Why Windows Genuine Authentication is Bad

[stash]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: STaSh
What principle, what corporate BS? WGA is there to protect you. It isn't designed so much to be a way to reduce piracy. It is designed to let consumers know if they unknowingly purchased a counterfeit version of Windows.

Uh, you're kidding, right?

Hey, way to bring back a month-old thread! Congrats.

And no, I'm not kidding.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: SkaarjMaster
STaSh, it's the whole principle of the thing. Yes, I could just give in to corporate BS and install WGA, but if there is a way around it I'm taking it.

There are plenty of ways around it that don't involve working around stuff like this. 😉

Hint: Each word above is a solution. 🙂

Your solutions are the very problem with Linux. It isn't standardized.

Then use a BSD. Standardization is good for some things, but bad for distros. What's the point in having free software if you're limited in how you can use it?

What I mean is the great thing about Windows is WinXP Pro is WinXP Pro. I've tried a few different flavors of Linux for a desktop and none of them looked anywhere near alike. On top of that there's the issue of hardware support and program support. Windows supports pretty much any piece of hardware available and software is plentiful and well known. Linux hardware support is (from what I've heard) getting better but nowhere near Windows and Linux is way behind Windows in the software area - especially gaming.

I'll probably try Linux again at some point but which one I don't know.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Robor
What I mean is the great thing about Windows is WinXP Pro is WinXP Pro. I've tried a few different flavors of Linux for a desktop and none of them looked anywhere near alike. On top of that there's the issue of hardware support and program support. Windows supports pretty much any piece of hardware available and software is plentiful and well known. Linux hardware support is (from what I've heard) getting better but nowhere near Windows and Linux is way behind Windows in the software area - especially gaming.

I'll probably try Linux again at some point but which one I don't know.

They all use different themes. Typically each distro will use Gnome or KDE, and theme it how they want. It all basically works the same.

Hardware support is fine: decent hardware works. Wierd and/or crappy hardware generally doesn't.

Software? There's plenty.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: STaSh

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: STaSh
What principle, what corporate BS? WGA is there to protect you. It isn't designed so much to be a way to reduce piracy. It is designed to let consumers know if they unknowingly purchased a counterfeit version of Windows.

Uh, you're kidding, right?

Hey, way to bring back a month-old thread! Congrats.

And no, I'm not kidding.

Sorry... Searched for a thread on Windows Update being slow - didn't catch that it was this old. That said, what's the difference? I just had to update 15 systems in an office today. Each of them required validation. No problems with it but it was an additional step that I'm sure added about 15 minutes to my work load.

And what if one of the systems had come up as invalid? I was working on systems that are 1-4 years old with 1-4 year old licenses. If they had failed it would've meant a call to Microsoft and more time wasted. IMO this WGA is a piracy preventative and does more harm/trouble to the end user than it's worth.