Microsoft has been painstakingly reviewing the operations and procedures behind its Windows Genuine Advantage license validation tool, with a view to ironing out glitches that have cause problems for legitimate Windows users. Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is designed to combat piracy by installing software on users' PC that periodically checks to see if their version of Windows is authentic before allowing them to download updates.
In a Tuesday Weblog entry, Alex Kochis, senior product manager in the Windows Genuine Advantage group, said the WGA team has been studying its WGA operations and processes and will handle future WGA issues more efficiently than it has in the past. WGA has been a source of much frustration for users since it was launched in 2005, and recent incidents have fanned the flames of WGA loathing among Microsoft's customers and partners.
The WGA team has changed the way it rolls out updates to the back-end servers and has also been shoring up the infrastructure on which WGA is based. In addition to revamping its monitoring of WGA servers, Microsoft is also implementing 24x7 customer support and phone based technical support to its North American customers, Kochis wrote.
View: Full Article @ CRN
In a Tuesday Weblog entry, Alex Kochis, senior product manager in the Windows Genuine Advantage group, said the WGA team has been studying its WGA operations and processes and will handle future WGA issues more efficiently than it has in the past. WGA has been a source of much frustration for users since it was launched in 2005, and recent incidents have fanned the flames of WGA loathing among Microsoft's customers and partners.
The WGA team has changed the way it rolls out updates to the back-end servers and has also been shoring up the infrastructure on which WGA is based. In addition to revamping its monitoring of WGA servers, Microsoft is also implementing 24x7 customer support and phone based technical support to its North American customers, Kochis wrote.
View: Full Article @ CRN
It doesn't help "combat piracy" any more than all the previous half assed attempts Microsoft has been trying.
Activation did nothing, WGA does nothing - if someone wants to pirate the stuff, they can and most importantly - they will. Pirates will always manage to duplicate the software or run the applications while emulating another device, a kludge or a cd/dvd.
With the widespread adoption of the internet, getting cracks/hacks is trivial even for the most inept of computer users. WGA doesn't even prevent downloading software directly from Microsoft web site nor does it even prevent you from installing the software where WGA is "integrated" since you can simply remove the check by tampering a single DLL most of the time.
Bottom line: If someone wants to copy it, they will. There's zilch you can do about it other than spend millions that would be better off invested in improving existing products.
I have a feeling that most people already know that in the first place. And if someone doesn't, even after they bought it off of the street, than they're retarded.
You'll be surprised to find out how far piracy of Windows goes. This is not about the customer who buys Windows off the streets on a DVD-R with the words WinXP Corp and CD-Key sharpied on it for $5. WGA is to stop vendors from selling Windows illegally. I've seen counterfeits thats hard to distinguished from the real retail versions. There are a lot of small OEM shops that sells PCs pre-installed with pirated version of Windows. And they charge the customer for the OS as if it's legitimate. Without WGA, the average consumer can't tell the difference between a legit Windows from a pirated version.
Now what I don't like about WGA is it stops users from downloading updates. They should remove that part of WGA. Having the little "counterfeit" pop up warning is fine and good enough.
I have a feeling that most people already know that in the first place. And if someone doesn't, even after they bought it off of the street, than they're retarded.
I knew of at least one local system builder that seemed at least kinda legit but ended up putting unlicensed copies of Windows XP on a ton of machines back in 2002 and 2003. My boss bought one of the machines and threw a fit when WGA kicked in around 2005. He was under the impression that his version of windows xp was fully licensed and why shouldn't he have?
I wish they would just do away with the WGA and Product Activtion. I just love how they have zero trust in their customers. In this situation, it's the pirates who win, because they don't really have to worry about activation or WGA. They can reinstall as many times as they want and not have to worry about it.
WGA and PA isn't fair to customers, like me, who went out and bought Windows. Already, I've had to reactivate my copy by telephone all because I updated my DVD-Rom firmware.
Microsoft, wake up and realize you're only hurting your legitimate customers, while pirates are able to format and UPDATE their copies with no problem.
I didn't pay $200 for Windows Vista Ultimate (OEM) to be treated like a criminal by MS.
EDIT: Comment was supposed to go under the first one.
I had a legit copy of both XP and Vista and when they both deactivated just because of driver updates I just bypassed these scams in order to continue using them. Because of Vista's many, many. many other problems I have switched over to Ubuntu Linux now and I am quite satisfied with its stability and reliability as well.
face it, huge numbers of them don't care, and wont look, or even know their system needs patching, these are the people after all who on legitimate systems would just have auto update enabled and let MS push anything onto their systems at any time.
and that's not even yet mentioned the huge number of people blissfully unaware their system isn't actually running legit software in the first place, who are expecting it is probably updating itself, or not aware OS's should ever need updates.
face it, huge numbers of them don't care, and wont look, or even know their system needs patching, these are the people after all who on legitimate systems would just have auto update enabled and let MS push anything onto their systems at any time.
and that's not even yet mentioned the huge number of people blissfully unaware their system isn't actually running legit software in the first place, who are expecting it is probably updating itself, or not aware OS's should ever need updates.
