MCE world, that is, but that has little to do with "NAS" or "server").

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Failing hardware was the reason I had to buy a new computer and WGA was the reason I bought a Macbook Pro. I have never tried a Mac before so it was a bit of a leap.
Well if I have to be 100% honest, I also wanted to try something new and a macbook pro kinda was overkill.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use the TPM to validate if a machine is authorized to use an OS? This works extremely well keeping MacOS piracy just to the extreme fringes, and this all transparent to the end user.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, it's just some guy's homebrew server/media player. Why the fucking beef?

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, if those 2 options are too difficult for you, you could always merely ask me for the correct URL.

No real point to bothering, though, since the article doesn't in any way support the original statement.

Re:WGA sucks

[aichpvee]

Actually, I probably shouldn't have said a market for bootleg dongles. That was assuming that the dongle would actually work, which it wouldn't. I should have said that it would create a "market" (though probably a free, as in beer, one) for cracks to circumvent the dongle. The difference between this and downloading a serial number are relatively trivial, and I can't think of any practical difference between such a crack and the various cracks available for the current activation schemes that companies are employing. In all likelihood you would see the same situation that you have now with pre-patched disc images making the circumvention invisible to the user and thus making the user experience superior to that of the legitimate copy.

The take aways from the failed DRM experiment should be a) there is no way to successfully deploy such a system to prevent those intent on running an application from doing so if they have the software (so not a service), and b) if an application is useful people will still pay for it, so the only advantage of having DRM is that you end up with a bunch of legitimate users who are pissed off. Which doesn't sound like much of an advantage at all.

It seems like one could make an argument that software that isn't directly "useful" could be more of a problem, particularly since individuals tend to be less likely to fear litigation or legal penalties for getting caught using it than a corporation with an army of lawyers warning them against it. The prime example of this type of software, that I can think of, is games, which as we constantly see piss off the people who do buy them because they're bundled with these types of DRM. I seem to remember hearing something about that recently. Incidentally there seem to be a lot of buyers out there buying these games anyway, just as there are with "useful" applications.

As to the case of Apple and their Mac "dongle," I think you'd see a lot more knockoffs if there were more people wishing to use them who were also unwilling to pay the price. It seems to me, and I'm sure there is objective evidence to support this theory (if anyone has or would study it), that the people who want to use a Mac, for whatever reason, tend to be the kind of folks who will pay for it. It could also be a lack of technical skill on the part of people who would like to not pay for it but still want to use it. But I can't really speak to that with any great authority since I don't have any wish to use a Mac, so I don't really care.

Re:WGA sucks

[jcr]

GEM

Apple didn't put DR out of business. Try again.

-jcr

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't have modded you down for suggesting a MS product, I would have modded you down for claiming to be able to get a MS that is still vaporware.

Re:WGA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to do that too. And I keep them around until I'm absolutely sure I'll never ever need it again. The last time I threw out old but not quite antique parts all my older systems started dying...

I just recently (2 weeks ago) threw away my last ISA card. I haven't had a computer that took ISA cards for about 2 years now...

Re:WGA sucks

[sumdumass]

Personally I've never had problems with WPA or WGA,

I have had the WGA haunt me. It comes in at the startup/login screen telling you your version of windows is pirated. It then bugs you some more about it. It offers a link to fix the problem but it is a link to a site that tells you your running a stolen version of windows and attempts to blame it on your tech support for fixing your computer with pirated software and then it says you could have bought it from a vendor who isn't reputable and could have pirated the software. (yes, I paraphrased but it isn't anything different from what is on the site).

Unfortunately, it also wants you to pay the going street price to fix it. And it is very challenging to tell your customer that MS is over reacting and you didn't try to cheat them. I mean common, Microsoft said so and they know more about their software then you do right? And when you get MS on the phone, they tell you the OEM is responsible for it and won't say a word about it might be an mistake, and if it is, the license key will be replaced free of charge. Finally I told the guy, "I have been working on your computers and supplying you computers for almost 10 years. If you don't trust me after this 10 years of faithful service, I don't need your business" And he came around. I called my supplier and they instantly gave em a new key over the phone and overnighted a new license CoA.

If you ever get hit with the WGA, hope that whoever sold you the computer is still around or whoever sold you the OS can be reached and that there is a record of the transaction. The computer I am talking about was 4 years old with no problems at all until one day abou 6 or 7 months ago when the WGA insisted I was a crook. Since I built the system, sold it and maintain it, I was covered under everyone of the "someone is trying to screw you ;)" scenarios that MS offered up to get the user to buy a legit copy.

I think they should be sued but I cannot find the web pages for evidence without the WGA going south again. Something I'm not willing to deal with on purpose. Next time around, I will save the pages and print them out, It won't be the same.

Re:WGA sucks

[level_headed_midwest]

Like any DRM measure, WGA is a pain in the butt and something to avoid if all possible. But if you want to see how bad DRM can get, try looking at what's in many low-volume technical/engineering programs. I'll use one I am familiar with as an example- it is the control program for a thermal stress testing machine.

1. Buy the machine for about $100k and the control software comes with it.
2. Install the software on your computer.
3. Plug the computer into an Internet connection with a fixed IP address that's permanently publicly available.
4. Call the company and give them your computer's NIC's MAC address and IP address.
5. They will activate the software remotely and continually log and validate the program whenever it is running.
6. The program is unusable if your NIC dies or your IP address changes. You call up the company and give them the new numbers and they will activate it later.
7. When an updated version of the control program ships, you have to upgrade or they will no longer validate your existing version. The price is about $40k for the program. The program itself is pretty simple and looks like an X program from about 1990 and isn't very stable. Oh, and it's Windows-only.
8. If your computer breaks, you have to beg and plead with the mfr. to let you transfer the license to a new computer. Same things for reinstalls, which is why the computer that runs the program is a W2K install on a PII-400. I hope that the guy who installed it has an image somewhere, but I am thinking not as the computer acts like it's never been reimaged since it was new.

Dongles and every-time-you-reinstall-you-have-to-buy-a-new-lic ense programs suck too, but this is about the worst I've seen. WGA absolutely pales in comparison, even though it's still a pain in the butt. I just hope that MS doesn't get any ideas from those guys, but I think that Chair(-throwing)man Ballmer and the rest of the BSA affiliates are smart enough to know that people aren't going to buy anything with that onerous of DRM (yet.) I wouldn't be surprised to see the TPMs get used more and more in the coming days, and that is much less obvious but just as big of a pain in the butt as the terrible software I described above.

Re:WGA sucks

[level_headed_midwest]

Three letters: T-P-M.

That's better than a hardware dongle as they are much harder to share (soldering a pin-edge chip to a motherboard does that) and most everybody with an Intel computer newer than about 2005 and even some AMD-powered ones will have the chips onboard already, particularly in enterprise/corporate machines. The TPM itself isn't bad as you can use it to store your passwords and do encryption, but it can be used against you as much or more than it can for you, which IS bad.

Re:WGA sucks

[Trifthen]

The funniest part, I think, is that actual pirates never see WGA or its ilk. The pirated version, more like than not, has had all authentication mechanisms removed, and as such, operates in complete ignorance to any "registration woes" genuine copies experience. The same thing happens with Steam.

Once again, the pirated copy is superior to the original.

I just love the irony: buy the software? "ZOMG PIRATE!!" Pirate the software? "Thank you for using this software. Carry on!"

Re:WGA sucks

[Anpheus]

To be fair, when installing an upgrade from XP to Vista, your original installation is kept intact, in entirety, until the very end of the process. As in, shutting down, pulling the plug, whatever... has no effect. The result is it boots back into XP. Every time.

Re:WGA sucks

[shmlco]

While I probably would never want to put OS X on a cheap beige box, there is one case in which I'd kill to have a cross-platform version that would run on a Dell. And that case is OS X Server.

I have an entire rack of Dell Servers running Windows 2003. And while I can't afford to replace the whole thing with XServes, I'd pay to zap Windows in a heartbeat.

(Linux fanboys stand down. Not interested.)

Re:WGA sucks

[shmlco]

"Once again, the pirated copy is superior to the original."

For as long as there are originals to pirate...

Re:WGA sucks

[someone1234]

If you type something too many times, why don't you make a shell command for it.

Re:WGA sucks

[iminplaya]

I do have to admit that I have this "gut feeling" that the relationship between Apple and Microsoft is more than a bit incestuous. At the same time, I don't have the slightest idea how much further along we would be if it wasn't for the insane laws we have on the books. That Apple(and Microsoft) exploits it is to be expected. That's life in the big city. Nice weather and an abundant supply of beer more than make up for whatever they do.

Re:WGA sucks

[rtb61]

The real solution is a class action law suit for all the lost time that M$ WGA failure caused. They wont to incorporate B$ like this to inflate their profits, then they should be paying the costs for it when it fails and not leaving the customer stuck with another finnacial loss.

As a end used a computer that was down for several hours and they might have lost several hundred dollars of production time and spend a couple hundred extra in computer administration time as they try to understand and resolve the problem all because of a $50 (P)OS overloaded with (FU)DRM.

Re:WGA sucks

[ConceptJunkie]

Pardon my ignorance, but has there ever been a class-action lawsuit that did anything more than be a mild annoyance to the company in question, enrich a bunch of lawyers and award all the litigants with checks that aren't even worth their time to cash?

Re:WGA sucks

[metamatic]

No, the 6.x to 7.x X11 upgrade was a major problem for ATI FireGL T2 users. I know, because the problem bit me too in Debian.

Re:WGA sucks

[pandrijeczko]

It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work.

Please stop being a moron & keep your stupid mouth shut over a subject you clearly know nothing about.

All of the Linux distros deemed suitable for Linux newbies (Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc. etc.) have just about every hardware driver there is compiled as a kernel module. Consequently, provided your hardware is supported by the Linux kernel (which these days is pretty much most common hardware), then the kernel will find it and load the driver. Sure, over and above that you may need to configure an application to use that hardware correctly, no different to configuring ATI/nVidia drivers (for example) in Windows.

Yes, Linux does have its faults but demonstrate you at least have an inkling of understanding about it by actually knowing what you are talking about - you've quite clearly never used it so zip it and you may actually learn something.

Re:WGA sucks

[Blakey Rat]

Wipe that foam off your mouth and try to follow my logic here a bit:

My NAS is located in my bedroom. Ok? Following me so far? And yet, the other computers in my house are (this is the incredible part, make sure you're still with me), NOT located in my bedroom. Therefore, it I want to watch a movie in my bedroom, I watch it on the monitor attached to the NAS machine. See how that works? Wow.

What flaw? What prevents you from watching those movies at a different box even though they're stored on the NAS?

Nothing prevents me. You made that up.

Why do you have to watch them ON the NAS?

