blogs.zdnet.com— A ZDNet.com Blog, posted by Ed Bott. Ed speculates that a specific unanswered question may reveal a September date to disable Windows if WGA has not been applied to computers running Windows.
Jun 27, 2006View in Crawl 4
"Linux users (particularly ubuntu) would quadruple over night."Agreed. If this happened I'd go from windows running a virtual machine linux to linux running a virtual machine windows. Unfortunately I have some application dependencies, otherwise I'd ditch windows entirely.
Hey all,I have been sitting here reading this for the past hour, and while there are many valid points, there are just as many invalid points.Many of you do not seem to understand that the WGA is part of a much larger project "TCPA/Pallidium". I have been a software engineer for 8 years now, and have invested time in both the open source, and closed source side of things.Microsoft is implementing WGA, wether you want them to or not. I will tell all of you this now, there are numerous doors in the XP code, and even more in the Vista code that will allow them to forcibly stream the update and force launch it. Windows has always had the ability to do such things. How many of you even notice all of the extra accounts that are built into a computer? Even disabled, accounts *CAN* still be used with proper permissions.Microsoft is well aware of the backlash this will cause. Bill gates is leaving the company for several "undisclosed" reasons. Microsoft has made its fortune on harming other smaller companies for years. Why do you think that would change? It will not change now, nor will it ever change. You call people such as myself who choose to give our friends and family our legit keys, and crack the serial database/etc thiefs. How many of you know the history behind most of the software you are running? Microsoft itself is stolen property remember people.You do have choices, you can easily switch to a linux based machine - ubuntu, fedora core 5 (note that this is bleeding edge and a new release is every few months), debian, Cent OS, the list goes on... OR You can get a mac and use macintosh, OR you can purchase yet another copy of windows and hope that the wga does not invalidate your serial. Each of these options has advantages, each has disadvantages. Linux - - - Those of you afraid of losing the power to play your games, do some research before you say "My god, I cant play my game" You can play your game, it simply takes work. Linux offers Cedega, Wine, and other utilities to run games AND software through. I have not seen a game yet that cannot be run through wine if you take the time to configure it properly. Now granted, different games may require different configurations. Is it a hassle, but possible. -The same also runs true for programs such as Adobe Creative Suite 2, it DOES run under wine, as does most windows software.Also consider that the linux world is even more supported than windows and mac put together. The main reason that windows is larger in business? It came first with "gui". Thats about it. Unix came before them all and companies did just fine with it, they still do.Mac -- A bit more commercialized, backed by intel now, and assisted in program development by miscrosoft (so you can get software you want to switch over at a price).Buying windows again: You get another neat little cd coaster ;) As well as another opportunity to complain if something goes wrong.The greatest enemy you have in the computer world is your own laziness. If you are not willing to take a step forward for yourself, then why should the companies bother putting out effort to support other operating systems? The more people switch to other OSes, the more likely companies will begin writing software for them.This rant could be much longer, but I am going to end here.
> And as for linux itself, after placing a CD in your cd drive, you must mount the CDYou're out of date... modern Linux like Fedora Core 5 automounts CDs and USB memory sticks / Flash memory in readers or cameras and pops up the same kind of "what do you want to do with the new media" dialogue as found in XP. For example, sticking an audio CD in on a KDE desktop gets you that dialogue with options including "rip" and "play", a USB memory stick insertion gets the same deal with "open in a new window" and so on.I take your point about OO being "different" being seen as a hurdle, but OO Writer is not so different to Word in terms of highlighting text, changing fonts, changing paragraph style and this is most of what most people do with Word. Yes many people will hesitate anyway, but over time they may start to know people who made the switch successfully and then it won't be so scary.
@ r3zonance >I bought an OEM xp media center 2005 last year for my system...after i built up my dual core system this summer i installed MCE and it wouldnt activate (naturally)I called up and politely explained that i upgraded my system (using some of the old hardware (hdd/dvd-rw) and that it was my oem copy;Woman on the phone told me that she had a new cd key she could give me but next time i'd need to buy a new copy (which will be vista anyway) and activated the new cd key for me :)Then the 40gb hdd used for windows that i dropped once before died on me and i had to reinstall/reactivate windows. This time it said that the os had already been activated and yadda yadda call;called last night, told the guy the situation and that it was only installed on this system (which it is) and he gave me the code.Call and be polite/appreciative; nothings black and white.
xst4t1kxJun 27, 2006
"Linux users (particularly ubuntu) would quadruple over night."Agreed. If this happened I'd go from windows running a virtual machine linux to linux running a virtual machine windows. Unfortunately I have some application dependencies, otherwise I'd ditch windows entirely.
