This just appeared on Boing Boing.
DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today.
The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation — except possibly those with volume license keys — is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in.
Looks like this isn’t the weekend to install a copy of Windows or buy a new Windows PC. Now where are they selling Macs.
When you read the forums on this (linked in blockquote below) it’s incredible.
Validation issues – Microsoft is having WGA server problems
Thank you for your response.
I’m sorry to inform you that the Windows Genuine server might be down for few days. I have escalate the issue to our Genuine team, kindly try to validate again on Tuesday 28 Aug 2007.
Thank you for contacting Microsoft Technical Support.
If these programs were properly designed they would all self-validate if the validation server went down. The cheaters would have a free day or two and be caught later. How hard can that be? But no. Now everyone is assumed to be a crook. This is a developing story.
______________________________________
UPDATE: It’s fixed, relatively speaking. Sort of.
Folks:
I understand the frustration you all are going through. I’m investigating the issue right now.
I guarantee that we’re working on this issue right now. For folks wondering, MACHINES ARE NOT SHUTTING DOWN with reduced functionality.
I guarantee that I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep – whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep.
#52, Panic,
. Just because you mother named you after a chick, is no reason to get pissy.
Our friend Lauren the Ghotti is actually a gentleman. What you see as “pissy”, we usually see as lovable irascibility. Although some of his posts are a little over the top, that is usually his sarcasm; or verbose, often the subject needs expounding; the vast majority show extreme insight, wisdom, and intelligence.
Hey Lauren, don’t forget that $5 ya owe me.
#84 – TIHZ_HO
“Let me make sure I understand what your logic. People pissed off at MS and Windows ‘get back’ at MS by pirating MS software and Windows? WTF? Where did you learn marketing principles?
People pissed off at a brand or product switch brands or products. That is not that difficult to understand.
E.G. People pissed off at US car manufacturers switch brands e.g. imported cars. Don’t whine that “MS has a monopoly so we can’t switch” BS! Apple has been around forever as an alternative.”
Jeez, T_H, what a load of crap.
To most users’ minds there is no viable alternative to Windows. Tens of millions of sheeple have picked up on M$’s false implication that they’re the only game in town. Only recently has the tide turned and Apple appeared on the radar of Mom and Pop.
Personal computers are unlike most consumer goods in an extremely important way: never before in history has there been such a commonplace, ubiquitous product about which consumers know so very little.
Joe Sixpack buys a Windows box because he knows nothing about computers. He is a sheeple. People like him have kept outfits like Compaq and stores like Circuit City in business for years, with their assists to M$ in hornswoggling the typical computer-illiterate consumer into thinking that only a fool would buy into anything but Windows, that Windows is easy and simple. When they buy their box of user-unfriendliness, it typically takes a long time, and many hours on the phone to various tech support lines before a sheeple starts to snap to the fact that all the problems he has getting things to work are not due entirely to his ignorance, that many manufacturers just don’t give a shit.
You’re all wet, T_Z. If the PC marketplace resembled just about any other – where consumers understand what they’re buying, what it should and shouldn’t do, M$ would’ve been ridden out of town on a rail 20 or more years ago. As it is, it’s no coïncidence that most of their spending is not on R&D or code creation, it’s lawyers, and most important of all, propaganda marketing; marketing to sheeple, capitalizing on peer pressure, ubiquity and blue-sky bogus promises of things that their competitors already do a much better job of delivering on.
No company has ever inspired so much hatred and resentment. And no company has been a bigger victim of piracy. And you actually think that’s a coïncidence?? Whatever you”re smoking, stop. It’s destroying your critical faculties.
aNOTHER goddamn mismatched tag. ¡Ai, caramba!
Fusion – Are you sure? I’m quite sure I already sent it. Check your mail. Maybe it got lost. Maybe your letter carrier stole it. Yeah, that’s the ticket…!
#91 “My boss told me a couple weeks ago to scrap his XP installation and set him up with Fedora, just to see for himself how hard “this Linux thing” really is.”
Sounds good… your company is mainly using computers for emails, documents, spreadsheets – Standard stuff ?
Lets not forget in this ‘debate’ (debate? more like “mine is better than yours”) that computers are just tools used to do something – like typewriters used years ago. Common sense dictates using the correct tools to do what you want. If the tool involves more work to do the work use a different one. Its not rocket science.
Most small to medium businesses have basic needs for their computers – like I said emails, documents and so on. There are gains in productivity which makes work easier and quicker – out side of operating system choices. This is a common problem in offices today – how much time was spent on typewriters 20 years ago? People just did the work not working to do the work.
