Anti-Piracy Windows 7 Update Phones Home Quarterly

Lauren Weinstein sends in news of a major and disturbing Microsoft anti-piracy initiative called Windows Activation Technologies, or WAT. Here is Microsoft's blog post giving their perspective on what WAT is for. From Lauren's blog: "The release of Windows 7 'Update for Microsoft Windows (KB71033)' will change the current activation and anti-piracy behavior of Windows 7 by triggering automatic 'phone home' operations over the Internet to Microsoft servers, typically for now at intervals of around 90 days. ... These automatic queries will repeatedly — apparently for as long as Windows is installed — validate your Windows 7 system against Microsoft's latest database of pirated system signatures (currently including more than 70 activation exploits known to Microsoft). If your system matches — again even if up to that time (which could be months or even years since you obtained the system) it had been declared to be genuine — then your system will be 'downgraded' to 'non-genuine' status until you take steps to obtain what Microsoft considers to be an authentic, validated, Windows 7 license. ... KB971033... is scheduled to deploy to the manual downloading 'Genuine Microsoft Software' site on February 16, and start pushing out automatically through the Windows Update environment on February 23. ... [F]or Microsoft to assert that they have the right to treat ordinary PC-using consumers in this manner — declaring their systems to be non-genuine and downgrading them at any time — is rather staggering." Update: 02/12 02:08 GMT by KD : Corrected the Microsoft Knowledge Base number to include a leading 9 that had been omitted in the pre-announcement, per L. Weinstein.

Comments

I already regret this

[copponex]

//South Carolina Congressman Here//

If you read the public notice it has some valid points about how it works:

1. Voluntary self-identification process
2. When non-genuine thought is detected, citizenship is NOT reduced
3. Yes, we did decide to notify/annoy everyone that certain people are enemies of the state which is a good thing because most people don't know who they are
4. The goal is reduce the number of unidentified enemies of the state, many of whom oppose our policies
5. No harm will come to any identified enemies of the State. This is stated CLEARLY in our current propaganda
6. It does not apply to any real free speech where corporate sponsors are used. @FreeAssembly, lots of states are selective about their fundamental rights... what planet are you on... :o)

The newspaper headline is a little outlandish considering the aforementioned propaganda we are providing. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts before they are illegal.

...and of course...

[fyngyrz]

***Warning: Mac Advocate*** ***Warning: Mac Advocate***

Then there's the Mac/OS X option. No driver installation at all. The machine and all its wifi, network, USB, bluetooth, etc. will be working 100% when you take it out of the box -- and it'll keep working. No viruses. No "phone home to keep running/legal." Full bore *nix capability, just like Linux, except with a much, much better, smoother and more consistent GUI. Nothing will insist on KDE or Gnome or whatever. Fabulous apps. And the ability to run both Linux and Windows (even several versions of Linux and windows) in virtual machines at the same time it's running OS X. Even lots of Linuxy-apps, like the Gimp, work just fine - there are even multiple flavors of them. Some run under xwindows, some under OS X. Both at the same time, if you like.

I left Windows years ago and good grief am I glad I did. Every time I see a task bar stuffed with pointless icons; every time I hear about someone "defragging"; every time I hear about viruses and worms and malware in general; every time Microsoft pulls another DRM antic; every time I see a windows multicore machine not use the cores for this app or that app; every time I read about "server licensing"; every time someone asks me "if I fix computers"... because we all know what that usually means. "No, I sure don't" is what I tell 'em.

I got my entire family to switch, and everyone is happy as a clam. No more panicked phone calls; everyone is fully backed up, all the time, no effort required on their part. Yep. OS X is simply a treat.

Perfect? Nah. Nothing is. But it's orders of magnitude better than anything Microsoft ever squeezed out their back door, and it offers darned near everything Linux does, plus a bunch Linux doesn't. Although it definitely costs more.

Decent Macs start at $599, for which you get:

• 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (which the OS actually uses, along with the GPU) [$options up to 2.53 GHz]
• Five USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
• 1066MHz frontside bus
• 2 GB of RAM [$options up to 4 GB]
• 160 GB HD [$options to 500 GB]
• 1x to 24x double layer DVD/CD R/W drive
• Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
• 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
• a tinny-ass little speaker
• analog digital audio input
• optical digital audio input
• analog digital audio output
• optical digital audio output
• Drives two monitors out of the box
• Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Look! Comes with the OS!)
• consumes max 110 watts. That's right. 110. Energy star, FWTW.
• dead quiet
• size of three slices of bread, stacked: 2"x6.5"x6.5"
• weighs three pounds
• uses any PC keyboard, monitor, mouse you have lying around, or high end DVI monitor, your call
• a year's hardware warranty [$option to extend to 3 years]
• and guess what? Doesn't come pre-loaded with AOL, etc., either.

Again, perfect? No. The graphics are shared RAM, so they're not lightning fast for 3D; but they rip for desktop use, photo editing, etc. This particular machine is only as expanded/expandable as you order it. And yes, it's more expensive than a bare bones PC. But then again, it isn't bare bones. Apple doesn't sell anything like that.

Or... you can shoot for the moon. Apple's really happy to take your money, and they've got hardware to empty most bank accounts right smartly. I went for an 8-core, 3 GHz machine for nearly $3k, and then stuffed it full of aftermarket RAM. This year it looks like a 12-core machine is in the works... and I'm seriously considering it. My camera pukes up 45 megabyte images, and I'm going to upgrade to a Canon 5DmkII, which will generate 63 megabyte images... right now, I'm thoroughly spoiled by my machine's ability to generate a JPEG from a RAW file faster than I can get my hands off the keyboard. I'd like to keep that feeling after I get the 5DmkII.