Microsoft Withdraws Vista's Kill Switch 635
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.'"
So Desperate (Score:5, Interesting)
Must be a fun way to conduct a DoS (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Coincidence or Related? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have they also somehow altered WGA in XP?
Re:Why stop there? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know where to get a copy of CP/M that will run reliably on newer hardware and with clean drivers for larger HDDs?
-nB
"Illegal and Improper" (Score:3, Interesting)
So that means that Microsoft have been getting perfectly legal auctions taken down because they deem then "improper" then.
Microsoft probably can't win but must act (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I'm actually thinking of upgrading to Vista today (Score:3, Interesting)
I just upgraded my main machine last month (from athlon 3000xp / nforce2 / 2G ram / 6800gs, to core2quad q6600 / nforce 680i sli / 4G 800Mhz ram / BFG 8800GT) I felt I was reaching XP's limits on what I wanted, namely:
- can't access 4G ram, or higher. Maxes out around 3.25G
- can't run DirectX 10 (this is the total killer, for games)
- also, I'd have to reinstall if I wanted XP-64, so may as well go the whole hog
I use my PC for gaming, and music production (Cubase, etc). Over the last few weeks I've been painstakingly contacting the manufacturers of every peripheral/software I use, ensuring I won't lose the use of anything I currently am used to. That takes care of the driver issue.
The other main issues seem to be memory (4G should be enough for now), and general resource usage. I've looked into it a bit and found a bunch of services that are useless for me and will speed things up when disabled (ReadyBoost, Search index services for example) - but to be honest, this was always the way with any Windows installation - msmsgs, anyone? A bit of tweaking will always be necessary.
Right now, it seems hard for me to find something that doesn't work under Vista, and the new device driver stack, directx 10 and expansion to 64 bit seem worth it to me. Anyone been through a similar upgrade recently and have a story to tell?
Re:Why stop there? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let me think... (Score:3, Interesting)
That doesn't discount the fact that there are dozens of high quality, professional, industry grade apps available, which would cost 1000s of $ in addition to the OS.
Name a few of them, please.
I get very bored of reading comments like the above, yet never seeing specific examples. I defy anyone to name even one dozen native Linux apps that really are as good at what they do as serious commercial apps that cost $1000s. Off the top of my head, I can think of perhaps three or four that are at least comparable, but they're all toys for geeks rather than toys for your average end user who might be looking for an alternative to Vista.
Re:Why stop there? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Let me think... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:"Illegal and Improper" (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, the quote said:
Microsoft said it had [...] taken down more than 50,000 "illegal and improper" online software auctions.'"
Because English is imprecise, that can have multiple valid meanings.
If we break the sentence down we could get:
Microsoft said it had [...] taken down more than {50,000 [("illegal) and (improper")]} online software auctions.'"
Meaning a number of illegal auctions were taken down and a number of improper auctions were taken down. The total is more than 50,000.
Equally, we could get:
Microsoft said it had [...] taken down more than {50,000 ("illegal and improper")} online software auctions.'"
Meaning more than 50,000 auctions that were both illegal and improper were taken down.
Note that either makes sense. Saying "More than 100 men and women ran in the race." does not mean "More than 100 entities that are both men and women ran in the race." It means "A number of men ran and a number of women ran. The total is greater than 100."
Since the line was written by PR people, who are notorious for twisting the meaning of language and, in the second interpretation, the word "improper" adds no meaning (since, implicitly, illegal => improper), I am inclined to believe that the first meaning was the one meant.
Re:Let me think... (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess we have different perspectives. I would argue precisely that it is precisely the commercial heavy-hitters like Microsoft's Office and Exchange Server, Adobe's creative apps, recent PC games like Supreme Commander, various heavyweight business management applications, and specialist software like CAD that set the Windows world apart from the Linux world.
Sure, Linux has apps like OpenOffice, Scribus and the GIMP, but for serious professional use, they really are only toys by comparison. If you just need to write a letter or remove a touch of red-eye, sure, they're fine for that. However, they lack the power, flexibility, and (perhaps most importantly) the supporting culture of their commercial brethren. I won't go into specifics here, but I have written several detailed Slashdot posts in the past supporting this position, which you can readily find with a search engine if you're interested.
Some of the other applications you mentioned, such as Thunderbird and Firefox, are available on both platforms, but even then, they are also bordering on the toy category. Thunderbird is crippled for many businesses by its refusal to play nicely with Exchange. Firefox is crippled for many businesses by its stubborn insistence that everything work according to standards and the developers' view of safety, with no pragmatic concessions to the way browsers are actually used on corporate intranets. I've used both apps at home for some time, but even then I'm looking to switch because of horrendous bugs I've encountered and daft missing features.
As you say, in the server space Linux is a serious challenger for Windows, thanks to the likes of Apache and the big name DB servers. But really, this is the only area where I would put the Linux world on a par or ahead of the Windows world.
Re:Why stop there? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Let me think... (Score:2, Interesting)
Regarding your zip file.. I'm not sure that
Any other examples?
Ofcourse, an informed user would buy hardware after verifying software compatibility.
With Windows though, you don't even really have to check. If you're buying a new piece of hardware, it will have drivers for the latest version of Windows, and likely past versions too. I've never bought hardware and had it not work with Windows or come with the drivers.
Re:Why stop there? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm... It wasn't putty, but I've had and still have the UAC popping up. "Always trust this executable" didn't work. Soo... I'll try Putty to run my own tests, but I'm inclined to believe gp.
Imagine that...