"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:2005-12-15
Microsoft didn't forcefully degrade them. It was an outage. It happens. I know my computer didn't forcefully stop functioning.
Further, WGA is not a suicide mechanism. It's a killswitch to stop people from pirating Windows. The implementation of WGA is a product of the end-user's desire not to pay for their operating system.
Sound familiar?
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-03-10
I believe the "forcefully degrading subsystems" the parent was referring to are those of the Windows installations all over teh world, not the server itself. It's simple enough... they are being forced artificially to degrade (not work correctly if at all), simply because the server that normally tells them "this isn't a criminal, it's alright to function today" fell over.
While it might not have been intended as a suicide mechanism, I'd say that is exactly what it is for potentially millions of "law-abiding" people who just wanted to get some cocking work done today. None of their fault, 100% their problem, and a fix not expected for a further 3 days? I'd be suicidal myself...
Though I don't use Windows (when I have a choice) I feel colossally angry on behalf of anyone affected by this, that Microsoft lacked the imagination to devise a workaround for when this happened (because who could have doubted that it would, sooner or later?). And how much comfort do you suppose "It's because so many people are warezing XP" is going to be to these people? Collective punishment is all very well in the classroom ("nobody goes home until who wrote that on the blackboard confesses!" etc.) but why the hell should consumers, people who have paid money, be treated in that manner? It is beneath contempt.
Member since:2005-07-08
The implementation of WGA is a product of the end-user's desire not to pay for their operating system.
Is this desire something we should be suppressing or satisfying? We humans are chock-full of desires, and happiness is generally contingent on getting what we want at least some of the time.
It's not realistic to demand free goods and services. But technology is such that it's both feasible to provide and difficult to prevent free information. The question of whether information should be free is one of the defining issues of our time.
Digital technology redefined information in the same way that nuclear technology redefined conflict. It isn't clear if either secrets or war are effective solutions to anything anymore. Secrets are giving way to lies. War is giving way to conspiracy.
Computers don't keep secrets, but they can be programmed to obscure information. The content vendors know that consumers will follow the trail of coverups, so they made the discovery of secrets a felony offense in the so-called land of the free.
The war on piracy is the mother of all conspiracies. We've been given the right to keep secrets to protect profit but not to protect freedom. Never before have our leaders' priorities been articulated so clearly.
The land of the profit has a lot in common with the land of the prophet. We give up our freedom over the same homophone.
Sound familiar?
Touché.
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?