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

If made you bitch...

[smittyoneeach]

If made____you____bitch
Did this____kill____switch
How 'bout__a______pitch
In a_______fine____triptych?
Burma___________Shave

Why stop there?

[faloi]

I think a lot of users would be happier if they withdrew Vista entirely. I know I'm scrambling to see if I can upgrade my system to XP. Darn gaming addiction...

Re:Why stop there?

[Billosaur]

XP?!? Bah! I'm trying to "upgrade" to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups!

Re:Why stop there?

[dave420]

You!=Everyone else :) You have to remember that every bad story about Vista isn't representing the whole truth - that there are thousands of folks out there who are using Vista on a day-to-day basis, and are not having problems.

Re:Why stop there?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

You!=Everyone else :) You have to remember that every bad story about Vista isn't representing the whole truth - that there are thousands of folks out there who are using Vista on a day-to-day basis, and are not having problems. I agree! There are definitely thousands of folks out there who are perfectly happy with Vista. That only leaves the other few million customers...

Re:Why stop there?

[Entropius]

I imagine that 95% of those people could also use WinXP on a daily basis and not have problems either, and that 80% of those could use Ubuntu and not have problems either.

Re:Why stop there?

[Corporate Troll]

Not CP/M, but FreeDOS is pretty cool. According to wikipedia, CP/M is open source, so perhaps what you seek may exist.

Re:Why stop there?

[cheater512]

My dad wonders why I'm so negative about Vista.
He got it with a new laptop and claims to have no problems.

Then I ask if I can use his laptop to burn a iso with Nero.
His response? Nero isnt compatible with Vista.
He didnt realize at all what he just said. It was perfectly normal for him for programs to not work.

There have been plenty of things like that.
That one was just the most recent being from yesterday.

Someone claiming that Vista has no problems is completely different from Vista having no problems.

Re:Why stop there?

[erroneus]

I've got some consultants that work for me that have Vista loaded on their machines. Some won't comment about it. One seems to be pretending he likes it and one doesn't seem to have a problem explaining that they are running it because Microsoft strongly urged them to do so.

It is my opinion that Vista is a good idea badly implemented, poorly presented and inappropriately pushed out.

It's a good idea because Windows and security are generally considered to be diametrically opposed. Windows and stability are generally considered to be diametrically opposed as well. Vista is a good idea because it's actually trying to address those problems.

It's a bad implementation because it causes people to feel very lost. I can't say that plainly enough. But frankly, moving from Win98 to WinXP was a similar experience although perhaps not as intense.

It's poorly presented because it has problems with backward compatibility and support for older software. I don't consider this a "problem" except that Microsoft did not adequately warn the public of this issue. Part of the problem with Windows is that it supports a LOT of broken behavior in older apps. This comes largely from software being written for broken, badly implemented or undocumented Windows API calls, but also to keep good software running after Microsoft updates their API. Getting rid of the burden of backward compatibility is a step forward for Microsoft and part of why Vista is a good idea.

It is inappropriately pushed out simply because it's not ready for prime time in the sense that prime applications and average hardware cannot be supported under Vista and it hasn't been stated clearly or loudly enough that to run Vista, "off the shelf" isn't good enough. Microsoft hasn't spelled that out well enough for the consuming public. Sales people want to sell. Consumers pretty much buy whatever is offered to them. (Though consumers are actually starting to wise up about that bad habit!) I recall when WindowsNT was being introduced. It had a set of requirements well about those of Windows 3.1 and was considered to be apart from mainstream Windows. It was accepted that it would run slower on old hardware and was intended for only the most powerful machines and the most advanced of applications. WindowsNT wasn't simply pushed out to consumers saying "Here! This is new! Use it!" It was offered and relatively slowly adopted by IT and eventually by consumers in the form of Windows2000 which even then was pretty much presented to business.

An appropriate push for Vista would have been to create "Elite Computing" status for Vista users initially and make WindowsXP usage appear to be legacy. It would have provided incentive for consumers to "strive" to be good enough for Vista. It would have provided incentive to software makers to update their software for Vista. We're not seeing that. Instead we're seeing "I'm sorry, that computer only ships with Vista... if you want that machine, we cannot support you under XP... you have no choice in the matter." How dark is that?! More than dark, it's inappropriate.

