"Windows Genuine Advantage Notification"

[spottedcat]

Not necessarily, it is incredibly easy to get hold of pirated copies nowadays, in fact you do have to wonder how many unlicensed copies get sold every day.

I bow to your superior knowledge here, Ben. But what I don't understand is, what are all these pirated copies going on. And what about the retail copies - at about £170-180 a time is it? Joe public goes into PCWorld or Comet or wherever and comes out with a pre-installed machine. A self-builder who wants to be legit, gets an OEM copy of Windows at less than half the price if he's got any sense. (Sorry - just realised what I've written. He/she'd install Linux if he/she had any sense.) Do all these pirated and retail copies go on old machines with earlier versions of Windows. Can older machines cope with XP?

I think we should be told.

[GMorgan]

Just out of interest. Don't even pirate copies get all security updates. The only things they can't get are things like IE7 and the new WMP with the DRM. Such terrible losses, how do the pirates ever survive without them.

I think the biggest problem with Windows is just general stupidity. I installed a whole host of anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on a mates computer and he complained he still got them. He of course hadn't run the programs since I installed them, they hadn't been updated in 290 days or something stupid.

[shifty_ben]

The pirated copies go on a variety of machines, quite a lot of OEM vendors sell computers (I've noticed laptops are especially bad for this) with XP on, but with no recovery CD, so when it comes to do the 6 monthly reinstall you don't have anything to put back on. This is where a ripped off copy comes in not that I am advocating Piracy at all Of course if MS didn't charge so much for Windows people would be far less likely to get pirated versions, there will of course always be someone who does, but the main part of the population would go legit.
Some older machines can cope with XP, but most run 2K much much better - must be the lack of candyfloss graphics - There is also a theory that a lot of 'custom PC building' companies (which are quite often one man outfits in my experience) are bad for it. Customer asks for XP so the person building the PC puts a copy of XP on there. The Customer is then technically at risk from MS's lawyers. Doesn't overly bother me though in that a) I build my machines myself and b) even if I didn't I wouldn't want XP on there!

AFAIK GMorgan when they make it compulsory it will apply to all updates, including critical and security. As much as I would love to slate MS for this, I really can't they are well within their rights to restrict the ability of pirated copies to use their update service. I do think though that the only people they will only hurt is themselves, the few people who are determined to run ripped off copies will no doubt find a way to crack it (Especially given MS's history in terms of software bugs)

I think once this comes into effect, as long as people are made aware of the alternatives we should see quite a large migration away from Windows. Some people do not want to give MS that amount of money, and some people simply cannot afford to.

[spottedcat]

This is going way OT, but since I started this thread, who cares? I don't. Just thought you'd all be amused by this screenshot:

Image

Yup. That's a Gentoo root partition showing in a Windows XP window! (Should I have put this in your 'sad' thread, Ben?) Since I pointed someone else to this without having tried it out myself, I thought it only right that I did so. It works like a charm. Gentoo is on hda6 (/boot) and hda7 (/) (or H: in Gates-speak ) of a multiboot. Windows can read (and, more alarmingly, write to) the lot. Well, except the reiserfs partition that is. Now I can ditch the shared fat32 partition and reformat the space as ext3.

All rather theoretical though, since I only really use Windows to update the virus software (which therefore doesn't need to be used) and refuse downloads of dodgy OS patches.

[towy71]

I feel tempted to reach out and give you a slap around the ear for being blo*dy silly

[spottedcat]

And I have every sympathy with your feelings! (I mistyped 'reelings' at first - perhaps more appropriate in the circumstances!) But put it this way, Towy. If you hadn't shown me how to mend a broken bootloader, I wouldn't have had the self-confidence to set up a multi-boot, I wouldn't then have wondered if I could read Linux partitions from the Windows partition, and then..... You can guess the rest.

[towy71]

my head is ringing from the slap ~I just delivered to myself

[shifty_ben]

(Should I have put this in your 'sad' thread, Ben?)

Yup I reckon so mind you no matter how sad something is, if its there and is a challenge it has to be done. Interesting that it is possible to read and write from windows though, I have seen a number of products that claim to let you do that, but I was always quite wary of letting windows do anything in case it corrupted my partition. Ironic really given that the last time windows was on my machine was about 5minutes before it nuked its own partition (Still never figured out how, only ran scandisk for gods sake!)

[GMorgan]

AFAIK GMorgan when they make it compulsory it will apply to all updates, including critical and security. As much as I would love to slate MS for this, I really can't they are well within their rights to restrict the ability of pirated copies to use their update service. I do think though that the only people they will only hurt is themselves, the few people who are determined to run ripped off copies will no doubt find a way to crack it (Especially given MS's history in terms of software bugs).

