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Vista Pirates To Get "Black Screen of Darkness"
jcatcw writes "Microsoft has just turned on Reduced Functionality mode, worldwide, and sent a letter to OEMs explaining the consequences of Vista piracy. These include a black screen after 1 hour of browsing, no start menu or task bar, and no desktop. Using fear as a motivator, the email warns resellers to 'make sure your customers always get genuine Windows Vista preinstalled.'"
Isn't using Vista enough punishment in itself?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What happens when this goes wrong? What happens when Vista is running in the Bank of America and it accidentally trips the entire network in to "Black Screen of Darkness" mode? What happens when a virus triggers this?
The first job of any operating system has to be stability. Without stability you have nothing and I can't honestly see a good reason to mess with the stability of your OS when you're making billions of dollars of profit a year. People do not have short memories when you turn off their company. They will avoid you for decades because an event like that could literally cost a company its existence.
Good enough is hard to shift. I personally think Grolsh is a superior larger to Fosters yet Fosters outsells Grolsh by a wide margin in the United Kingdom. Fosters is inoffensive and does the job well, it is "good enough." Windows is the same, it is good enough for the vast majority of people even though it is technically deficient to Mac OSX and Linux.
I think Microsoft is making a lot of mistakes with Vista. First of all, they released an early beta as the final product which left a lot of basic functionality horribly broken. Second, they added features that no end user wants at the request of record labels and the like. Thirdly, they've got sucked in to yet more anti-user copy protection.
How many more mistakes can you make before it starts to hurt? Who knows, but the competition is getting good very quickly indeed. I moved from Windows in January to Ubuntu and then Kubuntu..
To my surprise it is vastly superior to Windows XP and Vista. A year ago I would have called that fanboy-ism. Many of you are probably thinking that right now but I urge you to try it; you'll quickly learn you're wrong.
There has been much talk of the year of Linux and when that would be. The problem with the year of Linux is that you can only see it in retrospect. However, the signs are present that 2007 is in fact that year. We've had Ubuntu convince users like me to give it a go, I've heard people around me talk about Ubuntu who otherwise wouldn't have the inclination to try it. We're having people like ATI take the platform seriously and just today we've had Eve on-line announce a Linux port.
Is the year of Linux really upon us?
Simon
Back in the day, I used to play on a certain MUD (Eternal Twilight, ROM 2.4, I believe)...there was a command, if I recall, called something like "moron." When applied to a user, each time they used a command, said command would be disabled for further use, causing the player to slowly dwindle to non-functional oblivion. Ah, those were the days. Go Vista!
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Sorry, it was too easy.
I believe this is referred to as shifting the blame. If you're a customer of the OEM and the OEM is selling you, at full price, pirated software, it's not Microsoft who is screwing you.
It's not like that thing won't be cracked shortly after the implementation.
Besides, if all the pirated copies of Windows were to be switched to black... dang... that would be a nice day... Linux/OS X marketshare quadruples, spam is be only about 4% of internet traffic.
(Disclaimer to mods and pointdexters: no I did not RTFA, and yes I did pull those numbers out of my A.)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Black Screen of Darkness Assails the knave
Defend yourself
With your shaving glaive
And the white foam of truth:
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I am glad that Microsoft is actually backing up the restrictions that they say they have on their software. I've noticed that many Linux vs. Windows debates are about legitimate use of Linux vs. illegitimate use of Windows.
And when I try to point out to people that there are strict legal limits on what you can do with Windows, they look at me like I am making something up. "But, I can install Windows on this computer...I have a CD my brother-in-law gave me!"
So, I am just as glad that Microsoft is doing something to demonstrate the nature of licensed software. If people want to use licensed, commercial software, I don't object to it (even though I use almost totally free software), but they should realize that means they have to pay for it.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Good afternoon, as of this week, Microsoft has activated a function in Vista called 'Reduced Functionality.' This is a specific function in Vista that effectively disables nongenuine copies of Windows. Therefore anyone who has a pirated copy of Vista will experience:
"The Need to move to Mac OS X"
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
In other news, Apple, Sun, and a billion linux supporters simultaneously screamed their praise at this latest initiative by Microsoft.
It gets worse. Let's take that line of thought a bit further. From TFA:
Great. Just what we need: deliberately make some machines more vulnerable to attack. As if those machines are the only ones that will suffer when they get infected.
A malware infection doesn't just impact the infected system's users. Those systems then become nodes in a botnet. They pump out more spam, more viruses, more phishing. They host phishing sites. They could theoretically be used for distributed computing projects... like cracking into paying customers' systems.
What's Microsoft going to say when a large site gets hacked, using someone else's pwned box as a launch platform, and the attacker got into that box because it was pirated, and Microsoft deliberately disabled the update that would have fixed a remote root exploit?
We consult with a variety of $100m+ corporations in the Chicago area. Our last summary on Vista had three word: Don't Install It. One contractor asked us for a study (paid for by them) into Vista, and we sent them that very summary and billed them $1.50 (which I believe they paid).