I don't, and I never said I did. You made that up as well, for some strange reason.

Watching media on a remote viewer is pretty much the definition of how a media server works

That's how mine works, too. But what you're missing is that it doesn't HAVE to be a remove viewer. Hell, if I couldn't watch video directly off the NAS I'd probably just buy another HD for my desktop and do it there-- there'd be no point in wasting the power for it, and my desktop has the same networking features that the NAS does.

May I humbly suggest:
1) Toning down the hostility just a notch
2) Working on your reading comprehension skills? Or at least not completely making-up about 3 things I never actually said, then yelling at me for the made-up stuff.

Re:WGA sucks

[aichpvee]

What would an OSX server possibly give you that you couldn't get cheaper and better on Linux? I'm thinking nothing, so why don't you tell us?

Re:WGA sucks

[iminplaya]

Interesting that I'm having trouble cutting & pasting that link on a Mac.

It's Command+C, not Control+C :-) And it would be more 1337 if you made it look like this: Apple sucks balls I kid! I kid! Though I sure do love how they settled with Microsoft. I wonder who wears the pants in that relationship.

Re:WGA sucks

[shmlco]

In the case of the one company I consult for, they've transitioned their desktop environments almost entirely to iMacs, Power Macs, and MBPs. So in their case they'd get servers designed to work with their desktops and also have a much more homogenous environment for the admins to manage and maintain.

While that may not seem that much to you (Didn't I tell you fanboys to stand down?), it's a big deal to them. And since 15% of Apple's computer sales last quarter was in servers, I suspect that we're not the only ones with the same considerations.

You can go back to your "thinking" now.

Re:WGA sucks

[rtb61]

Who expects any money as log as the lawyers bleed the company dry and set up precedence for any future law suits, so it does far more than cause a minor insignificance for the company in question.

Re:WGA sucks

[ConceptJunkie]

But do they bleed the company dry when the company is as rich and powerful as Microsoft? I don't recall seeing any significant changes on the part of Microsoft due to the many lawsuits that have been decided against them.

Re:WGA sucks

[rtb61]

Stop and think about what M$ would be like now, if there had not been a series of succesfull civil cases against it, M$ would, with out doubt, be far worse. Just imagine what windows would be like if Linux had not turned up and forced M$ to start correcting it's worst coding deficiencies.

Each a every case against M$ has forced a modification of behaviour in order to avoid similar litigation. The only time it has really had no genuine effect was in that corrupt change of administration allowed M$ to continue with it monopolistic behaviour forcing the EU to tackle the worst M$ behaviour.

Liability

[nurb432]

Too bad they are not liable for any costs/lost revenue by their customers that are caused by this.

Too bad it doesn't happen more often, and piss off more people.

Personally it doesnt effect me either way :)

Re:Liability

[BSAtHome]

Just wait until some scriptkiddie decides to do a massive DDOS on the WGA servers. Then you'll see what is going to happen on a larger scale.

Re:Liability

[B5_geek]

The funny thing about your statement is that is EXACTLY why I can't get my company to install Linux on the desktops. ...."But who could we sue if something breaks?"....

Yes I know that the EULA prevents MS from getting sued anyhow, but these damned PHBs are mentally impaired.

Re:Liability

[Shados]

If you just buy the licenses retail, you're right. But large corporations can (and often do) have contracts with MS for stuff like that. The last place I worked for did.

Never needed it actually, but its in the contract.

Re:Liability

[techamed]

Okay someone mod this... It isn't "interesting"

Re:Liability

[fishbowl]

>these damned PHBs are mentally impaired.

And you have not managed to parlay your superior ideas into a position of authority for yourself because???

Seriously, if they are mental midgets as you claim, it ought to be child's play to take over.

Re:Liability

[aztektum]

Oh how I wish this had happened during the work week and taken out some computers at my company. Sure the powers that be would declare a switch to Ubuntu as a knee jerk reaction, as they do with so many other things to make my life hell... but in this case my life would be so much easier. Throw up a puppet server, and never worry about having to reformat a broken Windows box ever again.

I can dream right?

Slashdot Delay

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, by the time it hits Slashdot, WGA is operational again. Digg and Reddit have had this on the FP for hours

Re:Slashdot Delay

[Myen]

There's also the kdawson update to a blog post... dated 2006/10/05. It's only ten and a half months ago, it's still new, right? :)

Re:Slashdot Delay

[Vexorian]

Oh no! you mean I have missed a news item? Oh no, what a tragedy!

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a bad idea to leave the control of your computer to some grossly incompetent software company?!
Whowouldathunkit?

"Fight club scenario?"

[ivoras]

A friend of mine was immediately reminded of the Fight Club movie - how they tried to blow up all the banks at the end so nobody would owe anybody anything. Imagine if some digital vigilante wiped out Microsoft's database of keys, maybe like an inside job... all installs everywhere would simply be invalidated in an instant :) Now *that* would be a strong and immediate demonstration of both how the whole "activation" thing and DRM are wrong.

Man can dream...

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[marcello_dl]

But I guess they already know WGA and DRM are wrong... for the consumer. Remember this outage cost much more to the consumer than they cost to them, at least until people begin considering the painless alternatives.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[JFMulder]

considering the painless alternatives.
Since when is Linux or MacOS painless? Each platform have their share of frustration.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[gad_zuki!]

>Now *that* would be a strong and immediate demonstration of both how the whole "activation" thing and DRM are wrong

Err no its not. Thats like wiping out every social security number, watching the social safety net system collapse, and saying "SEE SOCIAL SAFETY DOESNT WORK AND IS WRONG." Or beating up your mailman, not getting mail, and saying "SEE, THE POSTAL SERVICE OUT HERE SUCKS."

No, youre just a criminal.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[Niten]

Not having used Windows for a while, can someone clarify what the consequences of a WGA "invalidation" would be? Once invalidated, is there a straightforward way to revalidate a Windows installation?

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Err no its not. Thats like wiping out every social security number, watching the social safety net system collapse, and saying "SEE SOCIAL SAFETY DOESNT WORK AND IS WRONG." Or beating up your mailman, not getting mail, and saying "SEE, THE POSTAL SERVICE OUT HERE SUCKS." What, you couldn't come up with a car analogy worse than those?

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[Shados]

Yeah, you can have fun revalidating your windows every 5 minutes if you want, be it valid or not (you can reenter the key at will).

For example the copy of Vista that was provided to me by my workplace didn't get activated correctly on first try for whatever reason. I just reentered it (the exact same one) later on from home and it fixed it, simple as that.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[ivoras]

Err no its not. Thats like wiping out every social security number, watching the social safety net system collapse, and saying "SEE SOCIAL SAFETY DOESNT WORK AND IS WRONG." Or beating up your mailman, not getting mail, and saying "SEE, THE POSTAL SERVICE OUT HERE SUCKS."

Until the SkyNet rises or we end up in the Matrix, they're "just computers", not really essential for life. It's not like Microsoft can't just set up a new validation server whose most important line of code is "return TRUE;".

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[Wordplay]

The analogy would only hold if people somehow didn't think they were dependent on the postal service to get them their mail, and needed a demonstration.

I don't support illegal activity, but people don't seem to realize or care how much dependency DRM puts on single (or singly-clustered) points of failure. Sure, Microsoft's not going down anytime soon, but other popular DRM-driven sources like Valve might. More incidents like this will illustrate the trade-off consumers are making with DRM: arguably higher availability of media, but the media itself relies on another entity to continue to be valid.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[Bearhouse]

Do you mean 'wrong' as in 'immoral', or 'wrong' as in 'does not work'?

Personally, I think it's both.

Like many people here, (I imagine), I change hardware frequently, and am also cursed with being my neighbours', friends', childrens' software and hardware support. So I get this 'activation' bs regularly. Have you ever tried fixing a system that was delivered with a 'recovery' CD, that tries to access some (corrupt) partition etc...of course, no 'original' installation CDs

How long before you cut your losses and install from one of your 'corp.' CDs, or - if it's not in the family - download some streamlined thing from isohunt? Believe me, its 10x quicker than going the ms way. Shit, it's not even as if they or I did not BUY the software in the first place... Anybody want a load of VALID ms serials - you can have 'em...

The real problem is that 'activation' punishes the honest user, whilst doing little or nothing to stop the pirates... /end rant.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[voice_of_all_reason]

they're "just computers", not really essential for life Would we even be able to run our reservoirs, sewage treatment plants, power plants, etc without them? We'd be significantly fucked if they all shut down.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[ivoras]

If they're running Windows connected to the Internet, you should be throughly and significantly fucked. But it's not like all your beer in the fridge will suddenly turn to poison or that you're going to starve. Call me a luddite but I stick by my story :)

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[X0563511]

Yes, but Linus can't just flip a switch and turn your systems capabilities off.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[marcello_dl]

Painless as in No Friggin WGA.

Besides, my last three frustrations (this week) were:

- network share disappearing on a laptop (XP), had to manually specify the name to make it reappear. With samba on linux, on the same network, did not lose the share nor ever have to specify, just chose it. Mapping the drive on xp requires seeing docs, on gnome you just make a bookmark for the share as you'd do for whatever other resource.

- plus sign appearing when i dragged an image to a folder's preview pane (XP) did NOT imply the image was copied. This kind of serious usability issue never happened to me with any linux or mac... or appleIIgs graphical environment.

OTOH in debian unstable at home, just after a multi hundred megabytes aptitude dist-upgrade, i got the fonts at the wrong resolution. It's the one frustration in the last 6 months or so and doesn't affect performance. I didn't fix it as I haven't decided if i really want the bigger fonts back.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[endymion.nz]

Please send list of valid keys to naldwell at xtra dot co dot nz.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[rugger]

You should download and use the correct CD for the license sticker on the computer you are fixing.

If you have HOME OEM, you install a copy of Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM.

If you have HOME retail, you install a copy of Microsoft Windows XP home Retail.

And so forth. Then you can use the OEM key on the computer, and activate it legitimately with Microsoft. No reason to ever use a corporate copy on any machine with an OEM license.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[metamatic]

Simpler would be a virus or worm that wiped out the WGA info on the client PC. If you could use an IE exploit to run the code, people could spread it across the net. I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't happened yet.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[petermgreen]

If the machine originally came with big brand OEM windows and you either can't find the right brand of install CD or you have had to replace the motherboard you will have to install using a whitebox OEM CD and then try and convince MS to activate over the phone. Apparently this can sometimes be difficult. Same problem if a machine originally had whitebox OEM windows and has used up it's quota of activations (say because it's owner upgrades a lot).

and then of course there is the situation where the machine has a OEM sticker but the sticker is placed in a position where it was vulnerable to damage and is no longer legible.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[L0rdJedi]

Said person that upgrades a lot should not be purchasing OEM licenses. They're cheaper for a reason. They're meant to be used on one complete system, one time. Just because you don't understand MS licensing scheme, does not mean it doesn't work.