It's true that the whole truth isn't being told. But mostly, the truth that needs to be told isn't being told by Microsoft to the consumer.

Re:Why stop there?

[gallwapa]

I've found vista[ultimate] to be rather enjoyable. Performance is great, the new features are nice, and it is overall a nice experience. UAC is a godsend when you demote yourself to a "user" (and before you even start complaining, it makes it like sudo)

At any rate. This coming from a guy who had his 5 home computers + 1 laptop running SuSE 10.2 / 10.3 for the past year, and SLED 10 on his work machine for the year before that.

Truth be told, there is a lot of great stuff you can do with Linux. Things I enjoyed were VPNC, for starters. A lot of clients have Cisco VPN and I spent 1 week trying to acquire the Cisco VPN client for Vista. ( Cisco requires a login with a contract associated...yea...). When it came down to it though, things just still didn't work reliably for day-to-day operation.

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in the latest Ubuntu all you need to do is visit a site that uses flash and Firefox tells you you need the flash plugin and offers to automatically download and install it for you at the click of a button (all using apt and the repositories in the background, without the user needing to know how to use apt or the command line). Moments later you have fully functioning flash without any complicated commands or terminals involved.

Re:Why stop there?

[jacquesm]

gp asked for CP/M, parent advises to go for DOS instead and gets modded informative ???

Re:Why stop there?

[mattpalmer1086]

You missed out (in Ubuntu):

(c) click install when firefox prompts you to install flash
(d) automatic updates for all software on the system, not just the OS.

No having to find those downloads buried somewhere on every manufacturers site, occasionally having to locate the right version of additional runtime DLLs, and keep them all up to date yourself.

Windows isn't quite as easy as Linux, eh? When you can do that in Windows, it'll be ready for novices!

Btw, I have been a DOS / Windows user since forever, and I'm now a very happy Linux user too. Some things are better in Windows, some are better in Linux. Your comments just show that you're not really familiar with anything except Windows.

Re:Why stop there?

[zmollusc]

WTF? I thought that the reason windows is so bloated and crappy was 'because it has to maintain backwards compatibility' ?

Re:Why stop there?

[mopower70]

there are thousands of folks out there who are using Vista on a day-to-day basis, and are not having problems. I find that difficult if not impossible to believe. I had my second experience with Vista this weekend, attempting some maintenance on an out-of-the-box Vista install on a computer my in-laws had purchased several months back. Turns out they hadn't used it since I installed it because it kept telling them things were broken, incompatible, or they didn't have permission to use them.

I wanted to download PuTTY so I could SSH into my machine from their house. Simple enough. It doesn't get any simpler than PuTTY - it doesn't even have an installer, you just unzip the files and run them. I'm not exaggerating when I say the whole thing took 10 minutes. For a 2M file.

It went something like this:

Windows: I see you're trying to access the Internet. Would you like to allow this?
Me: yes. [navigate to the PuTTY site and click the zip file download]
Windows: I see you're trying to download a file. Would you like to allow this?
Me: yes. [file downloads. Fine. That's about 1 minute right there.]
Me: [Navigate to the file and drag it to Program Files with the intention of extracting it there.]
Windows: I see you're trying to extract this file. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks. 30 seconds later.]
Windows: I can't allow you to do this.
Me: WTF? [Try it again. Same result].
Me: Fine. [I navigate to Program Files and create a directory named PuTTY].
Windows: I see you're trying to create a directory. Are you an administrator?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: This action will require administrative privileges to run. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: You are attempting to create a directory. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Fuck yes. [Windows sits. And thinks. And suddenly there's a new directory! Yeah. I rename it. 5 minutes has gone by.]
Me: [I drag the zip file and attempt to extract it to the folder I just created.]
Windows: I see you're trying to extract a file. This file is unsigned by Windows and may be hazardous to your health. Would you like to allow this?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: This action will require administrative privileges to run. Are you an administrator?
Me: yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: [Starts extracting the first file.]
Windows: This file is unsigned. Would you like to allow it to be extracted?
Me: Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks. And finally extracts the file.]
Windows: [Starts extracting the second file.] This file is unsigned. Would you like to allow it to be extracted?
Me: WTF? Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: Would you like to apply these privileges to the remaining files?
Me: WTF? Yes. [Windows sits. And thinks.]
Windows: [Starts extracting the 2.2M zip file. AT 2K PER SECOND. FOR A FILE EXTRACTION!!!]
Me: WTFZOMGBBQ?!? ...