Still does nothing to stop piracy and only harms the customers.
WGA checks on optional software downloads. Any important and critical security updates don't check. MS has said so already months ago.
and you know this how?......
It's not "their" customers they are worried about..think about that one for a minute
making a phone call is like being treated like a criminal?
Because every year they post greater figures stating how much more they've lost money due to piracy?
The fact that "PC gaming is dying because of piracy" and they've had copy protection out the arse for the past decade.
How much did that help? How about - not at all?
making a phone call is like being treated like a criminal?
If you're happy to have to keep wasting time ringing up an every random inopportune moment your expensive supposed top of the range product you've paid up the wazoo for de-activates itself, then I hope your looking froward to your DRM infested fair use free world where 50% of the value of every piece of hardware you purchase , and 50% of it's power is being applied to nothing but constantly checking that the things you've BOUGHT, you still OWN, where you can't so much as whistle your favourite tune without a fine, and in fact can't even send your own original works to friends and family until you've paid to have them tagged as approved for transmission through the anti-piracy filters of your ISP.
It's all one big slippery slope.
bleep, comment check in please: nope I'm still not a criminal
bleep, comment check in please: nope I'm still not a criminal
bleep, comment check in please: nope I'm still not a criminal
bleep, comment check in please: nope I'm still not a criminal
Maybe you should think about it yourself since that is only who they are hurting. The pirates are laughing their half-ass attempts.
So, yet another person who has low self esteem and doesn't mind being punished for something they didn't do.
How would you like it if every time you changed the tires on your car that you had to call up the manufacturer and beg them to start your car? Or that they continued to call you everyday and ask you if you have stolen your car yet?
It's not about that, it's about - how other already pointed out - having to call them to allow you to continue your work youre about to do (why would you sit at the computer otherwise
It's not really the best analogy with the car, but Foub is not even that wrong. I don't want my car manufacturer to allow me to put new tires on my car. And I don't want them to allow/disallow me or lock my car down when I'm about to pimp my ride if I want to do so.
It's just about stop controlling my life, buddies.
I think M$ should drop their prices, as they have a lot less piracy than they used to.
IF piracy was keeping prices high, then Vista wouldn't have been released in 8 ridiculous versions at 8 ridiculous price points.
IF WGA was working then piracy would have been down and then Vista would have been cheaper to buy.
IF WGA was working, then you wouldn't be able to find all MS products on the streets of Hong Kong for cheap.
WGA was always about stopping YOU the savvy user from sharing your copy of the OS with your not-so-savvy neighbor/friend/buddy. Making that inconvenient enough that you'd tell them "just go buy an OEM copy at Fry's".
And in that regard, it has been a successful program, from the MS perspective.
But in any other regard, it has been a colossal failure, ****ing off everybody EXCEPT the pirates.
IF piracy was keeping prices high, then Vista wouldn't have been released in 8 ridiculous versions at 8 ridiculous price points.
IF WGA was working then piracy would have been down and then Vista would have been cheaper to buy.
IF WGA was working, then you wouldn't be able to find all MS products on the streets of Hong Kong for cheap.
WGA was always about stopping YOU the savvy user from sharing your copy of the OS with your not-so-savvy neighbor/friend/buddy. Making that inconvenient enough that you'd tell them "just go buy an OEM copy at Fry's".
And in that regard, it has been a successful program, from the MS perspective.
But in any other regard, it has been a colossal failure, ****ing off everybody EXCEPT the pirates.
Exactly.
WGA was never intended to "combat" piracy. Microsoft isn't as stupid as people would like to think. They know that whatever they do, someone will figure out a way around it. This is only natural since Microsoft themselves admitted computer code can never be perfect.
WGA is designed to prevent casual copying and alert those who don't know any better if their copy is counterfit or illegal. That is all. Will people figure out a way around it? Sure. But for the "average" consumer they won't be able to lend a copy of XP to all their friends and have them install it.
I think you severely underestimate how people nowadays can find pretty much anything via Google in a matter of minutes.
You can install Vista and crack away all activations, all checks and make it completely "legal" to the WGA/WU by going to Google, searching for a suitable program and downloading it. Even the whole installation is completely automated - you just press OK a few times and that's it. Even your mother could do it.
welcome to the botnet
Just be careful not to mistake the apparent misunderstanding of the stated, or perhaps even the actual intentions of any kind of anti-piracy measure, no matter what the scale, for people who are fully aware of the actual effect of it wearing down their rights, and the motivation of the general public to resist further restrictions further down the line.
nothing but FUD.
Piracy is only the excuse. The Corporate don't like it when human rights get in the way of profit.
nothing but FUD.
happen to run one do you? trying to help keep the numbers up?