As an example our companies use Windows XP for mostly emails, documents, spreadsheets and presentations with some CAD and graphic designs. We are happy with MS Office as it does what we need it to do whereas the free OS office suites which technically does the job however for us it has an effect on productivity, plus don’t have any problems at all with what we have.
If I might make a productivity suggestion for all those who need to archive tons of emails and be able to retrieve them easily get Acrobat 8 Professional. It integrates with Outlook so you can select a email folder and convert it a PDF file with an searchable index which can be added to. I am sure that is not possible with free software.
Cheers
Last week I bought my wife a new laptop to do her scrapbooking on.
Low and behold, her scrapbooking program was NOT compatible with VISTA. A call to Broderbund revealed that none of their scrapbooking programs were Vista compatible, and they could not tell us if they ever would be.
So, I got out my XP install disk with a random VLK, and after 247 security updates and a service pack delivered via auto updates, her “pirated” copy of XP that I had to install because Vista was not compatible with our current software, works just fine.
Now, since she has a valid Vista license that we cannot use, since the new ACER laptop did not come with restore disks, and I had to delete the Service partition to get XP to install, does that make her XP install sort of legal?
Prolly not. I have never had the intestinal fortitude to wade through a license agreement, but I am sure they are NOT BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE EITHER.
Don
#94 “No company has ever inspired so much hatred and resentment. And no company has been a bigger victim of piracy.” and “Joe Sixpack buys a Windows box because he knows nothing about computers.” “and To most users’ minds there is no viable alternative to Windows.”
And thank you! You proved my earlier point in another post that Apple Macs are not a viable alternative to MS Windows, for ‘Joe Sixpack’ who you say is the major market, and Joe Sixpack does not have the nouse to use Linux. 😀
So….one can only conclude from your rants that Apple desperately needs to get another advertising agency as they obviously need to change their marketing strategy and pricing too. Obviously Apple is either inept or arrogant for not perusing all the ‘Joe Sixpacks’ – why is that? Can’t blame MS for that. 😀 (Smug)
You can’t have it both ways ranting on how Apple Mac sales have rocketed up (your other posts) and then blame MS because Apple Macs aren’t attractive to Joe Sixpack. Which is it?
It seems to me that your marketing skills are lacking at best. 😉
Cheers
I should add that I’m aware that the Chinese, f’rinstance, do not pirate M$ stuff out of resentment or opprobrium, but the profit motive. Not so the tens of millions of users who feel that M$ treats them, as I said, thieves and / or morans…
Something I’m also aware of, T_H, is the glaring absence of any attempt at rebuttal… 🙂
Oops, looks like it came whilst I was typing…
Specious reasoning there, m’boy. M$ for many years, spent more on advertising and marketing than Apple’s entire budget. ( “Where do you want to be dragged, kicking and screaming, today?” ) Falsely pretending to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’, artfully switching their true role as the greedhead, overlawyered, right-wing corporatist, conformist, unoriginal copycat suits for Apple’s pioneering, original, minority, counterculture, nonconformist, minority, user-empowerment origins… It is to laugh.
So you say that in order to succeed, Apple should ape M$ and start snowing the masses with bullshit about their products, ’cause – that’s how you get ahead, right? In a world without anything resembling corporate conscience, responsibility or ethics, I guess it is… 🙂
I should be fair though; M$$$ fucks their employees with just as much Big-Business Republican sociopathic greedhead gusto as they do their sheeple – er, USER base.
And 100 posts! Heeeeee!
Wonder if we could reach it were we discussing the relative virtues of going to a party with a Gant polo or with a GAP hoodie?…
#97 “Last week I bought my wife a new laptop to do her scrapbooking… NOT compatible with VISTA.”
That happened a lot with XP as well. Apple Macs also have compatibility issues with some software which needs a newer version of OS X – so that is not unique to MS.
Regarding the Vista licence working for WinXP – no that doesn’t work.
You might be able to get re-image disc(s) for your laptop from Acer as you used the service partition for WinXP. Its too late now, but Vista could have resized and created a new partition on your primary drive to make room for WinXP so you didn’t need to dump the service partiton.
I had a similar issue with HP on transferring Vista licences. I am in China and my new laptop from a HP shop only had Chinese Vista available. HP Shanghai’s solution was to install a pirated version of WinXP on a HP laptop sold with OEM Linux so I didnt have to pay for a useless Chinese Vista licence as it is not transferable.