Me: [Click on the PuTTY icon.] Finally...
Windows: I see you're trying to use an application.
Me: BANG!

Re:Why stop there?

[whoever57]

It's main disadvantage is that it's still harder to use than Windows if you want to do any sort of configuration, installation of applications and drivers.

Above is BS. I have had recent experiences with many pieces of hardware that goes like this:

Linux: plug in the hardware, application opens.

Windows: plug in hardware, find driver CD, now, am I Admininstrator? no: OK, run-as........

The fact is that for a lot of hardware (cameras, music players, etc.), under Linux, it is simply a matter of plugging it in; while under WIndows, I have to go through the process of installing some drivers from a CD. I don't see how that makes Windows easier to use.

Re:Why stop there?

[gallwapa]

FUD: I've done this

Open Browser (lets use IE For sake of argument) No UAC prompt
Search for Putty No UAC prompt
click link for putty website No UAC prompt
Click link for download No UAC prompt
Save the file No UAC prompt
Open the file No UAC prompt
Extract the file No UAC prompt
Launch the file - This file is unsigned/untrusted. Mark the checkbox that indicates "Always trust this executable"
Done.

No UAC prompt.

Imagine that.

Re:Why stop there?

[Junta]

This is actually one point I *hate* in Windows versus the current generation of Linux systems.

In windows, they have a semi-appfolder oriented design (except most apps either must or choose to dump some crap in system wide directories). As a result, they started out without anything resembling decent package management, and left it to third parties. Now you have a number of InstallAnywhere, MSI (microsoft's eventual 'standard'), Nullsoft installer, dozens of one-off installers for specific applications, and a bunch more I'm forgetting that are semi-standard). Most are moderately to severely anti-unattended and inconsistent. They have the 'add/remove' programs control panel, but largely it's relegated to just remove software, and even then some software ends up mangling the list so that different 'components' appear independently on the list, but uninstalling one breaks the uninstaller for the other, so you should have used the uninstall icon which a lot of programs put right next to running the application. It's horribly mangled and ugly and if the world wasn't so damned used to it, it becomes painfully obvious how piss-poor Windows has dealt with this.

Meanwhile, Linux was 'stuck' with the need to provide an alternative view on which pieces of software owned which binaries that were mixed in with everything else. To get out of a relatively messy situation that was undeniably there, they rolled the most sophisticated package management for a platform ever (mainly deb and rpm). With that, installs *knew* in a standardized way what other programs needed to be installed to work right, and things kind of 'just worked'. It was beautiful.

Then, recognizing the power of the package management, repository management emerged. Apt and Yum are the two prominent things. This above anything else is an *incredible* framework for software installation and, *CRITICALLY* updating. Not only does the *extremely* rich platform 'vendor' provide 99.9% of packages most common people would ever need, the architectures are pluggable so that third-parties can smoothly integrate their updates with your process. Using your flash plugin example and, say, Fedora Core. Adobe provides a yum repository. The low-level mechanics is that a file gets dumped in /etc/yum.repos.d, and from then on out, the global system update monitoring process tracks Adobe's software as well as the vendors. I don't know much about non-free software, but I do know that yum in RHEL requires authentication tokens to easily interact with RedHat servers. The framework is simple http, so I presume at the worst, https with http auth would be a viable thing for automated updates even for commercial, for-pay applications. I don't know about flashy layers over yum (I normally use ubuntu) that make yum administration painless, but I do know that Ubuntu wraps up the low-level framework in a mostly clean way. I added the wine repo by opening a terminal and copying and pasting the two lines from the wine repo install directions to the command line. It's not that hard, but a simple GUI tool could wrap even that.

