Thurrott vs WGA - posts screenshots and overview | The Coffeehouse

Badgerguy
Badgerguy

Paul Thurrott has had a run in with WGA - albeit on a testbed system, but it gave him chance to have a look at just exactly how the Microsoft 'nag screens' appear - and he shares those screenshots on one of his websites.

The overview that accompanies the screenshots stops short of describing WGA as a 'cancer' as he did (famously?) with IE, but it's certainly clear that he thinks WGA is a bad idea, executed poorly.

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

This looks like a precursor to a wide spread WGA killswitch coming in the fall.

AdrianJMartin

It would be nice to know if the copy is from his MSDN or some other source, even he's not sure....and if his MSDN copy is ligit will the WGA resolve this?

DarthVista
...

Paul will be brought into line soon enough.

I cannot wait until Research is finally done with their "proprietary software ID" concept. Then, we will finally see an "open source kill switch".

Badgerguy
Badgerguy

rjdohnert wrote:
This looks like a precursor to a wide spread WGA killswitch coming in the fall.

Microsoft can't be that stupid ..... can they?

If you're going to use WGA to actually disable people's Windows Installs, you have to be pretty damn sure that you're not going to hit anyone with false positives - as that would be a sure fire way to really p*** people off!

The more activation and anti-piracy and validation features are loaded into the OS - the more there is to go wrong;

Microsoft would do well to simply keep it simple, and avoid alienating the userbase.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

Badgerguy wrote:

rjdohnert wrote: This looks like a precursor to a wide spread WGA killswitch coming in the fall.

Microsoft can't be that stupid ..... can they?

If you're going to use WGA to actually disable people's Windows Installs, you have to be pretty damn sure that you're not going to hit anyone with false positives - as that would be a sure fire way to really p*** people off!

The more activation and anti-piracy and validation features are loaded into the OS - the more there is to go wrong;

Microsoft would do well to simply keep it simple, and avoid alienating the userbase.

Of course they aren't going to do that. MSFT is the same company that kept Win98 limping along 3 years after they wanted to kill support for it.

Further, quotes like this:

Thurrott, the troublemaker wrote:

Like many people who will see these alerts, I don't believe I did anything wrong.

Imply that some vast array of innocent people are using legitimate copies and through some freak of nature, WGA fails to notice this.

Read the article again,

Thurrott, the utter retard wrote:

The software was installed to a VM a long time ago and archived on my server. I no doubt used a copy of XP MCE 2005 that I had received as part of my MSDN subscription

To our non-english-as-a-first-language readers, this means that he isn't exactly sure. He's pretty sure, but maybe not. But he's sure enough to write an article about it.

What a jackhole this guy is.

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

Considering they've filed around 26 lawsuits for piracy because of WGA, is it really necessary to further WGA with a kill switch?

Also, looking at the text of the WGA notifications, it says "You may be a victim of software counterfeiting". Doesn't seem very likely a kill switch would follow.

It would be almost like arresting and jailing a crime scene victim.

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

I have seen Microsoft do some doozies so it wouldnt surprise me at all if they did it. I do give Microsoft some credit. They have some big, clanking iron balls. No other business in this world save the oil company would think about screwing over their customer base and wouldnt do anything like WGA for fear of pissing off their customers and losing the business. Microsoft doesnt care.

Badgerguy wrote:

rjdohnert wrote: This looks like a precursor to a wide spread WGA killswitch coming in the fall.

Microsoft can't be that stupid ..... can they?

If you're going to use WGA to actually disable people's Windows Installs, you have to be pretty damn sure that you're not going to hit anyone with false positives - as that would be a sure fire way to really p*** people off!

The more activation and anti-piracy and validation features are loaded into the OS - the more there is to go wrong;

Microsoft would do well to simply keep it simple, and avoid alienating the userbase.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

rjdohnert wrote:
I have seen Microsoft do some doozies so it wouldnt surprise me at all if they did it. I do give Microsoft some credit. They have some big, clanking iron balls. No other business in this world save the oil company would think about screwing over their customer base and wouldnt do anything like WGA for fear of pissing off their customers and losing the business. Microsoft doesnt care.