So I let them do that just to see if they would and they did! When I got home I installed my legal version of WinXP. I eventually returned that laptop for a better one and replaced Chinese Vista for my WinXP. I am still trying to get a set of recover discs for English Vista from HP but no luck so far…
This has nothing to do with Microsoft as this is a language and HP issue. I am still shocked that the HP staff at a HP shop and the techs at the HP service centre would not only suggest a pirated copy of WinXp but also offered MS Office as well. This is when everyone complains about piracy and here HP helps it along. Truth is stranger!
Cheers
#99 “Something I’m also aware of, T_H, is the glaring absence of any attempt at rebuttal… :)”
Rebuttal on what? You did such a good job on proving my points that there is not too much I need to add.. .other that Apple has been around as long as MS so Apple’s business model wasn’t as good as MS. I could add that Jobs when he was fired developed NeXT and then sold that to Apple which became OS X and Jobs is where he is now.
Thanks!
Cheers
#101 – Joao
“…a Gant polo or with a GAP hoodie…”
In the beginning it was suit-and-tie ‘don’t alienate the old white money men’ conformity vs. Dead tour shirts, jeans and Birks. Just cause they’ve both been forced in toward the center by their size and the changing times, you only have to take the most cursory look at their respective companies’ ethics and practices to see that that L / R hippie / suit schism remains. Billyboy is still the spiritual descendant of the robber barons, with their smug New England elitist contempt for the working rabble. Their army of conformist, obedient temp drones, hoping to get a slice of the moolah pie stands in marked contrast to the creative, informal, far-less heirarchial structure and practices at Apple, which was and is the misfit, minority underdog.
So shall it ever be, world without end, amen, and the rest of that stuff. 🙂
BTW, T_H, thx 4 specifying “Apple Macs” so’s we don’t confuse them with “Dell Macs” or “IBM Macs”…
#104 Fisherino…
lighten up. I wasn’t being figurative. Gant and Gap don’t represent, to the extent of what you imply, the debating parties. It was just a light remark.
remark: I don’t like the stereotypical dudes in Apple’s TV ads “mac vs. pc guys” either… (the actors are ok, the persona, not so…)
Well at least it’s good to know that if we go to war with another country MS can shut those fuckers out of using their computers.
106 continued
… and come to think of it, it’s not the first time I hear that coming from you, my finned friend. You seem to embark on a dualistic view of these two characters (bill’n’steve) as two opposing forces. The old conservative and the new “open minded” visionary that is set to save our world from the clutches of oppression and status quo (not the brit band…). Reminiscent, no doubt of your sixties roots in political thinking. I don’t presume to teach and enlighten you, since I’m not an actively political person, nor did I experienced such strong youth engagement (too young to be a red when we had our revolution, too old to believe in liberalism afterwards). But seems to me that you act on the smell rather than the substance. You see, in my point of view, Mac vs. PC it’s not a political thing but an socio-economical one. And we know what they all stand for: $$$$$$$. Furthermore, if you believe it, I say it to you the more plainly I can spell it out: In my view of things Jobs appears much more Bigger Brotherish than Gates. Apple has mastered it’s public communications to the point of schizophrenic cleanliness and clinical minimalistic design, as on the other hand, Microsoft has this mix matched image, of confusion and erratic behavior. Ms seems much more ad hoc and plain than the elitist perfection on infinite loop. You see, I don’t buy into perfection and have become increasingly suspicious of it as I grow older. Just that.
Case in point, this WGA fumble. Love it or hate it, it’s an honest mistake. A server has errors and collapsed, so some guys had their Windows copies marked as fakes. So what? Shout that we had it coming because of the choice in OS? That’s ridiculous. Is the Police gona storm troop their houses and demand their Original Windows stickers? No. Life will go on eventually.
And remember, just how many millions of Windows copies won’t, justifiably, pass the WGA test? I bet the number will be High up there in China and Russia…does society collapses there? No.
So who cares? I just like this “do it as you like, buy it as you want” freedom I just can’t get under the white and silver bitten apple world. And it’s all I care. I might even advise my boss to buy a 20″ Glass mac over a Dell. He recently spent more on a 19″compact Dell, that clearly is not worth it. With the Mac and an inexpensive Parallels copy he would have a better machine and protection on his legacy software investment. I’m open to this, no problem.
Me, well, I just like to build my boxes, and I’m proficient enough to protect myself from system quirks and attacking wares. So I’ll just have it the way I like it. Perfection? Bah, it’s overrated…
Guess what I’m going to say?