Now, compare that to the MS side of things. Well, you got Microsoft update, which generally cares only about the low-level windows stuff (though I can't remember if Office would tag along for the ride or not..), which also wants to WGA the hell out of clients, but we'll put that aside from now. I install Java, and what happens, a freaking java update checker/manager starts (it can't hook into the running MS update architecture). I install quicktime, Apple's software updater starts running (same as Java). I install Half Life, suddenly Steam also needs to run to manage updates for games. I install Warcraft and Blizzards software starts checking for updates independently. Repeat for Bioware, Symantec, etc. Oh, my video driver, well, I'll have to go to a website somewhere and manually check for updates. And that *still* omits a ton of applications for which they never implemented an update management solution. I

So Desperate

[Corporate Troll]

They probably hope that pirates will make Vista popular and that a fraction actually will buy Vista in the end ;-)

Re:So Desperate

[Mattsson]

Beating sales figures aren't really a relevant comparison.
Amount of computers 2002 = X
Amount of computers 2007 = 5X
Yes, I'm pulling numbers out of thin air, but you get the picture. There are lot's more potential customers of Vista then there where of XP.
What I'd want to know is:
1. How many percent of older MS-systems have upgraded to Vista.
2. How many percent of OEM computers come with Vista relative other systems.
3. How many percent of non-MS users have switched to Vista.
3. How many percent of those who have switched/upgraded are happy with Vista.

Then compare the same percentages to those of XP after the same period of time.

Market share?

[Noctrnl]

I guess this is one way to get Vista's adoption rate to go up. Just let it be pirated!

Strategy not changing?

[Jester998]

It's worth re-emphasizing that our fundamental strategy has not changed.

i.e. We're still gonna bend you over. The big guy named Bubba is still employed with us, but now we've taken away his lube.

Re:Strategy not changing?

[Mercano]

Well I for one won't stand it. Standing isn't technically necessary. See the first sentence of the GP.

Let me think...

[CaptainZapp]

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.

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.

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'd wager that if i really chose option three I must be a blistering idiot, too.

Re:Let me think...

[plague3106]

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.

And I can't really buy games off the shelf, nor printers, or a lot of other hardware, and have it work. Oh, and Linux does have its own problems, weird things breaking, spending hours figuring out what exactly is wrong, and then diving into a text file to change some obsure setting. Most of those 20,000 apps are shit. Sorry.

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.

People knock Linux / Windows UIs; I find Macs to be infurating. Why exactly would you want to be a fanboy? Fanboy is just another word for zealot.

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.

Surely you mean only ~$260? Not very computer savy if you can't find Vista at a good price.

I'd wager that if i really chose option three I must be a blistering idiot, too.

The other option is that you're a smart professional that just wants to get things done. Since I ditched my Linux desktop and server, I spent more time doing the things I want on the computer, instead of trying to figure out what text file I got wrong and then being told to RTM (which doesn't exist).

Re:Let me think...

[15Bit]

Its basically horses for courses - you use the OS which does what you want the best. This will inevitably be a trade-off between functionality, software compatibility, user friendliness and cost. I have a Windows XP desktop and a file-server/firewall etc running Fedora. I don't run Windows on the server cos it doesn't do what i want. The same is true for Linux on the desktop. So i mix and match according to my needs. I'm sure many others do the same, and look admiringly over the fence at the prettiness of OSX, or the stability of Linux, or the universality of software for Windows. But in the end, your computer must do what you want, and having a pretty OSX box or highly secure and stable Ubuntu desktop is pretty pointless if all the software you need to use runs only on Windows.

Re:Let me think...

[Pengo]

First let me say, I'm not really a Apple Fanboi, but hardly anti Microsoft. I'm using MS at home (for gaming mostly) and my work computer is a Mac Pro tower (Developer/admin/etc.. small company so I do a LOT of different things).

I don't find Vista bad, or Mac perfect. I think both are fine if used in the context of what they where designed to do, but I digress. I'd just like to add a few things to what you said.