If you upgrade parts so damn often that the OEM version is crapping out on you, spend the extra cash and get the full version of either Pro or Home. Yeah, it costs a little more, but it saves a whole hell of a lot of time when doing upgrades and it keeps you perfectly legal.

For the people buying pre-built systems, have them contact their vendor for a reinstall CD. They are required to send one (they may charge a nominal fee, like $10, not sure on that though). More often then not, the people that ask me for help with their HP, Dell, etc, etc have had the system for less than a year and are just to stupid to bother calling support. Unless it's family, I always tell them to call tech support since they will be able to get it running before I have time to come over.

Re:"Fight club scenario?"

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't work like you think. As I understand it, the mass-market consumer Vista installs are the ones that check a Microsoft server. But the machines upon which most business depends -- the corporate volume-licensed Vista installs -- check a local license server, so they shouldn't be affected by Microsoft's server going down.

good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The masses need to get hurt before they come to the conclusion that giving full control over your PC to a commercial entity is not a good idea.

lets hope it lasts a few more weeks or so.

Inevitable - look it up in the dictionary

[Torodung]

To all those people who say "Nothing can go wrong with the system" and "I've never had a problem with activation."

This (redundant link) is what can go wrong, and it was only a matter of time. There is no such thing as an unsinkable ship. I believe in Murphy's Law, so long as you add the word "eventually" to the end of it.

--
Toro

Re:Inevitable - look it up in the dictionary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you follow the link above it looks like MS has solved this problem within a couple of hours.

Re:Inevitable - look it up in the dictionary

[Torodung]

I already linked that and did it as a top thread, in my own name (to get the karma bonus), before you even posted this as an AC. The difference: I attempted to be helpful.

And that "solution" is not. It's a workaround. You have to navigate to an emergency site with your web browser, as WGA still doesn't work.

As an unhelpful fan of MS, I guess you're used to thinking of workarounds as fixes, though.

Have a nice day. :^)

--
Toro

Re:Inevitable - look it up in the dictionary

[Anonymous Coward]

I already linked that and did it as a top thread, in my own name (to get the karma bonus), before you even posted this as an AC. The difference: I attempted to be helpful.

And that "solution" is not. It's a workaround. You have to navigate to an emergency site with your web browser, as WGA still doesn't work.

As an unhelpful fan of MS, I guess you're used to thinking of workarounds as fixes, though.

Have a nice day. :^)

--
Toro

There is a workaround, apparently.

[caferace]

"Please go to http://www.microsoft.com/genuine and click VALIDATE WINDOWS to resolve this issue immediately."

Haven't tried it, because I don't need to. But....

Re:There is a workaround, apparently.

[sponga]

It worked perfectly fine and took all of 5 seconds of my life.
Article is a little late and it only really affect 1 in 100000.

"Thank you for validating your copy of Microsoft Windows.

Thank you for using the Windows Genuine Advantage program. You may now access resources for genuine Windows users."

The bigger problem for Microsoft...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that they're calling the people that sell their software thieves. They are biting the hands that feed them. One of our customers bought a copy at Fry's, and when they called Microsoft about the problem, Microsoft accused Fry's of selling pirated software. Accusing the people that make money for you is a good way to kill a business.

Re:The bigger problem for Microsoft...

[Bearhouse]

Monopolies breed arrogance. I quit IBM in the 80's because all my bosses seemed to be concerned about was politics.

The customer was always wrong - just a source of revenue. But when you're making 75% net margin, (yup - NET), on some hardware, hell, why not get lazy and arrogant?

I joined a software house, and, years later, was in the sad position of telling some of my former colleagues why they were unemployable.

Gonna happen to Ms.

Re:The bigger problem for Microsoft...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that pegged my irony meter - Fry's was a market leader in treating every single customer like a thief! I despise their 'Receipt Check' lineup to exit the facilities, and (on a separate, unrelated note) would not be surprised in the slightest to find that they have purchased pirated software for resale.

This in no way constitutes acceptance or defense of MS's WGA retardation. I have lost many production days to activations and validation issues with rebuilt servers in production and lab environments at my POE.

And before the consumerist fanboys jump up and down about free choice and market effects, I have indeed taken my business elsewhere, and no longer shop at Fry's (or TigerDirect, or Best Buy, or Circuit City) ... man, the 21st century sucks! Not even a flying car to show for it!

The whole concept if flawed

[puck01]

This whole concept of authentication and WGA is flawed. It adds too many points of failure that in the end hurts legitimate users. Why should we be punished for MS's piracy problems.

For me it started with XP. Since I can no longer interchange parts in and out of my computer without worrying about setting off the authentication, I've worked hard to get my myself and my family off Windows. I'm the computer dork in the family and if I can't trouble shoot stuff without worrying about this kind of stuff it sort of kills the fun in building your own machines.

I'm not surprised this is happening and I won't be surprised when this stuff continues to happen in the future. Please get rid of these awful 'features' Microsoft

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[careykohl]

I couldn't agree with you more. The only people being inconvenienced by this are Microsoft's legitimate paying customers. Once again a major company has reinforced the notion that not only does pirated software/music/movies/etc save you money it also saves you a ton of hassle.

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but here's the real kicker: the biggest security hole in Windows is there by design, widened with each release, and can be exploited through numerious attack vectors. Oh yeah, and it's illegal to fix. All closed source software has the same basic flaw: authentication. The only difference between these pieces of software is that the more successful the software company at "protecting their intellectual property" the more vulnerable the software, and the more inconvienient for the customer.

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[einer]

Please Microsoft ignore this man's plea. For the love of GOD you're advancing the plight of open source software by decades at a time with shit like this!

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[fishbowl]

>This whole concept of authentication and WGA is flawed.

It puts a cryptographic key between you and tools on which you may come to depend.

Would you crawl under a car that was raised on a lift, knowing that the lift might fail, and that possibly, before you could be rescued, someone would have to wait for a customer service line to give a crypto key to unlock it?

That is a bad car analogy, but it's precisely the reason some copy protection schemes are absolutely taboo in the parts of my world that I control.

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I'd never try to do anything important--like run a business upon which my livlihood depended on a WGA machine.

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[Peaker]

Please get rid of these awful 'features' Microsoft

If you used Free Software, you would not have to beg :-)

Re:The whole concept if flawed

[Technician]

This whole concept of authentication and WGA is flawed.

For the Slashdoters who feel left out, the Linux Genuine Advantage site is still up.
http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/

Between this and their slow-ass update servers

[Master of Transhuman]

it's a wonder any company can get anything done with Windows.

Corporations need to realize that making Bill the richest guy in the world is not the most effective use of their IT capital. Just imagine if all those license fees, the cost of downtime for malware attacks, the cost of license following, the cost of unnecessary servers due to lack of scalability, etc., ad nauseum, had been diverted to open source development. Microsoft would be out of business now.

Re:Between this and their slow-ass update servers

[SplatMan_DK]

Just imagine if all those license fees, the cost of downtime for malware attacks, the cost of license following, the cost of unnecessary servers due to lack of scalability, etc., ad nauseum, had been diverted to open source development. Microsoft would be out of business now. You have a very good point indeed - put it probably proves something other than what you expected.

Commercial software companies like Microsoft have spent a lot more resources on shaping their products into finished stand-alone packages that actually WORK... without the requiring the user to read five or six 800-pages O'Reiley books about advanced protocols or client/server APIs. So precisely because these companies HAVE spent their license fees on development that appeals to their customers, they are dominating the marketplace. And precisely because F/OSS development is (was) not driven by the needs of end-customers and consumers, the products were too advanced to use, understand, install, upgrade, etc.

Don't get me wrong here - I am a big F/OSS fan. But please observe that all the truly successfully F/OSS products nowadays are backed by big companies with commercial interests in them. Most (if not all) Linux distros that are appealing to normal end-users are from big companies with a lot of cash. And many (many, like in MANY!) non-OS products in the F/OSS category are being used commercially and is backed by companies with commercial interests in them (MySQL is its own company - HP, IBM, Novell, Sun contributes to a lot of end-user stuff both with development and cash).

Commercial software and license fees are not evil. Only their terms of use *CAN* be "evil" or at least "non-free" (as in "non-freedom).

And we would certainly not mind making Bill the richest guy in the world if he had just delivered his software with free (as in "freedom", NOT as in "beer") licenses - right?

:-)

- Jesper

Re:Between this and their slow-ass update servers

[glitch23]

it's a wonder any company can get anything done with Windows.

I realize the submission was about Windows and so is your comment but I'll add to your comment this: it's a wonder any company can get anything done with Windows and Office. Over the past decade of using Office and recently the last couple years working with Office 2003 at work, it has become increasingly annoying. Unfortunately we have to use Office because our project deliverables to the governmen have thus far had to be .doc or .xls files however I hear soon we are going to be required to deliver PDFs. But we still have to create the document in something prior to creating a PDF out of it so I have a feeling we won't get off of Office anytime soon despite Word's lack of performing nicely with hundreds of track change items visible among other things.

Re:Between this and their slow-ass update servers

[morcego]

I would like to take this a step further. First, lemme me say that I work and live (home) in a 99.9% Microsoft-free environment (I have 1 gaming Windows computer, and thats all). I'm also a company owner.

There are a lot of nice ideas that came (and still come, sometimes) from Microsoft. The problem there is that they lost not only their vision, but their common sense. I agree that
a company, to be successful, can not be rules by engineering. Marketing and the whole Commercial department has to give the guidelines and to point where to go. But there is the need to keep control over those areas. Things like "releasing day X no matter what" and "we need to add this and that" (during the project) are not healthy in most cases.

That is why I like companies like Bioware. I know answer like "it will be released when it is done" might piss a lot of people. Atari is one that keeps moving their products from Bioware to other companies. Can anyone name a single low quality software product from Bioware ? Yes, I don't like some of their games either, but they are well done.

Companies need to find a balance between engineering/technical and the marketing/commercial parts. If you are too technical oriented, you loose money and can go bankrupt. Apple was like that for a long, long time. If you are too commercial oriented ... well, I don't think we need examples for that.

Microsoft, as many other companies, have lost that balance, and this WGA fiasco, and they treating their paying customers as criminals is just another symptom of that lack of balance.

Also, don't forget the Share Holders. These days, they influence (and sometimes control) the decisions made by Microsoft much more than Bill. Or do you think it is Bill that is pressuring Microsoft to increase profits ?

Re:Between this and their slow-ass update servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Commercial software companies like Microsoft have spent a lot more resources on shaping their products into finished stand-alone packages that actually WORK... without the requiring the user to read five or six 800-pages O'Reiley books about advanced protocols or client/server APIs. Oh, and you've never had to consult manuals, websites, books, etc to understand how Windows works? You were born with the knowledge of how to fix your Windows installation after a bad driver/virus causes your computer to constantly reboot in an infinite loop without any warning/error messages?

