News When Product Activation isn't enough - WGA

/me raises his hand. I run Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition (complete with Active Directory and Exchange 2003).

 

Uh, I use Win2k server, with active directory. You're not doing too well here with that point...

You have a very good point, TheAnimus. The only problem is that it's called subsidizing, or socialism, or insert whatever here. They're raising the price of necessary software for all so that targeted software can be cheaper...to a point (they're still getting rich off the process, which I don't exactly condemn but there's limits...).

So someone like my grandmother (who runs AOL and that's about all) pays $200 for her OS that she doesn't use the breadth of features for because some schmuck said "you should upgrade to XP pro" at the local computer store when she had low ram issue. Now, her $200 contribution keeps the cost lower for you to develop software for me (or whatever business). So she pays $200, I pay $200, and I buy the software from you for $15 where we all could have paid $100 and I buy the software from you for $60.

 

Who said I didn't pay for my copy? I just choose to make it into a different version to suit my needs. Believe me, it's a VLK key my PID is well within the right ranges, not retail or OEM.

And I never said I was generating keys for myself with Blue listed or black listed PID keys... Just what windows is doing with them.

I did have the FCKGW for the longest time, then I had found 3 keys that were VLK's that gave me the appropriate PID ranges. I did have a keygen that gave the non-black or blue listed keys. I could select the PID range and everything. But I had no use for it.

I coulda swore it was a the devils 0wn copy was a Final RTM version (obviously corporate) not a Gold Final version...

 

Nope, Devil's 0wn was corporate (Build 2600)

 

Yeah I know that... obviously it was a corporate version (as I said before but nobody can read anymore) but there are build versions with not just numbers but letters.. get it?

Pre Alpha, Alpha, Beta, RC1, RC2, RTM, Gold....

Apple has you buy your features every year for $120...

If I was building a new system I would use linux for a person who is unfamiliar with the computer and just needs it for internet use...

 

Just to clear this up... I didn't mean YOU as in YOU, when I said "you should've paid for your copy" I actually meant a plural "you", as in ANYONE reading the post. The English language does fall down on the word "you" since there's no obvious plurality.

Devils0wn was an RTM Corporate Edition, leaked from inside Microsoft with Dell's VLK (so the rumours say).

PS Final, RTM and Gold mean the same thing. Just different names.

PPS winnt.sif is for unattended installs, I think you meant setupp.ini.

 

Allow me to correct that, then. It was a corporate gold build. 2600 was the first official gold release. Not beta. Corporate assumes a gold release that is intended for release to a specific market, unless there's a difference in the program structure for a corporate vs. at-home user base.

And I'd appreciate a little more politeness, thank you. Just because people disagree with you is not a reason to be rude.

 

Strange how software engineers don't deserve to be paid, but hardware engineers do

Is this down purely down to questions of quality and pricing for software or the fact that you're infinitely less likely to end up in the cells for using a dogy copy of windows than if you sneak out of the local shop with a motherboard which your though was probably unreliable and therefore you shouldn't have to pay for.

 

Exactly, pert of the reason people pirate stuff is because it is so easy, I am sure everyone would be carting around SLIl 6800 ultra's if you could get them as easily as, say, windows XP corp. People steal software because its possible. To stop it there would need to be to move to completly monitored traffic on the internet or (I forget the term, but where all the hardware and OS only allows files that are approved and have a digital signature). Of course as soon as this happens everyone will be screaming because they think their privacy rights are being voilated.

-Bob

 

Well, 2 bothered to post they did, i'd assume that to be an unfair representation but honestly, its safe to assume few people do.

If you grandmother went out an bought a quad xeon machine because the sales person told her too, would that be intels fault? HOME and PROFESSIONAL dosen't get much clearer than that now does it. Now whilst i like dual core chips (as i've been a strong multi-proccessor beliver for a long time now, science my dual PII350 machine) would you say ur gran won't use them, so shouldn't be sold them?

differnt note, kickarse, you'd use linux? Have you ever had to support linux? Hell do you even use it yourself? No offense but someone who says that i doubt has actually used the OS. It takes me about 200 hours each year just keeping the ****ing OS upto date, before it gets broken into! Debian, my favourate general purpose distro, has a brillaint package management system, now this if i have set to run weekly automatically, will everynow and again mess perl up (joy of joys!). Its incredibly hard to maintane, even if all they want is just KDE! Not to mention the fact that KDE would be very slow enless the system was highly specked. The £60 saving would be completely negated by the need for a much better CPU.

Tuesday, leave your PC on grandpa, thats all i have to do. Critical patches automatically taken care of in a friendly manner. Brillaint, he has never re-installed it, nor will have to, for well over 2 years, saved me soo much time and effort, we're talking of a cost of less than £1.50 a month here. I mean how can that not be a damn good bargin?

 

Yeah I have actually I use it at home on my spare box. But you got a point... Guess I didnt think further into it.

Gotcha about the gold and RTM thing...

