Vista to take a hard stand against piracy [Yahoo! News]
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by
Matt Hickey
on
October 5, 2006
 introduced its CheckIn system with Windows XP to put an end to your swashbuckling days. You were able to invent counterfeiting schemes that worked around all the documentation needed to drop anchor on your own hardware.</p>
<p>But with its largest payload in years (haha!) set to make port soon, MS has upped the security on its ship. For example, instead of just nagging you to register, Windows Vista will start limiting some services, such as web browsing and access to the files on the desktop. This goes far beyond the annoying “if you’re not legit, you don’t get Nilla wafers!” approach used previously, and goes straight to “we don’t care if you have our cargo, we’re putting you in Davy Jones’ locker!” It’s a move that’s going to put the average computer nerd squarely in their camp. That last sentence, lads, was sarcasm.</p>
<p>After so many years of fighting their users instead of courting them, Big Redmond is again using the stick instead of the carrot to meet its bottom line. Of course, Microsoft says this protection is to keep their stuff from being stolen in China and Russia where anti-piracy laws are token at best. That is a legitimate complaint, but rolling that crap out here is just really going to piss off some its customers who are at risk of the big switch. We mean people who want simple computing, not red tape. When people are tired of jumping through hoops just to use hardware they spent real money on, they start looking for alternatives, and at this point in the OS wars (oh, yeah, they’re back) that’s the very last thing they want or need.</p>
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pew pew pew
I give it 2 weeks ( or less ) before some one cracks it.
“Big Redmond is again using the stick instead of the carrot to meet its bottom line”
I’m curious what carrot you think Microsoft could offer to entice more users to pay for their software? I don’t think that giving it away freely would work for a publicly traded large company that derives a significant portion of its revenue from software sales.
Well, Piracy doesn’t hit the MS bottom line that much – but a pissed off user base who flees the OS would, I have the feeling MS can’t run the risk of alienating too many users.