"Late last night we started receiving reports from readers experiencing problems with Windows Genuine Advantage authentication. Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service. We contacted our sources at Microsoft, who told us off the record that the company is aware of a major WGA server outage affecting users across the globe. Microsoft is telling users who are affected that they should 'try again' later, with some support techs telling readers that Microsoft is aiming to have a fix in place by Tuesday, August 28th."
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Member since:2006-03-28
There are free options that work very well and for free.
This message brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
But seriously, this is a great example of why DRM is a really bad idea. If MS has a bad day (server-wise), then so does the rest of the world (literally).
Member since:2005-08-17
Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2006-05-14
"I think it's time you wake up and realise that even with redundancy, it's technology and things can break. Didn't Ubuntu servers have an outage last week? Gee, I guess it's time to drop Ubuntu as well."
Are you referring to this incident?:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/58929.html
Not exactly on the same scale as this Microsoft WGA 'SNAFU'!
Anyway, it "seems" to be resolved:
http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/08/25/validation-issue-fix.a...
Glad it didn't take 3+ days to fix, as I assume MS is as well. That would be difficult to explain away.
Member since:2005-07-07
And did you have the impression that any of the Ubuntu installation forcefully degraded their subsystems because of this?
Or did they actually continue to work as usual because there is not built-in suicide mechanism in case it can't contact the mothership?
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-05-29
But there is a huge amount of Software without any Linux compatible alternatives. Most of them are available on Mac though. So yes, it is time to drop Windows, but have a careful view of your software before deciding to switch to Linux or BSD... I couldn't/wouldn't want because those apps also are not compatible with wine.
Member since:
2005-06-29
I think it's about time people wake up and ditch MICROS~1 for good. There are free options that work very well and for free.