Yeah I did mean setupp.ini, I've been doing unattend stuff for a couple weeks now... It's all embedded in my brain! Argghhh!!!

Sorry dude didn't mean to come off as rude.. peace?

 

@TheAnimus / Risky:

You do have good points. I will concede this argument, though you have to agree the licensing thing is a little dumb and maybe they could work something a little better.

@kickarse:

S'ok, we all get a little defensive sometimes. All good.

 

product activation for home users that aren't enthusiasts is bareable, for those who are bloody stupid, its like DRM on music, or those silly CDs that kill iMacs (haha) because they botched the audio Cd standard. Hurts only people who are legit.

Making sure that your CD key is valid, before you can download direct-x 10, no problems with that, its a 100+ meg download, one little active-x object isn't going to anoy me.

kickarse, didn't mean to jump on u, but i seriously hate it when people spout the pro linux/firefox/what-ever-is-cool stuff. I do also however have a hudge hatrid for X-windowing system, as it is just stupidly slow for most desktops.

 

All RTM/Final/Gold/whatever-you-want-to-call-it releases of XP are build 2600, doesn't matter if it's corporate, OEM or retail. Devils0wn was no different.

 

Really? I could have sworn the build numbers were different after the first wave of corporate releases. Will have to check on this....

 

(this isn't intended as a flame if it comes off that way) TheAnimus, as you clearly have a very stubborn PoV about this, just save yourself the time and don't read this post. It's just like how your arguements can't sway me to fork over the dough. However I'm actually providing alternatives that would make sense where you've just given examples of how it's saved you time, not even of how paying for it has done anything more than give you that "my morals are making me give money to a company that has none" feeling inside.

Well not so much stealing as ripping off. But by the same logic, piracy isn't stealing either. Assume average joe user, buying a dell. He has NO CHOICE as to whether he gets Windows. He gets to choose Home or Pro (or MCE I suppose), but every home-type dell has XP on it. You MUST pay for that licence. There's no special-ordering a dell without windows installed, much like you're forced to get their crap software preinstalled as well. Now when joe user wants to slap longhorn on that dell, he's much more inclined to pay for it than billy überuser who knows how to pirate stuff. Or if joe wants an upgrade (since most joe users either don't get the concept of upgrading a single component or will pay $50 in service plus parts for a five-second ram addition), he gets to pay for software that HE ALREADY OWNS all over again. However for billy, he may or may not pay for windows. Everyone on the net has the ability to pirate just about anything, but many don't (either out of knowledge or personal beliefs, or whatever). But every joe user buying a dell must pay for windows, even if the first thing he were to do after getting said dell is reformat and slap on linux (let's not get into whether that's likely or not, it's besides the point).

edit - (oh yeah, let's not forget that there are at least ten joe's for every billy, so MS is really exaggurating what in reality is a fairly small problem)

Well, let's face it, many pirates would pay for windows if it were cheap (I would anyways). Even if someone buys a hardcopy/cdkey for the neighborhood and everyone in the neighborhood pays the $25 for a legit license, MS is making a whole lot more than they would if it was pirated.

Exactly, they do it because they can. Isn't this why they had that monopoly suit against them? It's like gas prices, notice how they always shoot up before Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial day, etc? MS is a bit more discreet - they're keep the gouged prices 365 days a year.

People have had their lives destroyed because they use windows - falling victim to a virus (may or may not be their fault) and having their credit card numbers stolen (again, may or may not be their fault, let's assume it was saved in history/form rememberer after an online purchase). So, pay $200-300 for a chance to get your identity thefted to all hell and whatnot, or pay nothing for Linux which is very rarely attacked and seriously reduce that risk?

I'm quite confident that the three most pirated bits of software are Windows, Photoshop, and 3Ds MAX. Note the pricetags for retail versions: $300, ~$700, and ~$3100. Now with Photoshop, many people that pirate it just do it because it's better than paint but aren't in a situation where they would pay for it if piracy wasn't an option (ie, they just want something better, but don't have a real need for it). In such cases, Adobe isn't "losing" money and isn't "losing phantom money" because it wouldn't have been purchased otherwise. I can't really speak for 3Ds MAX, but I'd imagine it's a similar case.

If people were really anti-piracy but didn't want to pay for an OS, they'd use Linux. In fact, if piracy wasn't possible, Linux would probably have a third of the market (initially from users who want a free alternative, then as it gets more developed, OEMs would start offering it as an option, and if people can find an inexpensive/free but near-equivalent to something overpriced, generally only severe brand loyalty will make them pay the extra cash), since there are so many that don't want to pay to have a chance of identity theft, etc.

*deep breaths* Well, I've had my finger workout for the day. I think if that doesn't convince either towards piracy or a more logical pricing model, then I've given up on you.

 

by your logic, people wouldn't smoke because theres no cure for lung cancer.

I'm guessing you've never had a job in the provision of IT, nor do you understand much about OS internals (HALs and the like). Or any idea of software engineering.
I'd recomend reading up on these things before making comments like this.