> Gutsy Gibbon is not an option for some people, due to its lack of some key software (games, 100% MS Office-compatible suite, driver support). That's not saying anything bad about GG, just that it's not a panacea for those wishing to ditch The Beast

I tried installing it at home on my Dell XPS-710 H2C. It didn't work.
I ran into problems with my video cards (Dual 8800GTX boards). The raid card wasn't read right off the bad, so I tracked down a cheap single SATA drive and the OS was able to see it.

After installing, countless playing with the video drivers, twiddling with different tools to configure X I gave up. Granted I use Linux for all our office servers and our datacenter, it was just more than I wanted to mess with. To the credit of Gutsy, it did install perfect on a couple of office machines and it seemed pretty slick. I haven't used Linux as a full desktop machine since the old Redhat 8 / 9 days, and I was more curious to see how far they have come. (I'm very happy with linux as our server platform of choice though :) ).

Gutsy is probably good for most people, but definitely not everyone.

>OS X is not as stable as you think. Sure, it's BSD underneath, but on top it's still an operating system. It still has drivers that are not 100% fantastic. It still crashes. On some peoples' machines, frequently. You also ignore the cost of the hardware, which is greater than for those wishing to run either GG or Vista.

OS X isn't infallible to problems, that's for sure. I've had a few over the years.. but I still measure my uptime on my Mac Pro at the office in months. (Usually only rebooting to install software updates). The OS is rock solid from my experience. Some things that kind of annoy me about it are the lack of real options on 3rd party hardware. If you want to upgrade the video card, forget it.. unless you want to buy Apples outdated and overpriced ATI board (Which i did for a second display that required Dual-DVI). For apple to ship that computer with a NVidia 7300 is just offensive. There are so many decent cards out there that are cheap and fast, I just don't understand the reasoning other than maybe wanting a passive cooling card.

Now price rant:

The hardware is expensive, but I make my living on that machine. I find that I am more productive on what I consider to be an elegant user experience. Maybe it's silly, but that's just how I am. It's the reason I don't drive a 79 Renault to work, it's not because the car wouldn't get me there and it's cheaper.. the car is just not something I want to be driving, and I enjoy nice things. Practicality does not always trump, and in my case I spend too much time behind the machine to not be using exactly what I want. I know that a lot of people don't have the option to even make the choice, but I do and I've never regretted picking up my mac for the office. :)

>Vista Ultimate (which is not $700 but about $200, depending on the dealer) offers a lot more than just a waterfall background. I can't believe I have to go into this, but I will anyway. It has a 3D-accelerated desktop, which means it can move a lot of the processing of windows and redrawing into the GPU, which would otherwise just be sat there, doing nothing, thereby increasing performance of your CPU (which also allows the "waterfall background" to not eat lots of resources). It has far more aggressive memory-handling techniques, which load apps into and out of memory at certain times to increase their loading times. It can use the hybrid HDDs, external flash memo

How soon...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

...until they start counting all pirated version of Vista among those "happily" using it in order to inflate their numbers.

Re:How soon...

[icepick72]

I doubt Microsoft's numbers need much inflation considering Win Xp / Vista / 2000 / 2003, even still in use NT, 95, ME, 98 ... the upcoming 2008 server. Microsoft is sitting pretty all things considered. What I find most funny is a lot of /. has fallen in love with XP in their fight against Vista. Microsoft has them either way. When Vista becomes a stable product as XP did over its lifetime they will all be moving to it and ragging on the Windows 7. One step behind in the Microsoft line doesn't matter. They're still pwned.

Re:How soon...

[mcrbids]

What I find most funny is a lot of /. has fallen in love with XP in their fight against Vista.

Don't confuse "falling in love" with "choosing the lesser of two evils". For all the nasty, ridiculous, and lame qualities that XP manages to invoke, Vista is simply far, far, worse. As a software vendor, Vista has been a TRAIN WRECK for us, despite fairly extensive testing with Vista B2. It's as though the O/S is specifically engineered to prevent you from actually doing *anything* with it. For example, it requires some SEVEN "Yes, I approve" clicks to install our application from the website.

Yes. SEVEN. "I agree to download the executable". "I agree to save the executable". "I agree to run the program" "I know it's an installer and might install something". "Yes, I'd like to install everything." "Yes, I agree to let the installer install something in Program Files" "Yes, I agree to let the installer update the registry".