Just imagine a big store like Wal-Mart. Do you think they wouldn't make changes if half of their inventory was stolen on a daily basis?

billh
call -141

Harlequin wrote:

rjdohnert wrote: I have seen Microsoft do some doozies so it wouldnt surprise me at all if they did it. I do give Microsoft some credit. They have some big, clanking iron balls. No other business in this world save the oil company would think about screwing over their customer base and wouldnt do anything like WGA for fear of pissing off their customers and losing the business. Microsoft doesnt care.

Just imagine a big store like Wal-Mart. Do you think they wouldn't make changes if half of their inventory was stolen on a daily basis?

Last I heard, Wal-Mart was working very hard on implementing RFID technology as a means of tracking inventory. With such a big company as that experimenting with that type of technology, you can imagine the savings and/or the effects (good or bad) it will have on other industries.

DigitalDud

rjdohnert wrote:
This looks like a precursor to a wide spread WGA killswitch coming in the fall.

There's not going to be any killswitch. The point of WGA isn't to piss off the user, it's to piss off crappy vendors who sell machines with pirated copies of Windows. That's the real problem. People who stold Windows themselves are just going to disable/hack the thing anyway.

The problem is that there are TONS of people using pirated versions of Windows who have no clue it's not legit because they bought their machine off eBay or from Uncle Tom's Computer Shop. WGA is there to notify them they were sold stolen merchandise.

julianbenjamin
Giggity

jaylittle wrote:

So you assume that he was working with a non-legitimate copy of MCE 2005 then? I mean thats the obvious implication based on your statements here. Can you prove that?

Well, considering Thurrott himself isn't sure, I'm surprised he even brought it up and wrote a whole article about it. I mean, how hard is it to check what license key you used to install windows, and then check your MSDN list of keys to see if it matches?

Thurrott wrote:

I no doubt used a copy of XP MCE 2005 that I had received as part of my MSDN subscription. If the WGA alerts are to be believed, it's possible that Microsoft thinks I've installed this software on too many machines, though that seems unlikely to me. I can't really say.

It seems he's not sure of anything relating to the installation of that OS.

The fact that he says he thinks it's an MSDN key, most likely means it isn't, since someone like Thurrott would know how to make sure what key it was.

I agree with ScanIAm; Thurrott is a troublemaker, jumping on the WGA-bashing bandwagon simply for the hits his site will get.

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Changes, sure. Car dealers also have cars stolen off their lots regurlarly. Can you imagine how many customers would sue them or not be very happy if it was suddenly required that the customer was required to show up in 30 days with the paperwork showing they truly own that vehicle or said dealer will throw a switch and your vehicle will not run anymore.

Harlequin wrote:

rjdohnert wrote: I have seen Microsoft do some doozies so it wouldnt surprise me at all if they did it. I do give Microsoft some credit. They have some big, clanking iron balls. No other business in this world save the oil company would think about screwing over their customer base and wouldnt do anything like WGA for fear of pissing off their customers and losing the business. Microsoft doesnt care.

Just imagine a big store like Wal-Mart. Do you think they wouldn't make changes if half of their inventory was stolen on a daily basis?

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

jaylittle wrote:

ScanIAm wrote: Of course they aren't going to do that. MSFT is the same company that kept Win98 limping along 3 years after they wanted to kill support for it.

Heh. Telling a customer they have to upgrade because their software is obsolete and telling a customer that they were ripped off and their software isn't legitimate are two different things.

Point made, but MSFT is still quite good at handling bad PR.

jaylittle wrote:

ScanIAm wrote: To our non-english-as-a-first-language readers, this means that he isn't exactly sure. He's pretty sure, but maybe not. But he's sure enough to write an article about it.

What a jackhole this guy is.

So you assume that he was working with a non-legitimate copy of MCE 2005 then?

WGA seemed to think so. Perhaps it was a beta version, or perhaps it was a botched upgrade. He didn't know for sure, however.

jaylittle wrote:

I mean thats the obvious implication based on your statements here. Can you prove that?