And precisely because F/OSS development is (was) not driven by the needs of end-customers and consumers, the products were too advanced to use, understand, install, upgrade, etc. You sound like you're a non-technical Windows user who knows Windows because that is what you've always used. You also sound like someone who has never tried to administer (in depth) both Windows and Linux servers (including email, web servers, VPNs, SQL servers, backups, patching, etc).

As someone who has worked extensively in both open source command line Linux and proprietary Windows GUI environments, I *HATE* using GUIs. Try explaining to a remote worker over IM/IRC/phone how to reconfigure a server while using the GUI. You'll hear a lot of comments such as "I don't see that button", "Oh, I was in the help menu of solitaire... so you want me to open the control panel?" and "Where is the shortcut to the computer management snap-in? It is missing". If you're running a server farm with 1000 servers, you can reconfigure Linux servers at the same time with a simple script. With Windows GUI interfaces, you'd have to login to each server 1 by 1 and configure each one by hand manually. Or if you've got a meltdown situation and you need to do things FAST... typing "/etc/init.d/something restart" is a hell of a lot quicker and easier than opening up GUI windows 5 layers deep.

Want to automatically update your software on Windows? Have fun visiting dozens of third party websites, downloading installation files and installing them one-by-one, trying to avoid the forced "You need to reboot your computer to complete installation. Do you want to reboot now?" with only an "OK" button and a "Cancel" button that rolls back the installation. If you want real fun, press cancel and rollback the installation. Then try to reinstall the same software to see a "This product has already been installed. Please uninstall the current version first" message. The only problem is that you don't have the software installed so you have to open regedit (via the manual command line "Run" window) and find the magic registry key(s) to remove.

I am sick and tired of hearing people claim that Linux is "too hard" and "too complicated", while totally ignoring the *MASSIVE* inefficiencies and problems of using a proprietary Microsoft environment. You can't claim Linux is "too hard" just because you've never taken more than 5 minutes to learn the basics. If you did know anything about "Linux" you'd understand that the command line is a specific and very important feature which many administrators swear by. People have made plenty of GUI configuration tools for Apache and Linux applications in general (a widespread example is cPanel, a web configuration interface used by thousands of hosting companies on dedicated servers). However you'll find that a lot of these projects are "dead" (haven't been touched since 2001) which just goes to show that there is little demand for dumb GUI configuration utilities.

Re:Between this and their slow-ass update servers

[SplatMan_DK]

You sound like you're a non-technical Windows user who knows Windows because that is what you've always used. You also sound like someone who has never tried to administer (in depth) both Windows and Linux servers (including email, web servers, VPNs, SQL servers, backups, patching, etc).

With all respect, that is not the case :-) And you also make a number of critical mistakes which display your Windows-ignorance. I will address those in a second.

With Windows GUI interfaces, you'd have to login to each server 1 by 1 and configure each one by hand manually.

That is a very widespread and common misunderstanding, which is totally untrue. Any Windows server since NT 4 supports remote scripting. A Windows SA who knows hes way around VBS can access virtually any element of a Windows Server through COM, and execute these scripts remotely. The scripts can also be propagated to any number of servers, either by naming the servers or by propagating them using the Domain/AD specifications (site, organization, country, company, etc). I don't know where you picked up this misconception, but when you accuse others of not knowing what they are talking about, the least you could do is get your facts right.

Want to automatically update your software on Windows? Have fun visiting dozens of third party websites, downloading installation files and installing them one-by-one, trying to avoid...

That is yet another common and very untrue misconception. It is no more difficult to get the correct downloads for Windows applications that it is for Linux applications. While it is true that many Linux distros have good packaging systems (which many Windows admins may envy), consider what happens if you have software that is not in your packet manager? Like commercial software from Oracle or IBM? (yes - businesses actually use such commercial products). Or 3rd party open source software which has not been compiled? Good luck compiling it for your specific distro and all the different hardware if you are just an average admin.

I am not saying Windows is better in this respect. But you shouldn't pretend it is 100 times as bad either. Rolling out updates on multiple servers can be done with the Windows Installing service, which can propagate properly formed MSI packages to any number of machines you like (including thousands of Windows clients and hundreds of servers in a single roll-out). It requires the same care and the same planning as rolling out updates on non-Windows machines - just using different tools.

In addition there are many software managing systems which can handle these things for you. Some are commercial (like Tivoli and HP Openview) and others are free. They support both Windows and non-Windows technology, so in many cases you can design roll-out projects for many different platforms with the same tool. They will even make sample scripts for you, or have agent-software you can install on the target machines to be managed.

while totally ignoring the *MASSIVE* inefficiencies and problems of using a proprietary Microsoft environment.

If you refer to your apparent lack of knowledge on how to handle large Windows environments, then you are correct. But an experienced Windows SA will never have the difficulties you describe, and will handle things in a very different manner. Your example is flawed.

You can't claim Linux is "too hard" just because you've never taken more than 5 minutes to learn the basics. If you did know anything about "Linux" you'd understand that the command line is a specific and very important feature which many administrators swear by.

The same goes the other way around :-) Scripting and shell commands is used just as much in large Windows environments by experienced Windows SAs.

Being a former Debian user, and now an openSUSE and Windows user, I feel I know many of the differences between Windows

surely

[Anonymous Coward]

They should rename it Windows Genuine Disadvantage ?

Good News!

[kihbord]

Wow this is good news! This means that M$ just gave us another reason not to use Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Re:Good News!

[TechForensics]

Windows 2000 too. If you get updates, you've gotten WGA.

From what I hear. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Personal Infrastructure

[PingXao]

There have been stories lately about how the IT structure in the US is vulnerable to disruption. While I think that danger is overstated to some degree, there is no doubt some critical infrastructure that is connected to the internet and subject to breakdown.

We each have our own personal infrastructure in our homes. If Windows is part of it, then you're subject to breakdowns in other parts of the system, i.e. Microsoft WGA.

Last week I returned one of those fancy Harmony remote controls because programming it requires contact over the internet with Logitech's servers. I refuse to subject myself to that nonsense, especially when a standalone piece of software would not be difficult to write and distribute.

If there was a way to divorce my personal Windows-based IT infrastructure from the online whims of Microsoft I'd jump on it. Too bad the monopolistic behavior of MS makes this impossible for the moment.

When they end-of-life XP they had better issue a patch to remove the activation component from it.

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[GPL Apostate]

When they end-of-life XP they had better issue a patch to remove the activation component from it.

You're kidding, right?

When they end-of-life XP they will at most smile and tell you it's time to upgrade.

People at work act like I'm weird that I stopped buying Microsoft anything (well, I bought a nice Microsoft mouse not that long ago...) at Windows 2000.

My W2K box works fine, and will continue to work fine. There are off-line Update Scripts out there now, so my 'doze boxes will NEVER connect to a Microsoft server again.

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[Bert64]

And why would they release such a patch?
You continuing to use old versions doesn't generate any profit for microsoft, they would prefer you to buy the latest version. By using xp in the first place you accepted that it used activation, and thus accepted the risk of the activation servers ceasing to exist. If you end up with a perfectly good machine rendered useless because it's software refuses to run, and are faced with buying a whole new machine and new os, you have noone to blame but yourself.
It's very much within microsoft's interests for old versions to become useless, forcing you to buy upgrades. Their own biggest competitor is their own old versions, people who are quite happy with old versions and consider the cost of upgrading pointless.

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[iminplaya]

When they end-of-life XP they had better issue a patch to remove the activation component from it.

HA! Are you kidding? What they will do is issue a patch that deactivates all XP installations.

First, make sure he's dead.
BANG!... BANG!

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[Phoobarnvaz]

When they end-of-life XP they had better issue a patch to remove the activation component from it.

Happened several years ago. Just look at all the warz sites with patched copies of XP/Vista.

Funny thing...by the end-of-life...instead of being a "criminal"...you will be able to continue using the copy of Windows you either got or bought. Just means this BS is/has been made redundant for quite a while.

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

A standalone piece of software WOULD be difficult to write and distribute. Consider how many different kinds of AV hardware there are out there? Consider how many configurations they might be hooked up in? The Harmony configuration UI is extremely good (compared to other remote control configurators, especially). It makes logical assumptions but asks you to confirm, it remembers your configuration, it's pretty darn clean and usable by people who would never have the proverbial snowball's chance of configuring something like a Pronto.

We're talking about a device that provides a unified view and command structure for essentially a random combination of multiple devices, which need multiple commands to accomplish a high level task (like changing from "watch TV" to "watch DVD" to "listen to CDs"). This is significantly more complex than just configuring your "All-in-One" remote (which are nifty devices in themselves). The competition is really designed to be configured by your "audio/video/entertaiment system installer". Yes, the notional /.-er would probably have no trouble with configuring the others, but for the casual consumer, the Harmony is way cool and very slicek.

Sure, one could make the existing web application a standalone program (heck, for all I know, it's written in Java and just happens to run on a backend, instead of the client).

But, now, who's going to spend the time to figure out all those arcane codes for all those oddball remote controls. The "all-in-one" head to head IR learning scheme doesn't work for a lot of the newer ones (for instance, the Moxi Set-top box apparently uses a bastardized version of the old PC-jr IR keyboard protocol, very different from the usual Philips style 40 kHz PCM). What's your distribution mechanism? Are you going to set up a public ftp server for the data? How will you collect user requests?

For instance, when I set up my Harmony a couple years ago, there was a function that did not work properly. You push the button on the remote that says essentially, "that didn't work". You connect the remote to the web via the USB port, it sends the data back. A day later, you get an email saying, we've figured out how to make your oddball whizbang device work, connect up, and we'll fix it. And they do.

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[WNight]

What part of what you described would be made more difficult by having an offline program? Obviously you'd have to connect to the net to get updates or use a 'contact us' feature, but that's 95% of the functionality instead of 0%.

Re:Personal Infrastructure

[internewt]

You connect the remote to the web via the USB port, it sends the data back. A day later, you get an email saying, we've figured out how to make your oddball whizbang device work, connect up, and we'll fix it. And they do. And that service will still be available in twenty years? Or ten? Or three? Or when the current product has been superceded? PingXao was right to return it, and I hope he returned it such that it couldn't easily be resold. That way, the message is much more likely to get back to manufacturer that the business model is bullshit!

WGA Newspeak

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, "Windows Genuine Advantage" has got to be the most blatant piece of Newspeak in the computer world today. I wonder if the irony of the situation still registers with Microsoft folks who are dealing with the crisis right now, or that they have already completely tuned out the meaning of the English words "genuine advantage".