Only ONE of those prompts is ours, the "I want to install everything". This is not security. This is teaching your users to frustratedly click "OK" on every dialog box they see without reading them.

Which then worsens problems for us. We now find many of our tech support calls involve users complaining about a problem that has a fix they've already been notified about.

Example: User calls, having problem claiming attendance, saying that "they get an error" and that's it. The error that they saw briefly and clicked "OK" on as quickly as possible (without reading) said something like: "You set the enrollment dates incorrectly in your program, and so we cannot find the school calendar to claim attendance on. Please check the student's enrollment date and try again.".

Training your users to ignore notice boxes by throwing lots of meaningless ones up does not improve security, it increases human/machine interface tension and results in frustrated, ineffective users.

Porting our application to OSX originally took us a month. Porting it over to Leopard was done in a day, with no complaints. The only change since 10.3 for us has been that Leopard removed the requirement to call X11 expressly. Now actually EASIER to write X11 apps for OSX, our application bombed after hunting for X11 binaries and not finding them.

Read this on ZDNet

[kat_skan]

A blog on ZDNet has this interesting bit:

This drastic change in Microsoft's WGA system is only the latest in series of attempts to smooth WGA's rough edges. In August, Kochis apologized on Microsoft's WGA blog for an outage that incorrectly flagged thousands of customers' systems as "non genuine." In October, Microsoft removed the WGA validation requirement from IE7 downloads. Two weeks ago, on November 20, Kochis promised to "build more trust in WGA" by improving its back-end systems, its response times, and its customer support.

Getting rid of the "kill switch" is a much better way to build that trust.

This is software explicitly designed to make your computer less useful. It does nothing else for you. Why would "improving its back-end systems" ever make me trust it the least bit more?

Dear Microsoft.

[LWATCDR]

Just so you understand.
If I install a new motherboard in my PC that is not piracy.
If I format my old hard drive and install Vista on a new PC I built that is not piracy.
If I have to call to take down that nag screen then you must hire enough people that I never have to wait more than two minutes to get the nag removed. You must also offer a world wide toll free number so I can call no matter where I am and you must keep that number staffed until the sun goes nova or you go out of business.
Only then will any type of "activation" be acceptable.
Never mind OpenSuse is working just fine as is Ubuntu. Or maybe I will just buy a Mac.

Re:Dear Microsoft.

[LWATCDR]

Why is that tough?
What if the motherboard fails? Why should I have to get a new OS if I replace a part? Nope same rules should apply.
Frankly since Microsoft is a convicted monopoly they should be under all sorts of control as far as things like OEM version and such.

Re:Dear Microsoft.

[nine-times]

Only then will any type of "activation" be acceptable.

No, not even then in my book. I use my computer for relatively important purposes, and the real purpose of the OS is to stay up and running and allow me to access my data and applications. That's priority number 1, and in fact most of what I care about.

Therefore, in my opinion, When I see an OS vendor who spends their time trying to figure out how to make their OS not-work and how to make it disallow access to my programs and applications, I must assume that they don't understand the first thing about what they're doing.

I know that explanation might sound too clever by half, but I am dead serious. When Microsoft should have been spending their time figuring out how to keep my system running at all times, they were instead engineering a kill switch. It's like if a shoemaker was trying to engineer a shoe so that it could easily be made uncomfortable or made to fall apart.

So my message to Microsoft: as long as you're spending your resources trying to figure out how to make my computer less useful and less reliable, I will not buy your OS anymore. Spend your immense resources on making an operating system that does what operating systems are supposed to do, and I may reconsider.

Kill switch is still there if...

[G4from128k]

What stops MS from turning the switch back on at any future date? Although MS may have "turned off" the kill switch, it remains a feature of the system as long as MS auto-update can make changes to the OS without the user's consent.

Re:Kill switch is still there if...

[Mathness]

What stops MS from turning the switch back on at any future date? *rubs a crystal ball*
Uh oh, I see a shadow heading your way, and ... This is a bit hard to see
*rubs the crystal ball vigoursly*
Ah, and it is wielding a chair.

