One Bug To Beat Them All
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Bugs happen. They happen in Windows, OS X, various distros of Linux, whatever. But this bug unfortunately, is the saddest thing I have ever heard of. As the piece points out, Microsoft responded and said they are taking this very seriously. Great, but knowing how poorly activation has worked in the past, both from user experience side of things and simply because it’s so easy to bypass, maybe it’s time to get back to the drawing board?
I do not pretend to know all of the ins-and-outs of Windows Vista activation, what sets what off and so on. Having said this, would it not simply be more effective to take a beacon approach versus policing the users hardware? Considering nearly every copy of Windows is connecting to the Internet at some point, having a beacon go off when it finally does connect, using a port not so easily firewalled, means no activation nonsense. Again, if they are already doing something like this, great, be happy with it and leave your legit users be for Pete’s sake.
Tags: computer bug, windows, vista, firewall, activation
One Comment
Washii
October 24th, 2007
at 8:18pm
What do you mean a port ‘not so easily firewalled’? If it was my installation, (this is where Caps Lock would be on, but I’ll be nice) Every Single Port Is Firewalled Until I Deem Otherwise. No excuses.
In fact, I’ll use a program that purports to block all network access through early boot-up as far as it possibly can (Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall purports to do this).
How do you have a port not easily firewalled, though? Are you going to use port 0? That would just instantly be a red flag to any half-decently made firewall.
But, I do agree. These draconian measures for activating installs are insane. I’ve known about this for a good few months, being that CS students are prone to gaming + driver updates for gaming.