Re:WGA Newspeak

[X0563511]

The sad thing is swapping two words around would still sound the same, but actually make sense!

"Genuine Windows Advantage" makes a hell of a lot more sense. But then that hurts your ego-complex.

Windows this. Windows that. Microsoft this. DAMN! Arrogant sons-a-bitches they are! They even go so far as to massacre proper structure of "Genuine Windows" advantage.

Project Mayhem

[no_pets]

The Data Retention committee of Project Mayhem is working on this - but you didn't hear that from me.

Re:Project Mayhem

[WPIDalamar]

There is no project mayhem.

Re:Project Mayhem

[Anonymous Coward]

His name was Robert Paulsen....his name was..

Re:Project Mayhem

[Jarik_Tentsu]

Oooh, that'd suggest an MS employee is part of a Fight Club somewhere. Which one? I wanna join.

~Jarik

eggs in one basket

[SolusSD]

monoculture == dangerous!!

Re:eggs in one basket

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, Windows users are the computing equivalent of a bunch of lemmings. You have to believe that MS knows where the cliffs are, or you'd better look up and around every now and then.

Phil Liu has workaround already

[Torodung]

Phil Liu details a workaround here, third post down.

Please go to www.microsoft.com/genuine and click VALIDATE WINDOWS to resolve this issue immediately.

Additionally, I know you all are looking for an explanation/root-cause. I will get that ASAP. We are aware it is a server-side issue - the cause is unknown at this current time. Best of luck to all you Vista users.

--
Toro

Re:Phil Liu has workaround already

[Almahtar]

Additionally, I know you all are looking for an explanation/root-cause. I will get that ASAP. Doubt it. 95% of people affected will just forget the issue once it's fixed, and they know it. Letting everyone know what they did wrong is not really their style, and really they'll probably just report the most acceptable answer they can think of.

We are aware it is a server-side issue SAY IT AINT SO!?!?!?

switch to LGA?

[atamyrat]

Damn it, it is broken?! I want to benefit from this Advantage program! They should open source WGA. Bugs would be fixed immediately by volunteers, so we can enjoy it without problems!
I'm switching to Linux Genuine Advantage(TM), guys. It is better and open-source!

Re:switch to LGA?

[beanenator]

but will microsoft will even things like that there like a pack of wolfs fighting over food when it comes to that kind of thing. they are going to blame on the pirates again or will they blame it on someone else ponders i hope the people who affected get there time/money back

Sysadmins! Go to work!

[erroneus]

Turn on all the machines! Log in! Get those machines invalidated as quickly as possible.

This was going to happen

[FunkyRider]

I knew sooner or later this was going to happen, not to mention how many times I've been pissed off about Vista's WGA, I changed a video card and vola! Not genuine anymore... But anyway that was long time ago and now I'm trying to be M$ Free just like I'm trying to be GE-Free, Drug-Free, or woteva Bad-Baddies-Free.

What? Am I really the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHA... HA.. HAHAHAHAHAHA...HA...LOL....HAHA...ROTFLMAO!!!!!111 11oneoneoenoeneoeneon!! DAMN!!!
Yeah, wow... that's really funny. Now imagine a worm like code red, but instead of attacking the whitehouse, it attacked microsoft all microsoft update and validation servers. If that isn't a reason to switch away, I don't know what is... now excuse me while I continue to laugh from the security of my linux box.

Re:What? Am I really the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have fun playing with your text editors little man!

Repay the compliment

[jeevesbond]

Microsoft frequently shill online forums, they're even attacking the venerable ISO! From this Groklaw article:

And if it were me, I'd want to know if there is any Microsoft shadow in the background. Someone placed a threatening comment on Groklaw the other day, saying someday the "darkness" behind PJ would be revealed, and to "sleep well", and because of the threatening tone, I checked the logs and the comment appears to have come from an ad agency that does a lot of work for Microsoft. So I am wondering about things I didn't think about before. I remember what happened to an innocent man's reputation in the Massachusetts ODF affair.

So, this would seem like the ideal time to feed them some of their own medicine. Get over to the WGA forums and do some pro GNU+Linux astroturfing. Here was my message:

I came here not because I have a problem but because the mainstream media is starting to pick up on this issue, I suspect that pressure on MS to fix the problem will tremendously increase once this hits a few news/social networking sites.

The reason I'm not having any issues? I use Ubuntu and have the pleasure of knowing my OS and computer are owned by me. Maybe a few people here should give it a try: you never know, it might work! If it doesn't, all you've wasted are a couple of hours when you couldn't use Vista anyway.

Either way, I hope these problems get fixed for you guys soon.

As long as you're polite and make a point it can only help the adoption of Free software. Show these people that we're not zealots and offer them a way out of the WGA doldrums! :)

Re:Repay the compliment

[TrekkieGod]

As long as you're polite and make a point it can only help the adoption of Free software. Show these people that we're not zealots and offer them a way out of the WGA doldrums!

It sounds like your heart is in the right place, but I don't think the Windows users will see astroturfers in the WGA forums as non-zealots. You're actually making the Linux users sound like the guys who post things like, "I don't even own a TV, and now I my quality of life has improved 10-fold" in TV-related topics. That's all well and good, but it doesn't solve their problem. They want to use windows, and even though linux doesn't have to deal with the WGA bs, it's not windows. I think we really need to admit that regardless of how much we may like linux for whatever reasons, other people may not care about our reasons. Let them use what they want.

Best way of getting people into linux is one person at a time, with people that you actually know. Set up your desktop up with some nice compiz eye-candy (the majority of people like that stuff), and the people who see you use it will be interested. Then they will ask you about it and you can say, "it's linux. It's free, and you can have it too."

Re:Repay the compliment

[X0563511]

Link to thread? I would like to know how long that one stays up.

Re:Repay the compliment

[jeevesbond]

Thread is here. Interestingly Microsoft have not deleted my comment (or the other person promoting Ubuntu on the next page). The thread has been locked and that's it.

They're either being good sports, or just haven't noticed our mentions of Ubuntu. Since Phil Liu (the MS bloke) seems to have read the thread, I'd expect the former is true.

Re:Repay the compliment

[Almahtar]

I think a lot of what you say is right, but when you say WGA forums users "want to use Windows" you could be wrong in a lot of cases. A lot of them want to use their computer - whether it's running Windows or not - and many don't even know that there are alternatives out there.

Re:Repay the compliment

[X0563511]

They have noticed now. Rather than delete, they scolded* everyone that it was a support forum not a feedback forum, and locked the thread. Your comment (and those of a few others in the same vein) remain unmolested!

* Well within their right, it IS a support forum after all.

The advantage of not running genuine

[leuk_he]

The advantage of running not running windows genuine are made clear by this incident.

Microsoft fanboi

[ctid]

JohninTN's contribution to that forum is just funny. He seems to think that people should just "calm down" when the functionality that they have paid (rather a lot of money) for suddenly doesn't work because of some MS boneheadedness. His attitude in this thread is quite amazing, in my opinion.

Re:Microsoft fanboi

[Tom9729]

I noticed that as well.

Seems a bit like that fake PSP blog Sony had up awhile ago. People being paid to pretend to be real users that really like the product and all...

I especially like how he took one of the most calm (considering the circumstances) arguments I have seen in quite a while, and put a completely illogical spin on it.

Some poster: "I can't work because of this problem"
JohninTN: "LOLS, you're so stupid. Go outside. It doesn't bother me, I'm going fishing."

Aghhhhh

"Safety critical"

[tepples]

Google and Youtube are hardly what I would call mission critical, unless we're talking strictly economics. I'm talking about hospitals, banks, air traffic control, etc. Things that can have a real effect on one's life. It appears that the term you're looking for is "safety critical", not "mission critical". Not all missions involve situations that present a clear and present danger to human safety.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it caused by a massive number of Skype users logging in at once?

big apps, bugs, and the awesomeness of it all

[icepick72]

Big bugs like this are awesome because they make the smaller ones that I generate on daily basis look like cow fodder. However I suspect no bug is necessarily bigger or smaller but it's the scale of how many people/users are affected. Oh how I wish my apps had that large of an installed base. Fingers crossed and wish upon a star.

Alternative workaround

[symbolset]

Available here.

Re:Alternative workaround

[cjdkoh]

where are those mod points when you need them

Re:Alternative workaround

[mattpalmer1086]

Superb! Made my day :)

So does vapor

[tepples]

Perhaps you should pick up Microsoft Home Server? Unlike distributions of GNU/Linux that can act as a home server OS, Windows Home Server is not available for sale today, so it's still vapor.

It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work. Nowadays, end users usually don't compile Linux or *BSD kernels for commodity hardware. Distribution maintainers do.

Re:So does vapor

[shaggy43]

Actually, you can buy it today, and a lot of us have been running the beta for a while -- but don't let reality slow you down. :)

Re:So does vapor

[tepples]

Actually, you can buy it today In this case, Microsoft's product page needs a clarification, as it states: "It's all coming together. Available in stores fall 2007." The blog states that the software has been released to manufacturing but "OEM products are still forthcoming." But will there be software to convert a paid-for, older computer with a new hard disk into a home server, as there is with Linux?

Re:So does vapor

[darien]

According to Microsoft's press office, enthusiasts will be able to buy an OEM disc (without technical support), but there may not be a boxed edition. And it'll work fine on older computers: the "getting started" guide gives explicit advice on installing it on old hardware (minimum spec includes a 1GHz Pentium III and 512MB of memory).

true story

[Kristoph]

I actually had this happen to me:

- A Vista installation at a company I work with 'invalidated'.
- I called Microsoft.
- A person named Josh, who had quite an Indian accent as well as a speech impediment answered and after MUCH effort I provided the information required. (Please note I have the greatest respect for people of Indian decent as well as people with speech impediments but you can, I am sure, appreciate how this makes communication difficult.)
- A few minutes later he came back on and said that 'Microsoft is currently having computer problem' and please can I call back later.

In fairness, 2 days later the machine automatically revalidated but the whole thing was rather comedic.

]{

Re:true story

[petermgreen]

out of interest what if any limitations did you notice on your use of the machine while it was in the "invalidated" state?

Windows Update

[tepples]

Of course, by the time it hits Slashdot, WGA is operational again. Yeah, until all the Slashdot readers who use Windows (there are more than some people might think) hit Windows Update en masse.

Aren't?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Aren't these servers dependent on availability of the Skype protocol? :-)

Re:Aren't?

[sumdumass]

It wasn't the Skype systems going down that caused this. The WGA servers failed themselves in their check for legitimacy and no one installed a legal copy so after a certain period of time, the WGA software shut the Internet connections off to get their attention and force Microsoft to buy a legit copy again.

Compare frustration levels?