No it isn't. My implication is that he didn't know what it was. He assumed something based on his past, but if I've learned anything over the last few years, it is that we don't always remember what we think we remember.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

rjdohnert wrote:
Changes, sure. Car dealers also have cars stolen off their lots regurlarly. Can you imagine how many customers would sue them or not be very happy if it was suddenly required that the customer was required to show up in 30 days with the paperwork showing they truly own that vehicle or said dealer will throw a switch and your vehicle will not run anymore.

Harlequin wrote:

rjdohnert wrote: I have seen Microsoft do some doozies so it wouldnt surprise me at all if they did it. I do give Microsoft some credit. They have some big, clanking iron balls. No other business in this world save the oil company would think about screwing over their customer base and wouldnt do anything like WGA for fear of pissing off their customers and losing the business. Microsoft doesnt care.

Just imagine a big store like Wal-Mart. Do you think they wouldn't make changes if half of their inventory was stolen on a daily basis?

Neither of these analogies are going to work, here. In both cases, the theft is of a physical item.

Software don't work that way.

And since the privacy nuts complained (rightly so) when the chip manufacturers tried to uniquely identify the CPU, this is what we are left with.

Detroit Muscle
Wii!

Orange County Register wrote:
Given the economy and some people's forgetful (or outright dishonest) payment habits, lenders have watched as nonpayment rates on car loans have skyrocketed," writes scareduck. "Now, the more aggressive loan companies are insisting on a new piece of technology called OnTime. Made by Temecula, CA based Payment Processing Systems, it shuts down the ignition so the car won't start once the system has been engaged. Designed to be maximally annoying, the box insists on the owner entering a code weekly to keep the car driving. The device also comes with an emergency code that can be used up to three times. According to one dealership that's selling cars with the device, 'it has slashed repossessions from about 30 annually to two in the past year and a half'.

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Actually, both are perfectly good analogies but we will probably nevr agree on this. I agree with Paul, WGA is an inconvenience and a problem more than a solution. At some point Microsoft will have to make a decision because this isnt helping. The hardcore pirates still pirate and all your "incentives" to get genuine have been hacked and put on P2P's.

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Find me people that will buy a car with a device like that? I wouldnt.

Detroit Muscle wrote:

Orange County Register wrote: Given the economy and some people's forgetful (or outright dishonest) payment habits, lenders have watched as nonpayment rates on car loans have skyrocketed," writes scareduck. "Now, the more aggressive loan companies are insisting on a new piece of technology called OnTime. Made by Temecula, CA based Payment Processing Systems, it shuts down the ignition so the car won't start once the system has been engaged. Designed to be maximally annoying, the box insists on the owner entering a code weekly to keep the car driving. The device also comes with an emergency code that can be used up to three times. According to one dealership that's selling cars with the device, 'it has slashed repossessions from about 30 annually to two in the past year and a half'.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

Detroit Muscle wrote:

Orange County Register wrote: Given the economy and some people's forgetful (or outright dishonest) payment habits, lenders have watched as nonpayment rates on car loans have skyrocketed," writes scareduck. "Now, the more aggressive loan companies are insisting on a new piece of technology called OnTime. Made by Temecula, CA based Payment Processing Systems, it shuts down the ignition so the car won't start once the system has been engaged. Designed to be maximally annoying, the box insists on the owner entering a code weekly to keep the car driving. The device also comes with an emergency code that can be used up to three times. According to one dealership that's selling cars with the device, 'it has slashed repossessions from about 30 annually to two in the past year and a half'.

I stand corrected and humbly retract my assertion that those analogies don't work.

cheong

jaylittle wrote:

ScanIAm wrote:Of course they aren't going to do that. MSFT is the same company that kept Win98 limping along 3 years after they wanted to kill support for it.

Heh. Telling a customer they have to upgrade because their software is obsolete and telling a customer that they were ripped off and their software isn't legitimate are two different things.

That made my question again:

Say after 10 years, WinXP finally go out the support cycle and Microsoft no longer wish to support it. We they still keep the activation server on with the activation information needed for activation of WinXP?

