Vista Family Discount Keys Found Not Compatible 394
acousticiris writes "Many (if not all) users who took advantage of Microsoft's Vista Family Discount have been issued invalid installation keys and cannot install Windows Vista Home Premium. Microsoft says, 'There is no expected time period for a fix at this time.' According to the article, the keys are valid for something, just not Windows Vista. Perhaps it's just too simple to issue these folks new keys and send them on their way."
Paid customers getting the shaft? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Paid customers getting the shaft? (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent Funny.
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Re:Paid customers getting the shaft? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd image such people at least somewhat competent when using a computer. Many non-technical computer users don't even know what Vista is, let alone that it has been released, and thus wouldn't be updating their systems so quickly. I'd expect such people would also be aware of how this sort of bullshit gets worse and worse with each release of Windows. Why do they accept being treated like criminals? Why do they accept being treated like nothing more than shit?
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also...
Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release? Why would they accept an OS that requires more and more from their hardware investment, eventually requiring replacement (as may be very likely the case with Vista) instead of getting sleeker and slimmer and more efficient? Why would they accept an OS that carries with it the highest threat of adware, viruses, worms, trojans - for whatever reason? When terrible mistakes are made - like activex - why don't they expect the company to fix those mistakes?
Just wondering. I mean clearly, they do not hold Microsoft to a very high standard. I left the OS a couple of years ago, having had all I was willing to take. But most people around me stick with MS, regardless of what trouble they have.
Personally, I think part of the answer is application lock-in; people who use some app that they can't get away from, and where the developers force them to upgrade to the next OS because otherwise, the next version or revision of the locked-in app won't work.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Informative)
All major OSes get some bloat as they grow. Vista's sheer size is inexcusable, but it's not terribly slower than XP, at least on a 1.6GHz P4 notebook.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
<RAMBLE>
Well, maybe that's a signal we're looking at things incorrectly, then. Why not build a stable core - multitasking, networking, application sandboxing, list management, basic graphics with user-settable bitmaps and/or polygonal models -- the rest of the usual suspects like disk io and USB -- and then let the user decide if they want, for instance, to add a 3d desktop with voice and haptic features, widgets, zooming, 400 language compatibility (OSX carries a crapload of language stuff to your drive it doesn't really need to, for instance) and drivers for every printer ever known to man?
That almost sounds like a linux release, but the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools so applications can run on the OS itself. linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer. It has almost everything else, I'm perfectly ready to concede. Be nice if it had a little bit smarter permissions - like being able to say that "this dir is read/write, but nothing can execute here" without having to set the dir up on its own partition, etc., but at least there is a workaround.
In fact, that's how I ended up with Apple's OSX. It's almost linux from my user / developer point of view, but it has a solid GUI I am under the impression I can count on, and I don't have to pay fees to use or get the user to try to download.
I'd like to see something more basic, though. I know these marvelous machines we have today would run like raped apes if we actually tried to make them do so, instead of trying to make them do "everything for everybody." Vista's gone and collected 10% or so of a modern CPU for itself, if the rumors I hear are correct; is that really where we want to be? Damn, 10% of a modern CPU is what, 100% of one five years ago?
Sometimes I write software to run in a shell in OSX or linux and just enjoy the zappiness of it all. I am heavily involved in AI experimentation, particularly in the multiply-associative memory area, and I always write that stuff for a text shell. A real linux text shell actually runnning in text mode... man that's fast. :)
</RAMBLE>
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However, if it consumes 10% of the CPU, then some of those advantages are for naught.
As an aside:
I'd been n
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9% baseline cpu utilization at idle on an Athlon X2 4200+ dual core, 663 mb used by kernel out of 2 gb. This is 2 days after the initial install (indexing isn't running), with no 3rd party drivers loaded as nVidia doesn't have RTM drivers for their "vista ready" nForce 4 chipsets yet. So no sound or gigabit lan for me just yet, and no the RC1/RC2/XP drivers won't load.
