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Black Screens For Unauthorized Copies of Windows
arcticstoat writes "In a bid to deter people from using pirate versions of Windows XP, Microsoft is now updating its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool to introduce a few uncomfortable niggles for users of pirated versions of Windows. These include replacing the desktop wallpaper with a black screen every 60 minutes, although you can still replace it with your wallpaper of choice in the intervening period. As well as this, copies of Windows deemed to not be genuine will also have a translucent watermark above the system tray, which Microsoft calls a 'persistent desktop notification.'"
Too close for comfort.
Some one I know just doesn't download the the WGA notification (tells it never to download when it shows up in system updates) I... I mean he wants to know if that will still work?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I'm impressed with Microsoft's forbearance.
Black Screen of Death
Oh crap, get ready for another wave of "omg where is the start button" questions on the Ubuntu message boards.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
The first thing I do after installing XP is turn the wallpaper to black.
Apparently, pirating it saves me a step after install.
WTG, MSFT!
You can have it if you want.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
now microsoft has officially left it's users black and blue
Thank you Dave Raggett
Question: People who annoy you?
Maybe it's just me, but I usually set my desktop to black anyway as one of the first steps after an install. This sounds to me like a feature rather than a deterrent.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
They need to get more creative. Here's a few ideas:
1) Cause the NIC to drop random ammounts of packets at random times.
2) Change the wallpaper from Black Screen to one with a letter ending with "... The police are on their way".
3) Every 2 minutes all keys on your keyboard get randomly swapped around.
4) Swaps the mouse buttons. Or moving the mouse left, moves it right, up, down, etc.
5) All print jobs only result in large words in upper case saying "PIRATE ALERT!"
6) Boot sequence and shutdown sequence get 5 minutes added on to them. Hey MS, don't forget to make sure you cause the hard drive light LED to flicker a lot while the users wait around so they think it's something going on. While you're at it, randomly flicker that HD LED every few minutes for 20 seconds at a time.
7) Every 10th web page visited would be redirected to goatse (is that site still around?)
You get the idea... now hurry up so that people get fed up faster and switch to Linux.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Can someone remind me why Microsoft wants to chase people off to other platforms again?
They're increasing their users' pain thresholds so that they'll find Vista's annoyances tolerable.
Yeah, that'll turn the h4xx04z away. Want to really make it worthwhile? Force a pink-on-pink color scheme, license the theme song to "My Little Pony", and play that in an uninterruptable background loop on all available sound devices. That'll do a lot more to keep a kid honest than would making his desktop look 1337.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Because they're hoping one or two might actually end up buying Vista.
The Vista Drake Equation
N = R x fp x ne x fi x fe x L
where
N is the number of Vista sales
R is the number of reported WGA unlicensed XP install hits.
fp if the fraction of those that care about a black screen & bit of text
ne is the number of users with PCs that can actually run Vista
fi is the fraction of XP users who dont have the brains to use Ubuntu
fe is the fraction of XP users who dont use a tool to kill the WGA app
L is the fraction of XP users too lazy to get Windows Update to skip the WGA app
S - Number of sales
X - Number of illegal XP copies
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P L E A S E R E G I S T E R
How we know is more important than what we know.
The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.
It was a tossup between that quote and "Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board."
More of the same. Just let go.
And the answer is none. None more black.
It's a tough job handling the ubuntu IRC channel. The other day some guy was asking how to maximize firefox. We told him to click the box in the upper right corner, and he didn't understand. So someone asked what version he was running, and he gave the output of firefox -v (or whatever command it is for version). It was baffling that he could use the command line but not maximize the window. I think (hope) he was joking. Or maybe it was Richard Stallman.
Were you a victim of Linux Genuine Advantage scheme to make millions? Linux Genuine Advantage Crack will restore free as in speech rights to what should have been in the first place. Down with the man!
FCKGW...?
"Every time you operate one of these weird black controls, labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you've done it"
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"