You want to buy a dell, WHY? Because you want it, why do you want it, its a tool, why do you need a tool because you've a task that needs to be done.

you don't buy it because u want a dell, you buy it because you've got a task that must be done. Now from that idea what dell are doing, is providing you with a tool, be it something that can do your office work for you, or let you browse the web. Now that is as important as the hardware, which you are "been ripped-off" by not been allowed to buy a CPU seperatly. Its their choice to goto Dell, Dell have their reasons for choosing MS.

You buy your PC from dell, you don't need pro functionality (well mabye as a penis length extension) and it will cost you very little. If you pirate it at that price, you'll pirate it full stop. Its like people who pirate DVDs and don't buy any, but hey, i'm guessing u don't have a job?

you keep implying that the pro version is needed, why?

you seriously over estimate the piracy problem, compaired to industry statistics, which is in their intrest to be accurate. Most people buy a PC rather than build their own, the software is normally bundled with the PC, thus not pirated.

12 year olds will always pirate, they've got no money, and too much free time. Anyone who is highly skilled on computers, and a programmer will always buy their software as not to destrupt the IP rights on their creations.

If people couldn't pirate, they'd buy the damn thing, think back when CDs first came out in a big way for SOHO people, piracy was non excistant. Everyone bought the damn stuff. Until CD writers/HDD space/CD-ram was prodominant enough.

3d max is a very proffesional tool, its buisness model is totaly differnt to that of MS Word. Photoshop is insainly over priced.

Now the reason microsoft sued was nothing to do with the price, but the fact they were including stuff with it, which was in competition with others. Myself i don't think it was really an unfair move, the only bit that was un-fair was the difficulties of removing IE for those who didn't want it. but thats way off topic.

the point of this thread was that they've changed their technologies, now if your point is they need to change the social implications, then thats fine. If your wanting to spout some crap thats nothing to do with the price, then theres a place for people like you, its called IRC.

Now what you might say is people will just pirate corperate based editions, which will bypass all this stuff, so the only thing they will do is inconvienance legitimate users. Valid point, very valid. Or you might say this won't make any differnce to how people use windows, because they charge too much money, but at the same time you say they have to buy it? So their pirating it because they all have to buy dell (else they got shot) and have to buy it? I'm having difficultly trying to comprehend what your trying to say?

 

Pro is needed if you're doing development, using dual cpus or want user level security. None of which is exactly necessary for home use.

I should also mention that the Educational version is about again which make Pro cheap for students (and teachers and parents, unless they've changed the licencing).

 

Pro is also used for anyone who wants a hard drive more than 120gb (unless this was changed in an XP home update). The initial XP home can only recognize HDDs up to 120gb.

@Firehed - the cost of the XP home copy from dell is nearly nonexistant. They pay approximately $0.80 a license. When you buy it in bulk like they do, M$ makes it really, really cheap. Dell receives almost the entire cost that they price in as profit (they price up XP pro so that it is similar to a store markup for retail versions...Pro costs them more, but not $100 more). So in the scheme of things, when joe buys a dell, yes he is forced to pay another $0.80. But when buying even a $300 computer, is that significant? That's part of why dell can be so cheap (and compaq, etc). When you buy that much, the price per unit goes down drastically.

@TheAnimus - Photoshop is not overpriced. Any graphic designer will tell you it's worth every penny they paid for it. It is overpriced for a home user, which supports Firehed's theory of no lost revenue for a pirated copy...if anything, it increases their revenue because people can train at home and then go work for someone who uses it in their offices (and therefore likely paid for it) due to that training. It's like why Maya offers the entire program free to home users, but then charges $8000/license for corporate. Photoshop decided to create a home user program (PS Elements) for $50, perfectly reasonable for the target market and without all the stuff that most people don't know how to use. Smart marketing on their part, they're picking up $50 where they used to get none.

And the lawsuit against M$ dealt solely with bundling...it was a monopoly suit stating that they were using their size as an OS maker to force their way into other markets.

As for linux security...the only reason there aren't more viruses, etc for linux is because it DOESN'T have the user base windows does. Why would you waste time hacking an OS that only 2% (if that) of the population use (a tech savvy bunch, as well!), when you can hack an OS that 80-90% of people use (including people who don't know how to protect their crap)? Linux can be just as insecure as anything else, it just hasn't been tried yet because there's no profit in it.

 

I believe XP SP1 fixed any large hard drive problems in XP RTM.

Dell's reason for "choosing" Microsoft is quite simple, and this goes for every OEM out there: if they don't buy their operating systems from Microsoft, Microsoft will cripple them!

Dell tried to sell bare PCs, and ones with Linux pre-installed. Microsoft took great offence and threatened to withdraw their agreement. Dell swiftly removed the products from their website. Without Microsoft's OEM agreement, they'd have to pay full whack for each copy they want to pre-install, or would be barred from selling it at all. Dell cannot do business like that, nor can any other major OEM.