Brent wrote:
On Sep 22, 4:50 pm, (DoN. Nichols) wrote:
According to Abrasha :

[ ... ]

It's no shock that Windows Vista isn't, shall we say, universally loved,
and it's also unsurprising that a plethora of businesses have voiced
their preference to keep on runnin' their operations on Windows XP.
[ ... ]

Yeah, Vista is a great success, ... not!
One of the problems was one which was predicted when Microsoft
introduced WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) -- software which checks with a
server run by Microsoft to verify that each copy of Windows (and all
Microsoft software installed on it) are legal copies.

It checks at install time, and whenever new software or hardware
is added. And -- I *think* that it does so at boot time as well, though
I am not sure.

If it believes that something is pirated, it can (and will) shut
down major parts of the OS (including the workplace manager), and slow
down much of the rest.

This might not be so bad -- except that if it can't contact the
server, it *assumes* that the software is pirated.

And Microsoft has already had the servers go down -- for
something like 18 hours, resulting in a lot of people with perfectly
legal copies of Windows Vista being accused by their OS of running
pirated software and thus their OS being crippled.

I followed a pointer to a Microsoft blog site where a lot of
users were muttering "linux" after being shut down like this.

I believe that one of the "security patches" to XP installed the
WGA there, too. So -- unless you personally control what is installed
by the security patches, running XP is not any form of protection.

So -- the question which comes to mind is "To *whose* advantage
is this software?"

Note that this is not personal experience, as I don't run
Windows for anything other than the annual income tax software these
days. :-)

But I wonder what would have happened if some of the Windows
systems doing critical work (such as checking for drug interactions) in
hospitals happened to be shut down by this? Or software running air
traffic control systems?

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. |http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

You are aware officially vista is a PER INSTANCE licence. A reformat
officially invalidates your windows license and you do not own your
COPY of the OS on one computer anymore

you only own vista for one instance of installation


No longer the case:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061102-8140.html

--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com