[tepples]

considering the painless alternatives.
Since when is Linux or MacOS painless? Each platform have their share of frustration. But if macOSX.getFrustration() < windows.getFrustration(), then we have a switcher. Or are you going to reply with how macOSX.getFrustration() might be higher than I think?

Re:Compare frustration levels?

[AusIV]

But if macOSX.getFrustration()

But for a windows user, windows.getFrustration() is a known value, while macOSX.getFrustration() and linuxDistro[i].getFrustration() have unknown values. Now, I've worked with Windows, OSX, and Ubuntu, and I find the frustration level of Windows to be an order of magnitude higher than either of the others, but to someone who can't measure the frustration levels of the alternatives easily, windows.getFrustration() may have to get very high before a user will switch.

Re:Compare frustration levels?

[AusIV]

Hrmm... Should've used preview. What it should have been:

But if macOSX.getFrustration() windows.getFrustration(), then we have a switcher.

But for a windows user, windows.getFrustration() is a known value, while macOSX.getFrustration() and linuxDistro[i].getFrustration() have unknown values. Now, I've worked with Windows, OSX, and Ubuntu, and I find the frustration level of Windows to be an order of magnitude higher than either of the others, but to someone who can't measure the frustration levels of the alternatives easily, windows.getFrustration() may have to get very high before a user will switch.

Re:Compare frustration levels?

[Anonymous Coward]

But for a windows user, windows.getFrustration() is a known value, while macOSX.getFrustration() and linuxDistro[i].getFrustration() have unknown values.

This seems like an OO WTF. Why is linuxDistro an array object? Shouldn't it be instantiated by something along the lines of linuxDistro = LinuxDistro.new("Ubuntu")? And anyway, you'll find this in the universe's source code:
class MacOSX
    def getFrustration
        return 0
    end
end

Re:Compare frustration levels?

[Kalriath]

The problem is that macOSX.getPrice() is a very large number, and linuxDistro[index].getRequiredCompetency() is the same. No dice.

Re:Compare frustration levels?

[AusIV]

This seems like an OO WTF. Why is linuxDistro an array object? Shouldn't it be instantiated by something along the lines of linuxDistro = LinuxDistro.new("Ubuntu")?

You take pseudo code too seriously.

Proof the piracy has the 'genuine advantage'

[Anonymous Coward]

I never install copy protected software, since I feel that it validates my right to use the software that I have paid for.
If i was buying the software on a lease/maintenance agreement, things might be different, but Windows is VERY expensive, and rather poor quality. I know of no other server OS that needs frequent reboots to correct weird slowdowns, and strange resource leaks.
I am just glad that I switched to Linux when Microsoft went down the product activation route with Windows XP. They cleary think that their customers are criminals, and i'm sure most of their customers have a similar opinion of Microsoft for delivering substandard products and exercising criminally monopolistic practices.
Good ridance Microsoft. I don't miss you.

Re:Proof the piracy has the 'genuine advantage'

[Cyko_01]

I think you mean "violates", not "validates"

I really love these features

[malraid]

I really love these "features" that prevent users from using their computers. I can't remember how many times I had to troubleshoot licensing problems in NetWare. Windows NT and 2000 used to be quite trouble free regarding this kind of crap. But now with WGA I'm making money off copy protection again. Right now I'm migrating a server from Windows 2000 to Linux for a client for that very reason. Thanks for giving me business, Microsoft.

Switch

[dreyergustav]

This doesn't seem to affect my Ubuntu installation and my iBook is also unaffected.

Re:Switch

[wizkid]

Hmmm, my windows box seems to be working fine also (X-windows that is LoL).

Last week it was sick though. Gentoo changed a library that killt lots of boxes. All the faint-hearted Gentoo'rs had real problems this week. :(

I won't be updating my one win-puke box this week it looks like LoL

Re:Switch

[Anonymous Coward]

"This doesn't seem to affect my Ubuntu installation and my iBook is also unaffected."

To experience the full Windows Genuine Advantage you need to use a product such as VMWare, Xen, Bootcamp, or Parallels to enable your substandard equipment.

Re:Mountain out of a Mole Hill

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your source? The MS forums say different than you. I call BS.

Advantage? What Advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

Score another loss for our favorite code monkeys. Yet another reason not to use Windows.

Will Microsoft compensate me for downtime? NO.

Will Microsoft provide timely response? Don't know, probably not.

Will Microsoft provide assistance in revalidation? Don't Know.

Where is the advantage of running a $400.00+ Operating System, that periodically phones home to see if I'm genuine. I hope 'mission critical' servers are not using WGA based services.

Yet another reason why one should not use Microsoft software. No WARRANTY, NO SUPPORT, NO CHOICE. I'll stick with an Operating System that DOES NOT ASSUME I AM A THIEF by default.

Software should put THE USER FIRST, not last. But then again, what can we expect from a bunch of code monkeys, controlled by a bunch of marketing execs.

Wow... No Aero, No DirectX after a reboot

[einer]

Who let's themselves be treated this way? You wouldn't let Ford decide whether you could shift past 2nd gear based on your lease payments being up to date. What the fuck is wrong with you people?

Re:Sysadmins! Go to work!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Turn on all the machines! Log in! ..." and fork-up 'Skype'. ;-)

I'm PRAYING this lasts a week

[einer]

God let this be a huge disasterous boondoggle for Microsoft. Please please please please please. I don't even believe in you God, but if you're up there, and you're a Just God, you will hear this and smite their backups with a bolt of bitrot.

If I go into work on Monday and everyone's computer is running in "restricted mode" it will be MUCH easier to convince my boss to let me get rid of our last remaining MSSQL instance.

Thank god for The Pirate Bay.

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, it also wasted at least two hours of my time when I tried to install a new system and activation would not work. I traced through countless routers before I finally figured that it must Microsoft that is a fault and not our firewalls - so I installed a hack. Thank god for The Pirate Bay...

I downloaded and installed OS X 10.4.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a problem. Found a legit copy on eBay I could afford. Installed that over the pirated version. Not a problem.

Downloaded and installed the WWDC beta of 10.5. Not a problem.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

DRM, copy protection, vendor lock in, Genuine Advantage, Sony's rootkit fetish.

NONE of them work.

And when something like this which affects millions of legitimate users happens, what is end result that gives MS reason to ensure it doesn't happen again?

You go and buy their latest OS AGAIN!

Seriously, how many times are you going to let yourselves be fucked over by MS, before you switch to Linux or Mac or just sodding file class action suits against the bastards?

In Soviet Russia, YOU fuck over Operating System monopolies!

We are only a few years away from

[gelfling]

A court agreeing with Microsoft that you do not own your own computer you merely license it.

It's planned.

[twitter]

For me it started with XP. Since I can no longer interchange parts in and out of my computer without worrying about setting off the authentication

WGA is just another way to kill of old versions of Windoze. All M$ has to do to kill XP is to quit "authenticating" it. Sooner or later, every Windoze box has to be wiped and reloaded. You might do it once a month or you might wait a year or so, but it's all over when M$ kills it.

This feature was added because XP did not replace previous versions fast enough. The end of XP will come sooner because Vista is a failure. What's the use of having a teather if you never pull it?

Re:It's planned.

[The Bungi]

Too bad Vista is also affected, along with other versions of "M$ Windoze".

Does that put a dent on your brilliant theory or do you plan on spending the day arguing with people who are more intelligent and less religious than you about this, like you did in the "M$ caused Skype to fail" thread?

Re:It's planned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it will fail. WAY too many working cracks are out for XP.

Re:It's planned.

[jb.hl.com]

This feature was added because XP did not replace previous versions fast enough.

Um...yeah. XP has, as I recall, over 80% market share, in the world. If that's not "fast enough" I don't know what is.

(note: I think WGA is a pain in the arse. I think people talking shite on Slashdot, however, is even more of a pain in the arse.)

The "Update: It's Fixed" link is from 2006

[bipbop]

I think the "It's fixed" page kdawson posted is talking about one of the other WGA outages, since it's from 2006. Link quoted here, note timestamp: http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2006/10/05/WGA-s ervice-outage.aspx

Re:The "Update: It's Fixed" link is from 2006

[Niten]

I just came in here to make sure someone had noticed this. Judging by the Ars forums, the present WGA problem is still very much in effect...

WGA doesn't have a problem...

[Spy der Mann]

WGA *IS* the problem.

No compiler needed

[symbolset]

It's 2007. I use cutting edge software on Windows, to the point of daily builds. Never needed to compile one yet.

It's good that you haven't needed to compile a program because Windows doesn't come with a compiler.

A person who won't compile a program has no advantage over a person who can't.

Re:No compiler needed

[Nullav]

It's good that you haven't needed to compile a program because Windows doesn't come with a compiler.

A person who won't compile a program has no advantage over a person who can't.

By that logic, someone with Ubuntu can't compile anything, because it doesn't come with a compiler. All someone on Windows needs to do is install MinGW/Cygwin. Hell, you could just install an IDE like Eclipse (and the required plug-ins)/Codeblocks/VC++ and be done with it there.

Re:No compiler needed

[ivan256]

By that logic, someone with Ubuntu can't compile anything, because it doesn't come with a compiler.

Except that it does.

Re:No compiler needed

[Al_Maverick]

You really have no idea what you are talking about. Are you comparing make to installing Eclipse or VC++? Yep, you better stay away from compilers, for your own good.

Re:No compiler needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it doesn't.

Re:No compiler needed

[morgan_greywolf]

Ubuntu comes with a few compilers right on the CD, but none are installed by default. Windows, OTOH, doesn't even include any general purpose language right on the CD. At least DOS came with GWBASIC and/or QBASIC. With Windows you get nothing.

Re:No compiler needed

[Blakey Rat]

The compiler doesn't come on the disk, but it is free. Anybody running a Windows OS can install any of the "Express" IDE/compilers on their computer for free. Anything from C++ to VisualBasic to SQL Server.

Re:No compiler needed

[ivan256]

Except that it does. Just because some idiot on a forum couldn't figure out how to check the box at installation time to have it installed doesn't mean it doesn't have one. Windows ships with plenty of things that aren't installed by default too.

Re:No compiler needed

[Tony]

Anything from C++ to VisualBasic to SQL Server.

Uhm... you're not convincing me. Name one *good* thing.

Re:No compiler needed

[WNight]

I take issue with "free" installs like Visual Studio Express that have an EULA listing things I'm not allowed to do with the software.

Besides, much of MS's required system components (Direct X, Visual Studio Express, etc) are hidden behind WGA download screens. It's possible to get the DX9 runtime, but only if you go looking.

I honestly can't imagine recommending software with termination switches that we don't control. What would your boss say if you couldn't install a new server just because someone else's site was down? What would your boss say if your server stopped serving because its quota of IP connections was full?

