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Sun, 26 Aug 2007

Microsoft Genuine Disadvantage

Here's the proof, should anyone still need it, that choosing Microsoft is really very silly. There's nothing particularly wrong with Microsoft wanting to check the validity of a licence when you install their software - it could, if implemented right, prevent people from, say, installing the same licenced copy of Windows on several machines at once. However, allowing Microsoft to arbitrarily decide later on that a perfectly legitimate install is really pirated is Just Wrong. Worse, relying on them running their licence checking servers for ever is Just Plain Stupid. There's no way that they'll still be running in ten or twenty years time. But I guarantee that there will be people wanting to still run XP or Vista then, just as there are people running Windows NT, Windows 95 and DOS right now.

Given that, I fail to see how anyone who freely chooses Microsoft software can be anything other than ignorant, stupid, or malicious. Of course, most people who make that choice make it out of mere ignorance, as they're not used to thinking about how software security systems can fail. There's nothing wrong with ignorance. It can be corrected.

Posted at 11:23 by David Cantrell
keywords: rant
Permalink | 4 Comments

Yea but the same thing will happen under Linux one day when the Linux Genuine Ad... Oh, hey, yea :)

Posted by Geeklawyer on Sun, 26 Aug 2007 at 15:20:46


And in supporting news - mobipocket auth servers go down for a week stopping people from reading their ebooks...

Posted by billy on Tue, 28 Aug 2007 at 22:54:20


I can't play the games I want to play on anything other than Micro$haft OS. What do the Linux zealots think about that one?

Posted by Ben on Fri, 31 Aug 2007 at 00:36:56


Ben, perhaps you could ask one and report back. My own personal opinion - and I'm about as far from Linux Zealothood as you can get while not sucking Bill Gates's cock - is that video games are something for small children whose inadequate parents see them as being an easy substitute for real interactive play, and so not of any importance.

Posted by David Cantrell on Mon, 3 Sep 2007 at 16:33:20


Sorry, this post is too old for you to comment on it.

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