nextsteposxJun 28, 2006
Who thinks that if Microsoft where to implement a kill switch...they lose 40% share to Linux within a month.
jsp317Jun 29, 2006
not a bad idea but i have a amd 64. 98 want run on it. but for the people that are still running 32 bit go for it.
jsp317Jun 29, 2006
not a bad idea. I'm running a 64 bit amd 98 want run on it. if you are still running a 32 bit go for it.
aebrediahJun 29, 2006
Hey all,I have been sitting here reading this for the past hour, and while there are many valid points, there are just as many invalid points.Many of you do not seem to understand that the WGA is part of a much larger project "TCPA/Pallidium". I have been a software engineer for 8 years now, and have invested time in both the open source, and closed source side of things.Microsoft is implementing WGA, wether you want them to or not. I will tell all of you this now, there are numerous doors in the XP code, and even more in the Vista code that will allow them to forcibly stream the update and force launch it. Windows has always had the ability to do such things. How many of you even notice all of the extra accounts that are built into a computer? Even disabled, accounts *CAN* still be used with proper permissions.Microsoft is well aware of the backlash this will cause. Bill gates is leaving the company for several "undisclosed" reasons. Microsoft has made its fortune on harming other smaller companies for years. Why do you think that would change? It will not change now, nor will it ever change. You call people such as myself who choose to give our friends and family our legit keys, and crack the serial database/etc thiefs. How many of you know the history behind most of the software you are running? Microsoft itself is stolen property remember people.You do have choices, you can easily switch to a linux based machine - ubuntu, fedora core 5 (note that this is bleeding edge and a new release is every few months), debian, Cent OS, the list goes on... OR You can get a mac and use macintosh, OR you can purchase yet another copy of windows and hope that the wga does not invalidate your serial. Each of these options has advantages, each has disadvantages. Linux - - - Those of you afraid of losing the power to play your games, do some research before you say "My god, I cant play my game" You can play your game, it simply takes work. Linux offers Cedega, Wine, and other utilities to run games AND software through. I have not seen a game yet that cannot be run through wine if you take the time to configure it properly. Now granted, different games may require different configurations. Is it a hassle, but possible. -The same also runs true for programs such as Adobe Creative Suite 2, it DOES run under wine, as does most windows software.Also consider that the linux world is even more supported than windows and mac put together. The main reason that windows is larger in business? It came first with "gui". Thats about it. Unix came before them all and companies did just fine with it, they still do.Mac -- A bit more commercialized, backed by intel now, and assisted in program development by miscrosoft (so you can get software you want to switch over at a price).Buying windows again: You get another neat little cd coaster ;) As well as another opportunity to complain if something goes wrong.The greatest enemy you have in the computer world is your own laziness. If you are not willing to take a step forward for yourself, then why should the companies bother putting out effort to support other operating systems? The more people switch to other OSes, the more likely companies will begin writing software for them.This rant could be much longer, but I am going to end here.
warmcatJul 4, 2006
> And as for linux itself, after placing a CD in your cd drive, you must mount the CDYou're out of date... modern Linux like Fedora Core 5 automounts CDs and USB memory sticks / Flash memory in readers or cameras and pops up the same kind of "what do you want to do with the new media" dialogue as found in XP. For example, sticking an audio CD in on a KDE desktop gets you that dialogue with options including "rip" and "play", a USB memory stick insertion gets the same deal with "open in a new window" and so on.I take your point about OO being "different" being seen as a hurdle, but OO Writer is not so different to Word in terms of highlighting text, changing fonts, changing paragraph style and this is most of what most people do with Word. Yes many people will hesitate anyway, but over time they may start to know people who made the switch successfully and then it won't be so scary.
ph30nixJul 27, 2006
@ r3zonance >I bought an OEM xp media center 2005 last year for my system...after i built up my dual core system this summer i installed MCE and it wouldnt activate (naturally)I called up and politely explained that i upgraded my system (using some of the old hardware (hdd/dvd-rw) and that it was my oem copy;Woman on the phone told me that she had a new cd key she could give me but next time i'd need to buy a new copy (which will be vista anyway) and activated the new cd key for me :)Then the 40gb hdd used for windows that i dropped once before died on me and i had to reinstall/reactivate windows. This time it said that the os had already been activated and yadda yadda call;called last night, told the guy the situation and that it was only installed on this system (which it is) and he gave me the code.Call and be polite/appreciative; nothings black and white.