Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Anti-Piracy Plans
Slatterz writes "Microsoft has announced that the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system will contain a number of piracy 'tweaks' it says are designed to protect the interests of customers. Under the new regime users will be expected to validate their software in a much more precise way than before. Other Microsoft operating systems and anti-piracy measures, including Windows Genuine Advantage, allowed users to delay 'activation,' but Windows 7 will make it harder to ignore repeated messages. According to Joe Williams, general manager for Worldwide Genuine Windows at Microsoft, counterfeit software 'delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction with our products, particularly if users do not know that their software is non-genuine.' Williams gave the example of one piracy exploit that caused more than a million reported system crashes on machines running non-genuine Windows Vista before Microsoft was able to resolve it."
Any code made by someone can be broken by someone.
Some consumers have already realized they don't have to put up with this bullshit, I hope more do every day.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
As a user of an OS that is actually zero cost, I would love to see MS actually enforce piracy protections effectively. That is one way to grow linux use. Once people figure out they can no longer "borrow" their buddies disk, they will start looking for alternatives.. and really, you don't even have to be 100% successful. If you make the process difficult enough, people will give up!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Genuine windows was something dreamt up in the marketing department, but the theory is that "counterfeit" copies are virus ridden.
Basically this just isn't the case, and VLK editions are much nicer to use because of the lack of activation.
Windows XP 64 was especially awesome because it escaped Microsoft's focus on crappy anti-piracy bloat such as WGA, since it wasn't such a main stream OS. I've never had compatibility problems, so for me, pirated XP64 is the best MS OS ever.
"Williams gave the example of one piracy exploit that caused more than a million reported system crashes on machines running non-genuine Windows Vista before Microsoft was able to resolve it."
WTF do you care what happens to people running pirated copies? Why don't you tell us about all of the times WGA has screwed up legitimate installations with false positives? I've actually had to "hack" a few falsely tagged installations so they'd run until I had time to go through the hassle of getting my system re-legitimized. And I don't maintain that many windows systems. I can only imagine the shitstorm that could be caused in a company with thousands of identical systems that, through some quirk, got nailed with a false positive from WGA.
WGA does absolutely nothing to protect legitimate consumers. Nothing. The only thing WGA can do to any specific installation is disable it. It can't ENHANCE or IMPROVE the system in any way.