Microsoft Withdraws Vista's Kill Switch

l-ascorbic writes "In what they are calling a change of tactics, Microsoft has removed the controversial 'kill switch' from Vista in SP1. This feature is designed to disable pirated copies of the OS, but had led to numerous reports of it disabling legitimate copies. It will be replaced with a notice that repeatedly informs the user that their OS is pirated. '[Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert] added: "It's worth re-emphasizing that our fundamental strategy has not changed. All copies of Windows Vista still require activation and the system will continue to validate from time to time to verify that systems are activated properly." Microsoft said it had pursued legal action against more than 1,000 dealers of counterfeit Microsoft products in the last year and taken down more than 50,000 "illegal and improper" online software auctions.'"

Comments

Obsolete Business Model

[clang_jangle]

A company that fancies itself a "tech leader" has no business attempting to enforce such an obsolete business model. The fact that MS still does not get this will be their undoing.

Re:Obsolete Business Model

[clang_jangle]

Microsoft's not any more or less evil than any other large-cap corporation out there. The whiners better just face up to that fact and move the hell on. You are getting tiring to listen to.

I was just thinking that very thought, but it was about the hardcore capitalist greed mongers who think society owes them the right to exploit whatever resources necessary in order to "manufacture wealth". I sure do wish you all would grow up and stop being so selfish. The business model is obsolete because it cannot work anymore without creating some *artificial* arrangement, okay genius? It ain't my job to solve MS' (or the **AA's) problems, but given the resources at their disposal I'm quite confident I'd do better than they are doing.

The real whiners are the stupid people for whom capitalism is a religion. Sadly that appears to be the vast majority of people in the US these days...

Re:Let me think...

[El Lobo]

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon : Free as in speech, free as in beer comes with about 20000 apps (the number's pulled out of thin air, but there are a lot of apps available), of which most are probably quite simple or outright crap, but there's true quality stuff among them and the pre-selection by the installer is quite good in my book. Oh and I'm part of the Ubuntu community, too.

Been there, tried that. Sorry, not my cup of tea. I have no time to tweak here and there. And I need to run my games and my visual studio, amd my autocad natively.

OS/X : Hereround 155$. Probably nicest user interface, at least at Panther level very stable, rock solid foundation (BSD) a real shell and real scripting. Oh and it gives me fanboy privileges.

And it comes with an unusable firewall, broken network copy/move operations and an unusable time machine. Not to talk about an extremly annoying user interface. Why do people seem to think that you must like the Mac way is out of my understandning. Still I've been obligate to use one of those everyday at work.. Sigh...

Vista Ultimate: ~700$. Nothing really to offer, exept maybe this floating waterfall background, which must eat a ton of resources. Requires activation, abuses 30% of my resources for Hollywoods satisfaction. Oh: And by default I'm a criminal software thieve pirate.

I use it gladly. And pay for it as well. Call me an idiot. I don't care.

Re:Dear Microsoft.

[kernelpanicked]

Why, exactly? The last three machines I've been through I have built the machine, yanked the drive out of my old machine, and booted it up in the new one. No problems. Yes, I use BSD and Linux. If this is a problem when doing it with Windows, well then, learn not to buy shit software.

Re:So Desperate

[dave420]

How is that desperate? Vista is already beating XP's sales figures at the same point in XP's release. They're just listening to their customers, and you seem to think it's a sign of desperation? Weird.