Windows desktop manager (dwm.exe) is responsible for 5-6% of the load by itself, explorer.exe ge
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, maybe that's a signal we're looking at things incorrectly, then. Why not build a stable core - multitasking, networking, application sandboxing, list management, basic graphics with user-settable bitmaps and/or polygonal models -- the rest of the usual suspects like disk io and USB -- and then let the user decide if they want, for instance, to add a 3d desktop with voice and haptic features, widgets, zooming, 400 language compatibility (OSX carries a crapload of language stuff to your drive it doesn't really need to, for instance) and drivers for every printer ever known to man?
Primarily because the vast, vast majority of consumers lack the knowledge and, more importantly, the will, to do so.
Heck, *I* have zero interest in doing that sort of thing these days, and it wasn't that long ago I did the whole Linux-from-scratch thing, just for the hell of it. I'm more than happy to sacrifice some (dirt cheap) disk space and processor time, to save myself the effort of putting the whole thing together myself and subsequently having to keep it maintained. This is precisely the same reason I don't use Linux on my desktop - because it's more work to get everything going and keep it that way.
That almost sounds like a linux release, but the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools so applications can run on the OS itself.
Close. More important than the "set of GUI tools" is a standard, stable, "set of libraries" (I use the term "libraries", but I basically mean a stable, defined set of basic functionalities that will _always_ be present in a known form). This is a _huge_ feature than OS X (and Windows) has over Linux.
Hardware resources are _cheap_. My time - and developers' time - is _expensive_. Sacrificing hardware resources to get better software, quicker, is a more than reasonable tradeoff and, ultimately, the whole point of computers in the first place.
The point of software [like this] is not to use as little hardware resources as possible. The point of software is to make my life as easy as it possibly can and the hardware resources be damned.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Informative)
No shit? Linux From Scratch is hard to maintain? I'm shocked! Shocked! Did you really just say that Linux From Scatch was hard to maintain, so you stopped using Linux? Linux From Scratch is meant to teach the deep inner workings of Linux, it's not supposed to be easy to maintain. There are dozens of Linux distros meant to be "easy to use", but you went ahead and picked the one that's purposely difficult? I don't think Linux From Scratch is your problem here.
Debian's testing branch is more stable than your LFS, it's current within a week of new software releases, and you can get daily automatic updates with a click of a button. I'm sure you'll point out some reason the average user is too stupid to do that, but it's a hell of a lot easier than LFS.
Why should I, as a user, have to worry about libraries? I shouldn't. And with a distro like Debian or SuSe, I don't. I open Synaptic, click on the application I want, click "Apply", and the application is installed along with any necessary libraries. Oh, and it'll automatically get updated along with the rest of the system. Try doing that on Mac or Windows.
As a developer, I still don't see your point. It makes very little difference to me if I'm using the API built into the OS, or a third party library. In one case I'll have to add a line to the build scripts. Big fuckin' deal.
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Building a kernel with just the drivers you want to use was one of the first post-installation jobs of FreeBSD.
You can't even boot Linux from a floppy no more
The main OSes are big balls of cruft bloated horribly by the 80/20 rule for general purpose computing but only the OSS ones allow you to do something about it.
Even then you still face the possible time penalty of recompiling userland. That's why I'm glad plan9 only takes 15 mins to make world.
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Hum, I can boot linux on a single floppy and make it my firewall with all the needed utilities. For exemple with Coyote Linux [coyotelinux.com]...
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I still fail to see how this makes sense. I think you have fallen into the trap of thinking that Linux is an operating system. It's not. Linux is the kernel. From there, you mix and match. Most distros use a GNU userland, but there are other options. Many distros use X.org, but there are other options. Some distros use GNOME. Others use KDE. Others use neither. If you think of Linux as an operating system, it's a big mess. But how can you think of something embedded in your WLAN router and something that runs your desktop with OpenGL and bells and whistles as the same OS?
Once you accept that there isn't a single Linux OS, but that there are multiple operating systems, each built on top of the Linux kernel, things will start to look very different. Now, for example, you have FREESCO, which doesn't have a GUI (I think), and Ubuntu, which uses GNOME for its GUI.
Now, back to your comment. You say:
``the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools''
Ubuntu has these, and so do many other distros.
``linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer.''
I don't see how the fact that FREESCO does not incorporate GNOME cripples Ubuntu in any way.
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That almost sounds like a linux release, but the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools so applications can run on the OS itself. linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer.