Seriously though, it's not FUD, just because you can find cracks/keygens that are clean, doesn't mean they all are, many that originated clean, are not clean very rapidly afterwards after being re-uploaded by people with ulterior motives, especially if they're pulled off a website rather than the system used for wherever they are originally released.
sure there's a lot of FUD pushed out there, do some rootkit research and you find youtube videos trying to prove X or Y group is pushing rootkits for example, I don't believe most of them are (hell a lot of crackers these days probably really are doing it just to bypass the DRM to let people who have legitimately bought the product, use it without all the hassle) either the video propagator is pushing FUD, or they got a post release infection.
That in NO WAY however discredits the fact that huge numbers of people looking for the easy option and getting hold of illegal software are exposing themselves to massive security risks.
Anyone that has to deal with full diagnosis of public machines and tracking infection sources would know this.
And besides, are you really as good at PC forensics as you think you are?
This FUD is put out there by the companies to keep casual users in Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about the occasional piece of pirated software...and that's the very definition of FUD.
Regardless, most professional packages are priced so high because businesses and professionals HAVE to buy them for their companies and jobs AND have the resources to do so. Whereas most "pirates" are casual users and "collectors" who might buy the software if it was consumer priced, but then the company would have to increase costs of tech support etc.
So, all of these major companies figured out a long time that is was more profitable to sell and support 1,000 copies of say PhotoOfficeWebDesigner at $1,000 per suite instead of 10,000 users at $100 per suite.
Therefore, they accept a certain level of "piracy" in order to facilitate early adopters, students, enthusiasts, cheapskates, collectors, and casual hobbyist users, but really enforce (via the BSA) corporate piracy issues.
For example, "piracy" gave Microsoft a world wide OS monopoly and made Photoshop (worst paint interface ever) the industry standard for image manipulation.
And that's the fact, Jack.
this situation is actually NOT helped in the slightest by AV companies accepting money from corporations to brand keygens/cracks as 'generic.keygen.w32' (made up example) that are not rootkits, viruses or trojans, and delete them from peoples systems.
When they do that they're not security companies, but corporate enforcers, and it just makes it easier for black hats to spread disinformation, increase the FUD against anti-piracy measures, and convince more people X thing that actually really is an infection is a false positive.
good AV (NOT looking at you Norton), rootkit detection, anti spyware all help, but take time and often experience to run, and are performance hogs many disable anyway.
the whole main point here and in my original posts was no matter how experienced YOU or any of the other neowin posters are, (I'm sure half the people on neowin , should they have to cleanse a clients machine (not accusing anyone of piracy here) you'd know how to at the very least run Spybot, Gmer, or track infection sources with ProcMon at the very least) there is a huge number of people out there who are NOT, they don't run security software, and/or are easily duped into disabling it to install any of the crap they pull off the internet, those who are going after illegal software are infinitely more at risk, and once their machine is infected it's not just they that suffer (private data theft) but others online (DDoS)
There is no way i would fork $250 for vista ultimate. Unless someone donates me one of them trees that grow money, then sure.
We gave them this monopoly, and now we're paying the price...to them.
We gave them this monopoly, and now we're paying the price...to them.
It was Gates' ability to write a contract that allowed for him to make Windows what it is now. People were just buying toasters as far as they were concerned.
Second, charging $399 for the top version of Windows is a bit out of line. At the release of Windows XP, the Home edition was $199 and the Pro was $299, while at the introduction of Vista had increased the price from $239 to $399, not counting the crippled Home Edition without Aero. This is roughly a $100 price increase. A price range that has changed very little since the introduction of the Windows 95. I think this will simply encourage people who need the software and are not likely to pirate software in the past to actually consider using a place like the Pirates Bay (elect).
Windows 95 $209, 1995
Windows NT 4.0 Workstation $314, 1996
Windows 2k Pro $299, 2000
Windows XP Pro $299, 2001
People are essentially paying a tax for a failing Western economy (short term) and the inability of a company to release another product outside of a five year time line.
Although I would buy it if it was like 129 dollars or less. Yeah... I'm real happy with Vista right now, but I'd be even happier if I had the box sitting up there on my desk
Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM $199.00nzd
Microsoft Windows XP Professional OEM $302.63nzd
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium $515.00nzd
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium OEM $205.88nzd
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate $883.63nzd
and M$ wonders why people Pirate their O.S. and take the time to crack/hack their dumb ass attempts at protection if they made it more affordable then piracy would decrease exponentially
Was already worried tho, my legally bought Vista Ultimate OEM might be infected. By refusing to announce Microsoft that I bought a copy of their OS I was more or less forced to find other ways and that Timer thing *coughcough* helped alot. As far as I can tell it's not infected tho.
after 90 days of free phone support they charge a fee. so what stops the end user of chargeing a fee to microsoft for the unnecessary wpa/wga Phone calls to verify that the copy is Legal.
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