The last happened to me. Win2k Pro was hosting a Source Safe repository. When the developers stopped using it the connections would take ten minutes to time out. If enough of them used it in that time it'd start locking people out - not with sane error messages either, but random failures. We ripped it out and replaced it with Linux running Subversion. We could have paid $500 for an OS upgrade, but that would still have limits, just higher ones.

Re:No compiler needed

[Blakey Rat]

I really don't care what your opinion of the quality of those products is, the point is that saying that Microsoft doesn't give free compilers is misleading.

Re:No compiler needed

[bhtooefr]

Actually... there is no box to check at installation time, I do believe.

You CAN install it later, via Add/Remove Programs.

As for Windows not having a programming environment of ANY sort... it's got Notepad and a few interpreters - CMD.EXE, the VBScript interpreter, and Internet Explorer's JavaScript interpreter. ;)

Retaining one's freedom has no "workaround".

[jbn-o]

Framing this issue around inconvenience misses the more important underlying point. Your freedom to control your stuff matters. This incident is a harbinger of bad things; ostensibly Microsoft is trying to prevent illicit use yet chiefly adversely affects legal users. A system which denies users the freedom to control their data, their computer, and (as more of their life is conducted on their computer) their lives.

Re:Retaining one's freedom has no "workaround".

[mattpalmer1086]

Exactly, but most people just accept it as normal, until it bites them. For myself, the whole WGA thing was the catalyst for me to switch over to linux a couple of years ago. As a legitimate user of all MS operating systems over the years, I just hated that feeling of being treated like a criminal, and having the possibility of being locked out of my own computer if I upgraded my motherboard once too often.

My experience is much nicer without that constant feeling of being watched, even though linux and other open source software is not without its own share of frustrations. But, crucially (for me anyway) they are MY frustrations - I can generally choose what I have to put up with. Anyway, if people are happy with windows, all power to them. I still use it at work, and still develop against it. It's a pretty good system, if you can put up with Microsoft owning your computing environment, rather than just enabling your computing environment.

Win95 from Vista.

[twitter]

Let me quote another just calm down person:

For the last 18 hours or so, ... the nag screen, the message in the corner and Aero isn't working

So, he and every other Vista and XP user has got degraded graphics and two big blinking signs that tell them they are dirty bad pirates. I'm going to play a few games to celebrate. Oh yes, feel the warm, golden Windows Advantage.

fix for this available

[Anonymous Coward]

There are multiple fixes for this problem. Anybody can download them from a host of linux sites or acquire the fix at any Apple Store.

The MS Fanboys must have TONS of mod points!

[Chris Tucker]

Look at ALL the comments modded 0.

Just wait 'till MS has their own corps of Enforcement Gundams!

Then you'll see some mighty fine Ubermodding!

Re:The MS Fanboys must have TONS of mod points!

[Chris Tucker]

Going from 'Insightful' to 'Flamebait' in a little more than 24 hours pretty much proves my thesis about MS Fanboys and mod points.

National Security Risk

[SeaFox]

Isn't it interesting that the government doesn't consider systems like WGA a threat to national security?

The dangers of software monoculture are well known, now combine that with an authentication system the government has no control over. Once the entire Windows desktop marketshare (+90% of all desktops) is using a Windows OS featuring WGA, what's to stop criminals and terrorists from capturing the datacenters that house these servers and holding a major factor in world finance hostage?

Re:National Security Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Close. Now try rephrasing it with a slightly different logic.

Suppose the government (US and allies) wants to keep, or be able to achieve when needed, control of people computers, say being able to put spyware, get access to user files, shut down machines etc, what requirements would the system have to allow this?

1: It needs to be produced by a single company with strong ties to the government(s).

2: It must employ methods to allow remote access of user files and system resources.

3: It must be closed source, and people exposed to the source code must be closely monitored.

4: It must be as widely used as possible, in order to discourage the use of alternatives. Giving it away installed on new PCs by default and closing one or both eyes when dealing with piracy will help to spread it.

On other words, Windows fits perfectly the requirements of the most obiquitous system of global public surveillance ever conceived.

Now back to your post, WGA isn't considered a threat to national security because WGA is a brick of the national security building.

Re:National Security Risk

[aeschenkarnos]

You haven't had a government capable of telling its ass from a hole in the ground since 1999, and computers have advanced a fair bit since then.

Re:National Security Risk

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Ding, ding, ding, correct. If I weren't $rbtl'd on this ID, I'd mod you up.

Re:National Security Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a former programmer, I'll say that the benefits of a software monoculture far, far, far outweigh the dangers.

Re:National Security Risk

[WNight]

Ahh yes, because web services are so difficult to write.

If you were writing a 3d game, maybe. But even then, you'd be better off if there were more types of computers/OSes, that way there'd more likely be platform independent way to write the game. You know, like Quake manages to run on most anything...

Re:National Security Risk

[sjames]

capturing the datacenters that house these servers and holding a major factor in world finance hostage?

It's worse than that. Terrorists these days seem to prefer to just cause massive damage without a leading threat. Consider what would happen if the terrorists slipped a driver update onto MS servers that waited a week or so, then wiped the HD and attempted to flash junk into the BIOS.

One week later, businesses and governments large and small all over the world grind to a halt. Some can get up and running again by installing Linux. Others find that their machines won't even try to boot anymore. They will have to wait until suppliers and logistics operations get themselves back up and running before they can order replacements.

I'm sure getting such a payload into an MS update is non-trivial, but so is the consequence of success.

Such a worst case scenerio is inherent to a monoculture but is made even worse when nobody can examine and understand the code before they just shut up and accept the update.

Project Mayhem

[goaty_the_flying_sho]

Nice on-topic sig.

The REAL update link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/08/25/valid ation-issue-fix.aspx

WGA can disable your running system?

[tji]

I didn't realize WGA did periodic (constant?) checks on the system validity. I thought it was just a one-time check at installation (like entering the product ID on Win2K). That's hilarious that you can pay MS hundreds of dollar for the software, only to have it crippled when they screw up and accuse you of being a thief.

Why do people use that crap?

Re:WGA can disable your running system?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only checks when you connect to download things from the MS servers. I am %100 sure it would invalidate my install, but have never ever had a problem with WGA even after downloading updates or anything.

Re:WGA can disable your running system?

[garcia]

Why do people use that crap?

Because everyone else does and no one wants to deal with a bunch of interoperability issues. Even long-time Linux users like myself.

Re:WGA can disable your running system?

[Chris Tucker]

Mod me down, and I will be more powerful than...

Oh, never mind!

Re:WGA can disable your running system?

[Whiteox]

Yep.
If you download Windows Defender (for example) when WGA activex is running then all ok.
Now transfer that exe to another box with no internet connection and it would refuse to install because it needs to validate windows again.

Probably happens for more ms downloads as well.

Re:WGA can disable your running system?

[Chris Tucker]

Wow! Look how long it took for the MS Fanboy Brigade to get some modpoints in order to mod me down.

Almost two weeks.

Pray, what is the "flamebait" in the honest truth of:

"You're paying Microsoft for the privilege of using their OS. And MS absolves themselves of any liability whatsoever in their shrinkwrap EULA.

The ONLY thing that MS affirms is that, somewhere in the box, is a chunk of digital media with an OS on it. That's it. They don't even affirm that it'll even fit in the CD tray, let alone that it'll actually install or work on your computer."

READ the EULA! That is, essentially, what it says.

And Bill Gates is still slapping you across the face with his dick, and he's still laughing at you!

Absolutely

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious considering my pirated copy works JUST FINE.

Re:Absolutely

[Anonymous Coward]

hay ur kool

Re:Absolutely

[Menelkir]

For sure, but if you see it, if you use a pirated copy, you're not able to download the most recent annoying bugs in windowsbugupdate, like this.

Re:Absolutely

[cheekyboy]

Yes he can, havent your seen the windiz update via firefox?

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18713447-Windiz-U pdateHas-anyone-used-this-for-FX

Re:Absolutely

[pandrijeczko]

Dear Mr Single Brain-Celled Pirate DICKHEAD!

You are sat there on your corpulent backside feeling pretty damned clever because you're so "l337" running your pirated XP. Yet you don't seem to realise that it's your total selfishness that gives the bean-counters at Microsoft the justification they need to inflict WGA and DRM on the honest users, making their lives a misery.

You have absolutely nothing to be proud of. You're quite clearly too weak-charactered to demonstrate the courage of your convictions and choose a truly free OS, perhaps you are just too stupid to ever be able to grasp the workings of Linux. I simultaneously loathe and pity you...

And no, I'm not an MS fanboi. I use Linux for just about everything bar gaming now, for which I have a valid Windows XP license. But it's total DICKHEADS like you that give WGA, DRM, the MPAA and RIAA the excuse they need to make life HELL for honest users.

Grow up, idiot, and get a life.

Re:Skype to Blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to use my guaranteed "+5, insightful" Slashdot form. I'm probably going to lose karma points blah blah Micro$oft blah blah blah lunix is better blah ideas want to be free. In my day blah blah vacuum tube blah 12 bits-per-second blah VAX blah tape drive.

Re:Skype to Blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not funny.

However, there is an easy fix for any issue you have with Windows Genuine (dis)Advantage. It's called Ubuntu. If you use Microsoft software, you deserve what you get.

Silly Troll.

[twitter]

Too bad Vista is also affected, along with other versions of "M$ Windoze".

I never said that today's screw up was intentional. I said it was food for thought. Sooner or later M$ is going to stop "authenticating" XP, Vista and every other OS they bother to authenticate.

Re:Silly Troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

The title of your fucking post is "It's planned". You end your post with "What's the use of having a teather [sic] if you never pull it?"

Don't insult our intelligence, you fucking psychopath.

Re:Silly Troll.

[Macthorpe]

I never said that today's screw up was intentional. Maybe you should try to avoid using post titles like "It's planned" then? We might accidentally start thinking that you're acting in a duplicitous manner.

Which part of the word "advantage" applies to me?

[Joce640k]

After two years I'm still not sure which part of the word "advantage" applies to me...

Defective by design

[realdodgeman]

Just the fact that this forum even exists, shows how defective by design WGA is. A dedicated forum to WGA problems with 226 PAGES with 20 TOPICS each... I still cannot understand why people keep buying this crap...

Re:Defective by design

[norite]

Amen to that...so glad I switched to linux on all my computers. None of this WGA crap. But you know what they say...there's one born every minute....oh well!

Non free software sucks.

[twitter]

it's not like I'd switch to Linux anyway. Ubuntu completely screwed up my X configuration after an apt-get upgrade ... [more hate for gnu/linux]

Gee, Mr. Bungi, why don't you use some of that BSD you claim to love. I'm sure that would be easier on you. What? You are really just a troll? Who would have guessed that?