I dunno? “Boo”?
-ETH0
Has a good fix for this already. If you do a search for “Windows.Genuine.Advantage.Validation -ETH0”
On google you might be able to find what I am talking about . 🙂
Cheer’s
Just DL the hacked version and get on with your lives.
Ooboontoo!
I’m with Dvorak one this one. But I’ll do him one slightly better. Why not have the stupid WGA simply extend its trial period another 30 days, if the M$ server fails? It’s not a permanent free ride for the OS piraters, and most “genuine” users can live with that.
>>And :> to boot. Fucking Micro$oft. Why didn’t we break them up when >>we had the chance? This monopoly thing sucks ass.
And I was wonder why our local PBS (DC) station ran a documentary on how M$ was “reigned in” by that court decision. But in the end we find out that it was “settled” and M$ didn’t have to break in two. Thanks, very probably to the Bush Administration (Ashcroft at DOJ). I quess someone at the Tv station was doing a bit of damage control.
Hey folks, there was this item in the news about Amtrak ticket sales computers being down because of “newly installed software”. But they didn’t say what software. This has me wondering if the WGA failure wasn’t what was screwing them up. But of course, the guttless news service can’t report THAT! And BTW, good timing by M$. If you’re going to have a major screw up like this. Do it on a weekend and fix it before the stock market opens on Monday morning. I’ll bet not a single analyst even mentions it by then. The “fix is in”, in more ways than one.
This particular topic needs a new “Breaking News” heading of a skipping record, except nobody born after 1984 would know what a vinyl record is.
This is a Skipping Record Topic: expect to hear the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over…
#105 LtG Your welcome.
I was wrong to only using the term ‘Macs’ and also PC does not mean MS Windows so it should MS Windows(version) PC. 😉
Cheers
#113 “Ooboontoo!” Yes that solves everything…
Bill, Steve pack it all in, you got trouble now boys!
Cheers
#100 Ok – Here is your rebuttal.
Apple and Microsoft start out at about the same time. Apple chooses to go one way with hardware and OS and Microsoft chooses to go another OS and software.
Looks like Microsoft had the better plan. So don’t whine on how Microsoft became so big because if Apple had better management they could have been right up there instead of being one of the crowd like Dell, Acer…
When Jobs was fired he had a good idea – NeXT CPU independent for both PowerPC (Apple) and X86. Smooth – works on anything you have. So what happened? Apple is going broke (cause their inept) so they hire Jobs as a consultant, buys NeXT and does a purge of Apple executives for NeXT execs and ‘poof’ OS X is born….BUT Apple stifles NeXT’s cross platform ability and aims for the high end market. Another smart move like IBM.
So now Apple not wanting to be another IBM – out of the personal computer game is doing as much damage control as they can…
How people view Apple Macs is how Apple wanted people to view them – high end and different – only it didn’t work out as well as they thought.
So now you want to blame Microsoft for having good business sense to read the market potential very well. So in your mind Bill Gates should have said “Oh wait…Apple is falling behind…lets slow up fellows and let them catch up!”
Apple marketing strategy is based on FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)
The I’m a PC and I’m a Mac campaign – Why not use Peter Griffin for the WInPC and Stewie for Apple Macs.
Peter: I’m a PC………………………………………………..(farts)
The dopey girl whose homework was eaten by her PC…..
Be different…….
The sheep you refer to aren’t that stupid to believe all the Apple rhetoric about (Win)PCs as so in the end Apple cried Wolf too many times.
Microsoft marketing is geared towards being productive – Office became #1 because it is easy to use and has more features than what you could ever need. If Office is so terrible then why not use Word Perfect or OS?
One thing that Microsoft has done VERY well is their software is easy to use – the commands, tools are all intuitive. This flowed over to other software so if you use Office you can use so many other programs. Just what Joe Sixpack can use.
Is Apple like this? Not that I can see. I use AutoCAD, and graphic programs every week. I have Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW – which was the one easiest and more intuitive to use? Not Illustrator, oh boy take a course first and get ready to punch the keyboard for even simple shit like Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (shift+ctrl+z) while CorelDraw just has a button to press. Like to customise the menus in Illustrator – NOPE use what you have – CorelDraw go ahead make your work easier. It wasn’t until CS2 could you use the mouse wheel to zoom!
This is software designed for Apple’s platform and ported to Windows which gives me a reasonable insight into Apple’s world. I accept that both Illustrator and Photoshop are industry standards and are superior but not needed by everyone. Which is why there are other alternatives.