If not, will they release a tool for removing WGA on WinXP? (Not likely because others may attempt to use the code to develop tools to remove WGA on other Microsoft products.)

If not, are they saying my WinXP Licence is going to expire in say - 10 years? (Which is not good... Consider how many people still using DOS and Win9X in the world. And Microsoft is selling most people with a "normal" licence, not a "time-limited" licence.)

Killing support is okay because will know that it's not sensible to beg infinate support for a product that no longer generate revenue, but banning people to install it would be quite another.

Cybermagellan
Live for nothing, or die for everything

cheong wrote:
That made my question again:Say after 10 years, WinXP finally go out the support cycle and Microsoft no longer wish to support it. We they still keep the activation server on with the activation information needed for activation of WinXP?If not, will they release a tool for removing WGA on WinXP? (Not likely because others may attempt to use the code to develop tools to remove WGA on other Microsoft products.)If not, are they saying my WinXP Licence is going to expire in say - 10 years? (Which is not good... Consider how many people still using DOS and Win9X in the world. And Microsoft is selling most people with a "normal" licence, not a "time-limited" licence.)Killing support is okay because will know that it's not sensible to beg infinate support for a product that no longer generate revenue, but banning people to install it would be quite another.

W3bbo I think has asked this question before to which I have said...In 10 years do you think you'll still be using XP to care? Once they stop support for a product they have no (I think Legal) obligation to maintain anything for it. After all do they still provide support for DOS? Or Windows 3.1, how about Windows 1.1 for Pen Applications? No,...but then again no one cares.Will WGA be a killswitch, naw, I don't think so as the ratio of valid to false validations would be too great... we had this example at work that caused a big stir...one of our machines started showing up as invalid (non-genuine) to which we all panicked, turns out that machine has been around and been reimaged enough to set off some type of trigger in Microsofts server that it needed to have another key used...I dunno why...just did. But imagine if one of our products were stored only on that computer...1. It would be stupid to do it that way instead of the server farms we have2. Microsoft would be in trouble...BUT I do agree, thurott is an attention (I need to watch my language).

Badgerguy
Badgerguy

julianbenjamin wrote:

I agree with ScanIAm; Thurrott is a troublemaker, jumping on the WGA-bashing bandwagon simply for the hits his site will get.

I don't think his article was complaining about his particular installation being hit, he was merely using it as an example to show people what the WGA screens look like.

What he does complain about though is the way that Microsoft put out a pre-release version of WGA on WindowsUpdate as a critical update, and not disclosing to people that it would 'phone home' on a frequent basis.

That's not jumping on a bandwagon, that's stating the bleeding obvious - and considering he is a tech journalist writing mostly about Windows, just exactly why shouldn't he?

Scott Sutton

Greetings All,

I thought I would voice my opinions on this matter seeing as it's such a heated topic. Firstly, I have to fully agree with Paul Thurrott's views regarding Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage deployment, it was scandelous, badly implemented and caused the company grief where none was needed. I complained to an operator while activating Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 on July 16th and he gave me Microsoft's Corporate address to write a letter to - I for one was not amused.

I can't say I've had issues with WGA, I haven't, but the release of the software as "Critical" when it doesn't fit the criteria is falsification, the release of BETA software caused issues with many a user (I personally only use final release software therefore I was not at all happy about having BETA software on my system.) but I feel that Microsoft have taken the right step towards targeting software pirates - Which was the outright aim of WGA.

Regarding the view that Paul Thurrott is a "trouble maker" is decietful and out of context. As has already been said, he was simply highlighting the effects of WGA in identifying pirate software, nothing more, and his article is proof of this, but he is a unique journalist in himself, has given many seminars regaring Windows and is well-respected - I personally enjoy his articles and visit his website regularly.

I don't however agree with the title of this thread "Thurrott Vs. WGA" - I don't see him opposing it.

Regards,

Scott Sutton

jamie

good post.

maybe it's a cross between 1) when it is outright wrong and b) when it asks you over and over - that is annoying people

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Im going to make a logon screen with the Banner on the bottom so anyone whose legal can fool their friends or perhaps start some trouble at my job hehehehehehehe