It does have a standard GUI - three of them in fact. Don't think of them as "not a standard", think of them as options. In Windows, you get just one option - Microsoft's. In Linux, you get more than one. If you don't like GNOME, switch to KDE. If those are too heavyweight, switch to XFCE. It's still the same operating system with the same applications and tools, just a different front end. Plus, have you looked at all the extra add-on crap with Windows now? WindowBlinds and ObjectDesktop changes th
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Informative)
X11 is the device-independent driver upon which GUIs (KDE, GNOME, GnuSTEP, XFCE...) are built.
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X11 isn't a GUI, merely a very low level framework, unless you mean X + Athena + twm (both usually come with X11 installations). However finding apps that rely on just that is *really* difficult nowadays.
If you're too young to have used any Athena based apps, an overview of it and derivatives [efalk.org] is available online.
OTOH, one could argue that Linux has two standard GUIs, Gnome and KDE (standard as being de facto standard since they're u
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:4, Informative)
I run Tiger on a 900 MHz G3 iBook all the time. It's very usable. And my experience concurs with the GP's experience: it does seem significantly faster than Panther. However Tiger does require more RAM than Panther. If you don't have enough RAM, your computer will be paging to your hard drive pretty heavily, which could make Tiger appear slower than Panther. Add more RAM if you think Tiger is slower than Panther. Chances are, you just don't have enough.
That said, until you've booted Mac OS X public beta in 32 Megs of RAM, though, you don't know the definition of slow, and thus have no room to complain.... :-)
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Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release?
Because a) in many cases it isn't true (the higher end your hardware, the less true it is) and b) in the cases where it isn't, it's quite normal behaviour (eg: more recent versions of Linux are slower on low-end machines than older ones).
The only OS in recent memory that has improved in performance on low end machines with new releases is OS X, which has far, far more to do with how dismally slow it was at initial release and compiler improv
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
To use an old truism: "the devil you know
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't know if you're in the US, but it's commonplace here now. For example, if you have a head cold and want some plain old Sudafed, you are treated as a possible criminal and have your license scanned or number tracked on paper and you have to sign for it.
Actually, I tend to feel like I'm being treated like a criminal unless I've been robbed.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just posted this in the topic about Window's new DRM patents, and realized after that that discussion is already dead. Seems everyone jumped into the discussion about the guy who gave up on Linux after 10 years, and now there has been almost a dozen discussions since then. I just want to make a point I feel really strongly about. I don't think there is anything really wrong with this if you are up front about it. At the risk of being marked off topic, here I go with my little rant...
While many of you Linux user don't seem to be too worried about this, I think you should be. As pointed out by others, it will have a detrimental effect right across the board. No more dual boot with Windows and Linux. No Wine, no more popular drivers for Linux because of the DRM, no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax, and in the end, it will get harder every day to find a computer that will even run Linux.
As a Window's programmer since 3.1, I am seeing a nightmare scenario staring me in the face. I can see the day coming when a person can no longer develop software on their own computer, because it will only run in some kind of sandbox, if at all, unless you buy a special developer's license. Of course I too will finally defect to Linux long before that happens, if that is still an option.
I'm am seriously disturbed by the vision I am seeing in all I have read tonight - but I am too tired to articulate it all - it's late at night where I am at the moment and it's been a long day. It's like someone said - the frog in the pot thing - the public has to wake up to this DRM business before it's too late.
Before I go - there is one more thing I want to get off my chest here. One might hope and pray that it will be stopped by anti-trust laws before it goes too far, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Why did the courts not press for a breakup of Microsoft? I think they were leaned on by the US government - for a reason I have not seen articulated before. The fact is that Microsoft is a US corporation, one of America's finest. It brings in big bucks to the good ol' US of A. So from a local perspective, among fellow Americans, Microsoft's monopolistic practices are scandalous, but if an American - especially a Congressman - looks at it from a nationalistic perspective, it's good for America. In fact, the worse it becomes (the monopolistic practices) the better it is for USA. Bill Gates' age old dream of world domination happens to coincide with America's dream of world domination. That's why we can't count on the US courts to put a stop to this.
Wow - I didn't think I was going to say all these things. It's like suddenly I see where all this is going now, and it's real scary.