Sorry again that Apple made market choices that placed them exactly where they are…less than 20% but now is expected to rise because they can run MS Windows, but don’t blame Microsoft for that one! LOL!
Cheers
This has became quite a fun if offtopic discussion.
I’ve sat on both sides of the fence and threw pies at everyone over the years I dispised macs at school… classics, LC475s and Performas and no stupid art teacher was going to tell me that they were better than my first PC, a Packard Bell P60mhz.
At the time, I was right (subjectively) From what I remember Steve Jobs was already at Next and the Win 95 marketing machine was about to get into full swing. Apple didn’t know their arse from their elbow and thought every mac fan would continue buying rebranded HP printers.
I never realised just how antiquated those macs I’d used in my school days were until later when I matched models with the years. I swore back then that I’d never ever ever ever ever buy anything Apple. I have 2 macs at the now.
For those years (forgetting any Amiga use etc before that) I was an intel/MS fanboi and flamed everyone that thought otherwise, RedHat 5.2 was a welcome insight into the world before windows, all the different window managers recreating the Unix past. I loved the BeOS live cd I received on a coverdisc, sadly I never knew just how close Be inc were to going out of business, I missed that wagonride completely. I still play with BeOS and Haiku, but the reality of it is the company went the way of Amiga. I’d say that the old BeOS was indeed 10 years ahead of its time. The OS architecture only started becoming dated after Vista/OSX
I wouldn’t call myself a zealot, I just want the best technology to win. It really saddens me when a corporation uses its monopoly to kill off competition. And THAT is where my own bias against Microsoft comes from.
In the same way Microsoft has put almost all other OS manufacturers out of business (and not due to better tech) Intel has done the same to processors. The Amiga 1200 was far superior to the 486 equivalent …
sadly the same cant be said for Commodores management but that is why you see Amiga enthusiasts holding on to their machines with an iron death grip. Intel nearly knocked AMD out the water with their ‘megahertz myths’ And yes I totally agree Intels coreDuo tech is far superior at the moment… but AMD had a great run at them with the Athlons. I’m thinking if it hadn’t been for AMD, everyone today would be running 16ghz 1000watt P4 processors that do less processing than your average core duo. If it had been up to IBM, you would only see computers at work and you’d still need a loan to buy one. If it had been up to Sun and Sgi, a graphics workstation would still cost upwards of £30k
Disregarding the whole netscape debacle, Microsoft is at it again with DirectX. OpenGL runs on all hardwares, all operating systems and is arguably better technology than DX acceleration. If Microsoft wanted to embrace industry they would combine their efforts and we’d have a magical gaming experience on all platforms. Instead they force OGL to run on top of DirectX in Vista so that everybody suffers.
I remember when the playstation came out… Games were being designed on PCs and ported back to the consoles. Console specs generally have a longer lifespan so within a few years PCs were making PS games look like heaven The consoles were usually feature deficient and not very well optimized.
Due mostly to Microsofts tactics crippling windows games and squawking about DirextX… the majority of games now are written for consoles and then ported back to Windows. Admittedly there is a bigger market share there now…. but that’s what happens when you subsidise hardware while piracy is prolific.
In 5 years time when all the PC gamers have 16core 10gb memory machines, will they be playing 5 year old technology console ports? Sony have stated the PS3 has a 10 year life…. Its the only way they can market the initial console price.
I couldn’t give a flying fvck what any of you guys choose to use on your computer. All I want is good clean competition based on price and technology, not backhanding, DRM, patent trolling and marketing spiel.
I miss the days when each architecture had its merits and misgivings. The C64 for colour, the spectrum for sprites, The Amiga for both… and the Atari for sound. There were fanboys back then too… I OTOH was too busy reading “Input” magazines and making the frog jump accross the blue screen.
And yes #92 I’m scottish 🙂 so by default I support the underdog LOL
Regarding consoles…. and what I said before about Sony expecting the PS3 to be circulating for 10 years. I think Nintentdo (for once in their blood lifes!) made the right move… Nintendo only said the Wii would be out for about 5 – 6 years and then replaced. In 5 years time I’m thinking that even the cheapest processors and graphics chips will be a better spec than the PS3.
Big question for Sony… do you screw your customers over again with another $700 price tag… or watch Nintendo scream ahead when people decide they cant wii fast enough? (pun intended).
It will be interesting to watch for sure. Especially when the only company making a profit on the hardware for the last 2 generations is Nintendo.
Ian,
Is your last name, McIntosh??
no ECA,
its ‘freedom’ 🙂