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1. Comment - The Truth About Windows Genuine Advantage

   (May 15, 2005 - 3:36 PM)

   i mean, the numbers are obviously speculative. with WPA and then broad analasys of windows update server responses, surveys, scans, etc etc, windows XP has the best chance for a close guess at how many legit vs pirated copies are out there, but there's no way to be sure....
   
   that said, i remember hearing one time that in fact, the all time record high instances of non-licensed copies distributed of a single operating system was (drum roll) Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. now i have no actual legitimate base for this, and i don't think anyone else really has a good stat base for other claims of piracy... but what i do know is that in the late 90's when MS had their big time licensing push to audit their world of enterprise customers, it was right around the big transition away from windows 3.11, the same way we are in the big push away from win98 right now. my point is that back then, without much knowledge of licensing, your computer tech/admins never though one thing about copying the all of 5 floppies windows came on,a nd installing that one legit set onto hundreads of machines. this is also the same time frame as word perfect for windows, the defacto word processor app at the time, lotus 123 spreadsheet, etc.
   
   so yeah, if anyone can bring this to light i'm sure many people would be curious to know what's out there. it almost seems like everyone has forgotten about those days when you shook in fear that MS might send an auditer to your company, and there was no system in place to validate your licenses other than paper (ie, no license tracking services) and have forgotten when software piracy was focused mainly on games, and what the whole attitude towards distributing software via floppy disk was like.

2. Comment - The Truth About Windows Genuine Advantage

   (May 15, 2005 - 3:07 PM)

   oh, that's an awesome little anecdote. definitely makes the point of "to what ends?" this whole issue beggs.

3. Comment - The Truth About Windows Genuine Advantage

   (May 15, 2005 - 3:03 PM)

   qute frankly, it is impressive when a system runs stable without reboot for a long perior of time.... but i would never use that as the measure of stability.
   
   i have seen simple python scripts completely take down a linux box to the point that a reboot was the only possible remedy. on the other hand, i have seen services on windows 2000 that refuse to restart in order to bring a critical function back to life, requiring a reboot.
   
   it goes back to the whole "do one thing well rather than many things mediocre" idea. the uptime debate is just silly, as you can have a mediocre sysad whose answer to life is reboot, vs a slick UNIX admin who can update core system services on his servers without a reboot for years, vs an MS admin who can have his Exchange server 100% for over a year. eventually all of them will have to install a kernel update that requires a reboot, and then they are all at < 1 day system uptime.
   
   in my experience, service downtime is the mesure the rest of the world judges us on. they could care less how long the box has been running, but freak out when they can't get their e mail between noon and 1230.

4. Comment - The Truth About Windows Genuine Advantage

   (May 15, 2005 - 2:40 PM)

   well, that's a well and good point when you're talking about seemingly minor inconveniences.... yeah, quit whining when all the "force fed" changes are merely inconveniences....
   
   but truth be told, the most recent run of updates from MS for winXP have been so radically different that it forces big time enterprise customers to either not patch or update their systems in order to maintain mission critical services, or else completely redesign their infrastructure.
   
   on one side, you have a point... but on another side, you're telling people to stop whining about things that ammount to breech of contract, or at least bate-and-switch.
   
   yes, these updates needed to be made, but the implimentation by MS could have been much more efficient if Redmond were more open to all of its enterprise customers, rather than just the top few.

5. Comment - The Truth About Windows Genuine Advantage

   (May 15, 2005 - 2:32 PM)

   yeah, i prefer to have legit software, but i have seen exactly what you are talking about. saw a guy at a LAN party show up right after going to Frye's and picking up a new video card, rushed over to get it in his machinea nd start gaming, but low and behold it invalidated his copy of Windows XP (and it shouldn't have done that, according to the WPA documentationa bout what hardware changes require re-validation).
   
   everyone who was there had a legit copy of windows that they had obtained through retail, but none of them install it because of those types of problems. their legit license is merely a safety net to say they have the right to install windows on their machine. is this wrong? according to the EULA it is. but ultimately MS never gives any real gaurantee on how their software will perform, because that's the nature of proprietary software running on a defacto standard, and there's little to nothing anyone can do about it, except to stop investing money in the defacto standard proprietary software.... if you get my point (ie, there really is nothing we can do).