I'm very open about IT developments to my clientele. I've explained to them for almost 20 years that MOST of the hype in an industry is designed to pad the pockets of consultants such as myself. Of our client base, almost none were going to be bothered by Y2K. I think we were one of a handful of consultants who didn't bill more than a few bucks for the entire Y2K fiasco, and we also let our clients know this. We make _more_ money because we are honest about the gimmicks of the trade: we don't want to make money doing work that isn't necessary. When a client takes us off a project, and the project drops in efficiency, they know we were needed. Most consultants, when fired, are a net positive to the firing client.
Vista will never run in my office, in my home, or in the homes and offices of my clients, until the third party software developers require it. For most large companies, Vista offers zero additional efficiency, profitability, or reduced downtime. How else can you sell an upgrade unless it does at least 2 of those things better than XP?
XP runs fine. I know it is hated, but it runs fine on hundreds/thousands of desktops and laptops and servers we maintain or provide services for. Is it efficient? No, but my customers know they're paying for the lower efficiency/stability by being compatible with the software and hardware THEY need (CAD, print RIPs, accounting flagship programs, etc). Vista offers NOTHING.
Let Microsoft kill pirate Vista installs: as far as I know, the only installs I'm aware of are pirated ones. Anyone who runs Vista now that we consult with gets a FREE downgrade to a legitimate XP license. That's how firm I am on Vista: I'll pay for the labor to downgrade it.
Microsoft's non-customers: in the Black
Our customers: giving MS the Red. Bank statement, that is.
Vista may actually be usable like that. Why aren't Microsoft sharing this upgrade with their paying customers?
I'm curious if this reduced functionality is a function of the windows shell its self (explorer.exe)
In such a case I imagine that if this "feature" does kill explorer.exe, then simply loading up a different shell like Black Box (bblean) then atleast the local features would work even if windows update is still blocked.
Of course, their methods for stopping the windows update feature is not really clear at this point either.
Both parent posts are largely valid. What they fail to address, and what I believe the the GGP Post was trying to point out is that if a Key is *incorrectly* marked as invalid then they have done nothing wrong and nor has the OEM. Worse, the customer will suspect the OEM and presumably Microsoft will suspect both the OEM and the Customer. That is a quick way for Microsoft's customers, the OEM's, to lose both credibility and trust in the eyes of their customers, the consumer and businesses. Microsoft could hurt their customers by potentially hurting their customers customers. That will lead to a re-evaluation of the risks involved when dealing with Microsoft, as highlighted by recent issues with their WGA servers.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Sounds like an easy way for a rogue IT employee to take out an entire company. Simply publish that company's key (or their special non-activation copy of windows) as a torrent, bunch of people download it, Microsoft picks up on the flux of installs and pulls the plug, the entire company goes dark.
"Dear CEO,
I have a copy of your Windows Vista install key. If you do not transfer $1,000,000 to my swiss bank account by 5pm I will publish this key on teh internets. How expensive would it be for every copy of Vista you own to go dark for a few days while you negotiate with Microsoft?
Tick tock tick tock..."
Dekker Dreyer
Dissatisfied customers might decide to try something different like Mac OS X or Linux.
Uh, wait a minute, I forgot to take my meds this morning. People won't switch from Windows regardless of how bad the experience or poor the customer support becomes.
What a great new denial of service attack. Get hold of a corporate Vista key, get it blacklisted, sit back and watch the fun. Virtually untraceable.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Actually, I think Microsoft should force the user to download security patches. I know most people I talk to think that waiting for software patches is punishment, especially over a slow modem.
"You are required to download 900MB of patches. Estimated time until completed is 8 hours, 23 minutes. Allow us to stream this anti-piracy movie while your computer is inaccessible. Download time now increased to 10 hours, 42 minutes".
Dissatisfied customers might decide to try something different like Mac OS X or Linux.
Uh, wait a minute, I forgot to take my meds this morning. People won't switch from Windows regardless of how bad the experience or poor the customer support becomes.
You know, the individual consumer may be dumb, but collectively they're not so dumb. They found and are going for another option: keep your XP while it works (which is for another good 5-6 years).
Then we watch early adopters get hurt by piracy missdetection, bugs, poor resource usage, lack of drivers and incompatibility, while we just enjoy our amazing XP-rience in a brand new way.
As is known for quite some time in the industry, Microsoft's biggest competitor is Microsoft.
I can't believe that 400 posts in this thread fail to mention that this is a hoax.
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
Don't forget, the rule of twos:
With windows, it works for two hours and never again.
With Linux, it takes two hours to get it working, then you never have to fuss with it again.
With Mac, you spend two hours finding and app that does what you need, but it "just works".
Going for +5 Funny and falling far short.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"Let us play this MP3 file you've got here. Whoops! Download time now increased to 13 hours, 15 minutes."
I wish I could agree that Apple's moment to 'strike a hot iron' is a good thing -- however, Apple is just as bad about vendor lock in as Microsoft is. Some might venture to say worse. Especially in a situation like this where our main gripe is Microsoft's overall control of your computer regardless of the situation. Apple can in theory do the same thing, but so far, hasn't bothered except to make it overly difficult to run their flagship OS on standard off the shelf hardware.
Oh well, maybe someday we'll see a cool thing like Apple's hardware actually becoming as cost-efficient to own as normal x86 hardware...but I don't intend to hold my breath.