Not just MS, it's DRM, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you hit the nail on the head. But you need to look beyond Microsoft. The U.S. Government is -- or fancies itself, anyway -- much bigger than even the largest corporations. They're going to protect Microsoft, because they see MS as a modern U.S. Steel or General Motors; it's a huge part of the national industry.
Moreover, DRM in general is going to be pushed heavily by the USG, for the "national interest." Even though it will punish consumers here, it's a way of protecting one of the only things that the U.S. exports anymore: "intellectual property." We don't make stuff anymore; we "manufacture" IP. DRM is a way, in the minds of some folks in DC, of protecting that whole category of exports, and maintaining our dominance in one area, at least. Without DRM, the whole idea of commoditizing and selling "IP" on a retail-like market doesn't work; if you can't tie down information to physical artifacts, or make it behave conservatively (even though information is naturally nonconservative), then it's devilishly hard to sell multiple times. And if you can't take one Hollywood blockbuster and sell it 100 million times over, like it's some sort of aspirin tablet that you're turning out, how do you keep the economy going, when nobody wants to buy anything else we make here anymore?
Re:Paid customers getting the shaft? (Score:5, Informative)
and a follow up from another poster:
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Microsoft does not offer refunds for purchases made through their web site and they are sticking to that policy, leaving users like me who already paid them hundreds of dollars with no recourse and unable to affect the remedy to this horrible situation.
Does the US really have no laws protecting consumers from this sort of crap? You were sold a product that is defective, and the supplier has no acceptable substitute to replace it with. If you paid with a credit card, the credit card company should at lea
Keys work on Ultimate (Score:5, Interesting)
family values (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:family values (Score:5, Insightful)
Just sayin'.
Re:family values (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:family values (Score:4, Funny)
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Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wait.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Stick to what you're good at" - something companies know they must do, but can't, because of growth pressure.
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I predict that we will see the same with Apple within five years for the same reasons - although not to the same degree.
Well, Apple has been heavily focusing lately. They pretty much dropped off the professional market (ever noticed how the switcher ads presents the PC as the "boring machine for business" and the Mac as the "fashionable machine for having fun"?). They're focusing on home user media applications with the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV, with the Mac as the hub between them -- that metaphor is a few years old already, actually.
Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic and Shake are pretty much "also rans" right now. They're n
Family Plan wasn't in beta. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a simple thank you is in order (Score:4, Funny)
upgrade.
Unacceptable (Score:5, Interesting)
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They offered to refund people's money. Is that not an acceptable response for a product that doesn't work?
Re:Unacceptable (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Unacceptable (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends. How far into the installation are these users before they discovered this? Is the former OS no longer bootable? IF that is the case a simple refund does nothing for the customer that was just left high and dry. As I recall, "upgrade" versions of Vista invalidate [gizmodo.com] the key [tailrank.com] used for previously installed version of Windows (thus making a reinstall a moot point).
They do (Score:2)
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Re:Unacceptable (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Unacceptable (Score:4, Insightful)
and the OS works so well because it is tailor made for a know set of hardware. They could lose their wonderful reputation if people started trying to stick it on unknown boxes.
Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft Bob for Vista.
Now that's just not right (Score:2)
This is exactly the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Your really have to be stupid to do that.
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No, they don't.
Not with Vista.
This is the first release of Windows that actually does less than the previous one. The people in the article didn't need it, I don't need it, and you don't need it.
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No Timeframe? (Score:2, Insightful)
Known issue or not, get them working keys!
Not Surprised... (Score:3, Interesting)
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YMMV, but I doubt it.
It's just another non-story, another chance for the geek to vent his rage against the universe. Vista has moved into the home market, where its dominance is as certain as the rising of the sun:
You have to wonder how long the crowd here will continue grasping at straws:
I just tested this out for myself. If you received a free copy of Vista from your participation in the beta progra
Might be the computers (Score:3, Funny)
digest (Score:5, Interesting)
People with tags (Score:5, Funny)
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A major IT producer making a screwup this big is definitely 'news for nerds, stuff that matters' no matter who you're a fanboy for.
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Seriously, get a grip people (Score:5, Interesting)
This site is supposed to be about news and technical scoops not about personal opinion or flame wars. Get a grip. We like different operating systems. All the other ones suck. Let's move on and talk about something interesting.