There is problems here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Nvidia problems have nothing to do with X11 updates. More often kernel updates. It also does not help that Nvidia does not register parts in package managers to mark there dependency. Note this registration would stop the updating of linked parts.

Nvidia replaces large sections of X11 related libs with there own. I really don't know why they just don't go hole hog. And provide a replacement X11.

Linux has good backward compatibly with syscalls. Windows has no such compatibility. Linux distro api is becoming standard. But nothing can stop rogue companies from hacking things they should not.

Honest question here

[Anonymous Coward]

"GE-Free"

What's GE?

Yeah yeah, I'm a dork...

That's what live CDs are for

[tepples]

but to someone who can't measure the frustration levels of the alternatives easily Don't Knoppix and other live CDs allow users of Windows OS to approximate the frustration levels of the distributions that they're based on?

Re:That's what live CDs are for

[AusIV]

Don't Knoppix and other live CDs allow users of Windows OS to approximate the frustration levels of the distributions that they're based on?

I find LiveCD's to be quite useful for recovery purposes and occasionally testing purposes, but I don't think they come close to giving a feel for the operating system.

For starters, you have to load it into memory, which means it's far slower than the system would be installed. Second, it resets every time you reboot, which means you can't (permanently) configure the system at all. Unless the LiveCD comes with proprietary graphics and wireless drivers, most people won't be able to gauge the frustration level of getting drivers working.

Sure, you can tell Gentoo from Mepis using the LiveCD, but LiveCD's hardly give an accurate measure of what the OS is like installed.

Scale of problem?

[quantaman]

Does anyone know what the actual effect of this issue is? I haven't used windows in years so I don't really know how often you'd end up talking to the genuine advantage server, does anybody have an idea how many windows users would have been affected by this incident and have lost functionality as a result?

Not if you're a monopoly.

[Almahtar]

Then you can get away with it just fine.

Sad.

True.

Desperate times indeed...

[AndyCR]

The Project Manager of WGA posted on the MS forum recently about the servers going down. He said something to the effect of "We apologize for the inconvenience, but desperate times call for desperate measures." I would post my comment there, but it would undoubtedly get deleted (I see no anti-Microsoft comments - gosh, wonder where they all went? Must mean everyone is happy!), so I am posting it here: Since when the heck has MS been in "desperate times"?!

No advantage anywhere else, either

[Anonymous Coward]

A kernel update under Debian fucks up your graphics card drivers and a ream of other things.

Will Debian compensate me for downtime? NO.

Will Debian provide timely response? Don't know, probably not.

Will Debian provide assistance in fixing the problem? Don't know, touch and go because nobody is obligated to help me. If I phrase my question slightly wrong they may even refuse to help altogether. That's "community support" for you.

Where is the advantage of running a Free Operating System, that periodically breaks everything I'm doing? I hope 'mission critical' servers aren't taken out by a single erratic update.

Yet another reason why one should not use Linux software. No WARRANTY, NO SUPPORT, NO CHOICE. I'll stick with an Operating System that FIXES MY DAMN PROBLEMS WITHIN 48 HOURS by default.

Stupid MS, heres a solution to you MS....

[cheekyboy]

MS, get better product designers/engineers, hire ex apple guys.

1. why not ask the user when shutting down, "Are you changing any hardware? and if so tick which from this list"

the user can tell the OS what he is about to change, windows can grow a brain cell and not go mental if it knows in advance
that some piece of hardware will change.

Even changing 100% of components should be allowed, surely windows can register on the net that this UID is about to change 100%, and
then check later to make sure there are not two PCs using the same UID. And who cares if some people do this behind a firewall so
the OS cannot check or know.

Maybe only grads work at ms and not real world experienced people, I dont know.

Bothers me.

[FriedDylan]

Why? You don't have to care about my feelings in general to care about what I have to say- I speak for just about everyone here. Windows costs a lot of money to the end user upfront at the checkout as well as to licensed companies in support costs when compaired to some other OS' that I won't mention and so when that cost is further raised by DRM or ANY kind and productivity is halted as a result of lack of redundancy to support their own protection scheme(s) then the end user is being thought of last and their pocketbooks first. I understand why people go into business and sell their products but if your product is flawed due to DRM or insecure due to shoddy workmanship/programming or perhaps a really loose versioning system when farming out modules for programmers to write then you are at fault and may be liable for the costs- how many times have we heard about how MS feels Windows is more secure than ever and that DRM in their products will never inconvenience the legitimate users of their product. Then I smell a lie here and nobody should be able to get away with it. Who's to trust this group? Who watches the watchers and makes sure they have redundancy in their servers as any infrastructure should have? And when will they pay you back for your time lost?

Worked fine for me Friday at midnight PDT.

[Anonymous Freak]

I had the (mis)fortune of installing Vista on my work laptop Friday evening, and it activated just fine for me at about midnight Pacific (about 08:00 GST.)

So it wasn't *ALL* servers, then.

(I also activated Office 2007 successfully this morning.)

Then who does RIAA sue? MS?

[cheekyboy]

If the PC is not yours, but MSs and you lease it, then the RIAA has zero
rights to that PC and has to ask MS for access.

when money is involved...

[Cyko_01]

Typical Microsoft.
when money is involved they get right on it! Obviously it's much more important to make sure that every copy is genuine(or cracked) then it is to fix security holes in the operating system!

Quick update now

[pizpot]

Quick everybody, update your pirate installs now while they have WGA secretly turned off.

"Gee sir, its been running bug free for weeks. Oh yeah, turn it back on..."

Window Genuine (Dis)Advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

Another good reason to leave M$. Try Ubuntu, it rocks. Join the rest of us in the 21st century! ;-) AC

Oh boy

[kc2keo]

Thats a Genuine Disadvantage.

When? I used GEM.

[SuperKendall]

The Atari ST used GEM for the entirety of its life. What makes you say Apple killed GEM?

Re:Wow... No Aero, No DirectX after a reboot

[innocent_white_lamb]

Actually, some people have devices in their vehicles that track payments made, remind you when one is due, and disable the vehicle if any payment is past due.
 
  Details here.

Settle Down People

[CopaceticOpus]

Hey now everyone, let's chill out! I think we're forgetting the bigger picture here: Secure Computing. During this little software glitch, there may have been some minor inconveniences, but computing remained secure at all times.

When my Windows machine got hung up trying to upgrade WMP, I didn't panic. No, I just shut it down for the night and turned in early. Slept like a baby!

This story isn't anti-Microsoft you moron

[Anonymous Coward]

How in Hades is this story anti-Microsoft! Their WGA servers failed - fact. It is Microsofts fault - fact. There is nothing anti-Microsoft about it. It is a problem with a Microsoft system caused by Microsoft. The problems are being reported across the news sites. This is just a standard Microsoft story reporting the facts!

Bloody Microsoft fanboys make you sick. When Microsoft do something wrong these morons still protect them! Get a fucking life idiots. Microsoft cocked up so just admit it.

Re:Which part of the word "advantage" applies to m

[Anonymous Coward]

The word advantage applies to you when Microsoft take 'advantage' of your wallet now and in the future when they force you to upgrade because you cannot validate your current software. And it is 'Genuine' because they really mean it!

WGA Notification Critical Update?

[Esion Modnar]

Microsoft used to have a critical update called WGA Notification Tool (or something) that would appear if I was getting updates for a freshly installed XP SP2 system. Now, that update has disappeared on new systems which I build this way. I know this, because I would always de-select it along with IE7 for installation.

Of course, I'm sure it's just getting installed implicitly now, so you can't simply choose NOT to install it. But... has anybody been keeping a history over time of the various critical updates that Microsoft has put out, that it has in the meantime just quietly "disappeared?"

Actually

[Almahtar]

it wouldn't be too terribly hard to have the external Internet re-route around that datacenter. I HOPE Microsoft is keeping off-site backups of their WGA key databases and code repositories for the WGA server software, so if they are it would be pretty quick to set up other machines as emergency redundant WGA and temporarily reroute the original WGA IP addresses to those.

Once that's done, the terrorists have only the employees in the building as hostages - no more risk than any other building in the US at that point.

That's if Microsoft is keeping offsite backups of the WGA data and code. I doubt they do, so you may well be right.

The difference between 'should' and 'will'

[Almahtar]

It sucks, but most bosses don't even know enough to realize that commodity hardware and software aren't perfectly sufficient for mission critical operations.

Silly Zealot

[The Bungi]

I never said that today's screw up was intentional.

Sorry there, twitter. Next time I see a statement like "It's planned" I'll whip out my Zealot Thesaurus and look up the correct definition.

Billy the G

[Anonymous Coward]

Its raining and blowing a gale. Your kids are freezing and your wife is complaining about the mess in the house. The next day, you realise that what you need is some windows for those holes in the walls that let in the light. So you call up the local glazing company and soon enough, having paid him what he asks, the nice Mr Gates comes round and fits your house with the latest in light-hole-filling technology.

Some time later, its cats-and-dogs outdoors and force-8 again. You and your nearest and dearest are surveying your purchase and thinking what a wise one it was. All of a sudden - smash!!! What's going on??? Stones thud into the rooms of your house, as - aghast at the cacophony - you witness your fine new windows being broken.

You rush to the front-door. Unbelievably - you see before you, Billy the Glazier, clutching a handful of rocks screaming at you "You didn't pay me! You didn't pay me!". "But I did!!!" you cry... too late. He's off in his van to visit another customer.

The children are cold again. Your beloved asks - what you are going to do about it? Reluctantly, you are forced to admit, there is _nothing_ you can do... Your house has no windows - Billy came round and broke them all.

Later, still cold and wind-blown, you learn from from the news that there was a spate of occurrences like yours that whole weekend. Mr Gates offered no explanation for his behaviour but said that he'd come round in a few days and repair the damage. One of his workmen said that anyway, not many people had been affected that night (well, fewer than 12,000 - according to him).

Lemmings are the ones responcible for this misery!

[Erikderzweite]

Well, i disagree with your point. Corporates want control and profit and pirates is just an excuse for them. Similar with terrorists - a phantom threat that allows governments worldwide to spy on their citizens. Pirates are indeed a useful tool for MS - they helped secure it's dominance in developing markets, where people are unable to pay a month' salary for legit copy of Windows. BTW, pirates are just dumping for MS helping to keep any competition out because they are giving windows away for free. People get addicted and then companies and governments buy MS software. Price dumping is illegal jet MS is able to do this and act as a victim at the same time. A win-win situation. "They steal from us, as long as we want them to steal ours." Bill Gates. Think about this. The only thing you can do about this is to stop using their products entirely. I have done this already. Not because of protest, but rather because open systems are much more comfortable, but here is the point: if you don't like something about MS - quit using their projects. If you prefer to beg down and accept anything they throw at your face - don't blame pirates/penguins/human errors for your misery. You are just a lemming, get used to it.