Must be a fun way to conduct a DoS

[dido]

I suppose they realized that it would be just a matter of time before someone outside of Microsoft discovers a way to use the kill switch. And then every Internet-connected computer running Vista will die instantly. Hmm... Doesn't sound like such a bad idea after all...

Re:Must be a fun way to conduct a DoS

[Phat_Tony]

In the old days, viruses used to do things like delete users data to be malicious. Now, virus authors go to great lengths to write stealth rootkits to be sure there is never any visible sign to the user that the virus is installed on the system.

Viruses used to written by basement hackers who wanted to be elite and cool and to show what they could do, and visibly damaging people's user experience drew a lot of attention to them. Now, viruses are authored by hackers payed by organized crime, and they are used to mail spam, steal credit card numbers, and blackmail companies for cash under threat of DDOS attacks. Today's hackers won't bother going after the kill switch, it's not in their interest. They want those machines online, unknowingly marching to their orders like a good little botnet bot should.

Re:Fat lot of good this does me

[baadger]

The get yourself a Vista RTM ISO off of BitTorrent and utilize the little app at the very bottom of this page to save your OEM license. I've done it and it works a charm.

Re:Slightly better

[rolfc]

The next thing you will know is that the popping windows will become paid banners i SP2!!

Microsoft probably can't win but must act

[CtrlShiftEsc]

People can bitch about the apparent tunnel-visioned business model that they adopt with WGA. The fact of the matter is that if the tables were turned and Apple were the most dominant and pervasive OS, there would be similar tactics employed. You bet your life that Apple would hunt you down with their 'iCanDoNoWrong' activation software. It's just that way it is, being a monopoly, good or bad.

Microsoft is in business to make money and do the bidding of its shareholders, period. If one accepts that fact, then expect that they have to do something to protect their interests because it does affect their bottom line. Again, /. people might not care but then again, it's not your bottom line, on the line.

Not so many years ago, Steam arrived on the scene in the PC games world. Everyone moaned and complained. Groups formed to try and find ways to circumvent it (and I suspect they still do). Everyone said it was organised spying because the software had to 'phone home', nobody wanted to activate their game on-line. Now, Steam does a whole lot more than just phone home, it's practically Borg! Yet, I don't really have a problem with it. Maybe Microsoft could use their model instead? It certainly doesn't treat legitimate customers as potential criminals as far as I can see.

I accept that WGA is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. However, if one accepts that there is a global piracy problem for Microsoft to deal with, how would /. people solve it? Don't bother to chime in 'Make it free' or 'Make it Open Source and then I'll pay for it' or 'sell it for peanuts because no-one will pirate it then' - yeah, right. Business is business.

Re:Microsoft responds with...

[tsj5j]

Microsoft has described the new approach as a "change of tactics". It said efforts to tackle piracy had seen numbers of fake copies of Vista at half the level of XP, the previous Windows operating system. Wow, even pirates don't want Vista. Speaks volumes.

Re:Oh! Shucks.

[Ash-Fox]

What MS needs to fix is the 'perception' of slow that Vista has. Its bad.

Okay, you're trying to copy a 500kb file somewhere, and Vista's copy window pops up saying "Calculating" for almost a entire minute, before instantly just copying it.

It really is not just a perception. These things seem so obvious to me to be a flaw somewhere, I wonder how quality assurance even passed that. On XP, you would just see the copy window flicker onto the screen and poof and the file would be there.

No big deal

[JRHelgeson]

Until they completely pull DRM out of the kernel, I will never support the corporate adoption within our enterprise. In a perfect world, the DRM should only activate when "Premium Content" is being played. However, if we are copying gigabytes of .mp3 voice recording files (recorded phone calls to customer service, etc.) Vista just bogs down and stops. "It won't do that", we were promised last year while Vista was being readied for release. "It shouldn't do that" we're told when we encountered the problems, but it doesn't matter, Because. It. DOES.

With today's computers and today's work environment who DOESN'T work with or Manipulate multimedia content at some point? How could we possibly rely on an operating system that treats all multimedia content as special requiring extra inspection attempting to verify that I'm not trying to circumvent some nonexistent copy protection.

Windows Vista truly is the longest suicide note in history.