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I think you are being a bit sensitive here, at least on this specific s
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You must be new here
I for one welcome our new uber-topic (Score:3, Insightful)
A thought (Score:2, Funny)
Fix? Yeah, we'll think about that... (Score:2)
Microsoft's antipiracy program is so good, even if you do pay for the software you can't run it!
Hmmm, they already have the customer's money, are not delivering a product and have no time frame to deliver the product to these people. Isn't that a textbook case o
Overblown MS bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
This wouldn't be unacceptable if you had a problem _installing_ vista and the sales guy at the store said, "I don't know why you're having a problem, we'll have to have a technical rep. get back to you". It just sounds horrible because it's something simple like a 'product key'. Well guess what - not everybody can make those.
They are probably under the tightest lock & key system microsoft has because you _don't_ want anybody, even most of your own employees, to be able to create valid keys.
I think the article's overzealous hatred of microsoft is apparent when the author says, " If Microsoft does not have this issue fixed very soon, they are going to have a lot of unhappy customers ". I'm sorry but I think Microsoft actually knows that, and so do I.
Don't insult our intelligence.
That whole anti-ms rant was written based on 1 phone call to a rep that sounded, surprise! reasonable.
---
surprise! [douginadress.com]
I guess I made the right decision (Score:3, Interesting)
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What about in the future? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand making a mistake in key generation. Mistakes happen. But what makes me wary is the Vista enhanced authentication/validation process. We know Vista is designed to validate that key not just when it's installed but periodically thereafter. Microsoft knows they need to make a good impression right at product launch, and they still manage to stuff up the keys so they won't validate. My thought is this: if they can blow it now, what about 6 months or a year down the road when it isn't so blatantly critical for them to look good? Are they going to upgrade a server somewhere, blow it again and suddenly my key isn't on the valid list anymore? What confidence does this incident give me that this won't in fact happen?
Why I love /. BETA (Score:3, Funny)
[+] defectivebydesign, haha, windows, slownewsday, bug (tagging beta)
above:
'Buy VIsta Today' Ad
All hail the wonderful world of contextual ads!!!!!!
Subject (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that would depend on the speed of your connection and the quality of your usenet provider.
For instance, on my rather slow connection I could have the 32- and 64-bit combo RTM DVD in about 6 hours if I actually wanted it, and about another 20-30 seconds for the Vista final activation crack.
So really, MS doesn't have to worry about a thing. The market will fix itself.
uh huh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I can already see it.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Let's see... Mine says "Slashdot Troll Special Edition, 2007 - OO". (I guess they had to use infinity in order to include the Duke Nukem Forever release date).
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Re:Upgrade does not include Vista Premium.. (Score:5, Informative)
The program is basically this: If you bought a retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate, you can buy two additional upgrade licenses for $50 each. These upgrade licenses are for Windows Vista Home Premium - i.e. you don't get two more Ultimate licenses, you get 2 home premium upg licenses. Hence the bit about home premium.
Mod parent up; GP down (Score:3, Informative)
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Welcome to slashdot!
By the way - just a hint - if you read at -1 then you can decide for yourself what is worth reading. Yes it's more work, but then you get to see how mods regularly abuse their "power"...
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But, as your moderation proves, accusations can get positive moderation without providing any details about the claim at all. What's factually incorrect in the GP's comment?
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When you build something as incredibly convoluted and confusing as the fourteen different versions of Vista, you must accept at least partial blame when people get them mixed up. Most of these people probably don't even know what Windows Vista Ultimate is or whether they have it. Sure, this i
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You spend $400 for Vista Ultimate
Then buy the family upgrade pack
and get two Windows Vista Home Premium keys for $50 each
Essentially, $500 for Ultimate + Home Premium x 2
What's to stop someone from buying Ultimate, doing the family upgrade pack & reselling those licenses for >$50?
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Re:What's to stop someone... (Score:3, Funny)
uhm, how about keys that don't work!
(Can't wait to read about the class-action lawsuit on Groklaw about this one!)
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Mods, check the basic facts [windowsitpro.com] before wasting your points.
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Or maybe they just don't know how to handle problems like always.
"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
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You see, anyone who's buying Vista for home already is gay...
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