Make what complusory the next security update. I've already blocked it on my machine even though my copy is legal (may as well make them wonder about why I'm blocking their anti-piracy measures).

I just found it interesting that the things you really wanted (the security updates, even if they could use a lot more of them) you can get but a pirated copy blocks you from using the new Exploder and the DRM WMP. It's like a dream world where pirates are protected from the madness and normal users are left to rue the day they paid for a copy and were allowed to install DRM.

[Flea]

I hate software pirates, without them Windows would have died long ago

[shifty_ben]

It sounds about right though bet it almost makes you wish you had a ripped off copy I remember when deciding which version of Windows to install (had a copy of XP and 2K) I went with 2K purely on the basis it didnt have Media Player 8 (or was it 9) on there. I used to enjoy using Windows (back in the days of Win 3.11) when it felt like an operating system written for me, increasingly after that it felt like it was being written for someone else. Let alone XP breaking backwards compatability with older games and applications.
When Windows Vista comes out I will get opportunity to fiddle around with it, but I certainly won't be buying a copy for any of my home computers (although AFAIK its coming as OEM versions only) and when I decide its time for a new computer, rather than my past "I guess I could take XP off" I will not be buying any computer that comes with Vista on it - let alone Treacherous Computing Components - Its time to hit MS in their big fat wallet

Sorry Rant Over

Ben

[Diagmato]

I hate software pirates, without them Windows would have died long ago

True, so true . Everyone who didnt buy their own copy could have been a Linux user by now.

[GeoNorth]

I'm a Linux user because I bought my own copy of Windows.

I bought this PC getting on 3 years ago (it could do with another CPU and motherboard, what do you recommend?) and it came with an OEM copy of Windows XP Home and a Recovery CD, I thought that I wouldn't be able to install Linux because of this (anticipated trouble partitioning the HDD and why bother when the whole install would be wiped the next time I run the recovery CD?)

Then at Christmas my PC, sensing that it's warranty had expired ages ago and that the only support line available cost £1 a minute and terminated in India to be answered by a bunch of buffoons whose priority was to keep the caller on the line for as long as possible rather than actually solving their problem, decided that it wasn't going to speak to my HDD anymore.

This resulted in me spending a little bit of money on a new HDD and a lot of money on a legit copy of XP (Home again it was an emergency and I couldn't stretch to a legit copy of Pro and you can't download a pirate version of Windows without an OS)

I installed the new HDD and the copy of WinXP... and discovered that my old HDD was working again.

I've since downloaded Kubuntu and life is good. Although I suppose I could have saved a bit money by just buying the second HDD before my installation when belly-up and just installed Linux on there.

[GMorgan]

For anyone considering Vista heres a post I saw on one site. It does get confusing since the guy seems to call all users administrators then define an extra level equivalent to root above, it can seem a little odd at first.

Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don't get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago.

Here's the good news. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this kind of security model. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP) and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they're doing before making a critical mistake. It sounds like a good system. But this is Microsoft, we're talking about here. They completely botched UAP.

The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.

Let's look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the download and install process (including a brazen security warning from Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let's just examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed, there are two icons on my Desktop I'd like to remove: The Setup application itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?

Wrong. Here's what you have to go through to actually delete those files in Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog explaining that you don't, in fact, have permission to delete a ... shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?

OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to "complete this operation." But that doesn't complete anything. It just clears the desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window. Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely called a "File Operation." Click Allow, and you're done. Hey, that's not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then respond correctly to. What's the big deal?

What if you're doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.

Nice to see MS are still fully capable of shooting themselves in the foot. I mean not allowing the user to delete files within their own user space. Thats not a user priviledge system, its barely a system at all.

[spottedcat]

That quote warms the cockles of my heart, GMorgan. (Or is that the heart of my cockles? )

One year ago I had never seen a *nix terminal let alone used one. Now I use Linux 99% of the time, and have a (vaguely) working Gentoo installation. I'm not crowing; this merely reflects how well Linux suits me. I keep my XP installations alive and up-to-date for a couple of rarely used Windows apps, and I've already promised myself that I will not get Vista when (and if ) it's released.

But bearing in mind the above, and the possibilty that future 'security patches' may cripple my XP installation, I make the following public and solemn declaration. If, in the future, and for whatever reason, I find I need a proprietary OS, I will buy an Apple computer. That is a promise.

However, I think that is extremely unlikely.