hmm, or you could have a legal version of windows
What else is it sending?
Yup, if you’re not pirating someone else’s property, what’s the problem?
If there is any place where property rights should be understood it’s this forum.
I have a legal version of Win 7, and I still don't want them poking around.
Oops, we're sorry we crapped up your PC, it "looked" like it was suspect.
I paid for it, but I didn't pay them to snoop.
How about when you buy some DVD movies? Does Disney have the right to come into your living room every 90 days and check your DVD collection?
I have a legal copy of Windows XP (several, in fact): 2 months ago, after upgrading the video drivers on one of my machines, it suddenly failed to authenticate, and it took me two weeks to straighten it out with Microsoft, including forwarding copies of my CD key to them.
And finally got a “oops, our mistake”, and it got fixed.
The point is, you ALREADY authenticate the box and license when you activate the OS at install. . . .
Another variation of the “what’s the problem with us snooping? do you have something to hide?” argument. I have quite a few PCs and only one left running Windows. This just might push me over the edge to go 100% Linux.
Just run Linux and forget Micro$oft
The problem isn’t solved by having a legal version of Windows. The problem is one of false positives. If WAT or WGA decides your previously valid copy of Windows is no longer valid, you’re screwed. This can happen if, for example, your installation of Windows was done with a volume license that later gets stolen. MS will, no doubt, simply shut down any OS that used that key, and wait for the valid owner to get in touch. In a situation like that, MS would probably issue a new key, and require every system to be re-validated manually. This can also happen, as it did with WGA, if MS’s validation system has an error, and shuts your machine down. You then have to jump through all the hoops to correct their error, and in the meantime your computer is crippled.
Hopefully MS will decide that this was a bad idea after all, and work out a better solution. ALternatively, we the consumers should hope that MS doesn’t decide to get sneaky and keep re-releasing the update under new KB listings, so that excluding it by KB number won’t work unless you can keep up with each new release. In the meantime, it is likely that there are people out there figuring out how WAT works, and coming up with a way to short-circuit it so that it either never actually gets to the internet to check in, or that if it does, that it can never actually modify the OS.
That’s right, because Microsoft is 100% perfect in making such determinations, and I shouldn’t mind strangers poking around my computer if I haven’t been doing anything bad, right?
ping