26 Feb
Posted by Blair in Security
Windows Genuine Advantage is an anti-piracy tool loathed by many, tolerated by some, and even appreciated by others. How you feel about it may depend in part on whether or not you’ve been caught in its snares: the “authentic software” validation tool is known to have falsely identified thousands of “pirated” Vista installs.
As Microsoft steps up its war against piracy, the company has decided to slightly nuance Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). Rather than identify users as either in the clear or not, the company has added a third classification for users who set off some, but not all of WGA’s undisclosed piracy-detection functionality. Users will now find that Windows XP installs are labeled as genuine, non-genuine or “not sure.”
While Microsoft has not responded to requests for comment, it’s quite obvious what is going on here: Microsoft has added “not sure” as a way of cutting down on the number of false positives associated with WGA. As many as one in five PCs were failing WGA checks, but this new setting should both reduce this and give Microsoft the chance to investigate further the kinds of things that are landing folks in the “not sure” category.
Via: ArsTechnia?
3 Responses
Article Feed » Windows Genuine Advantage’s newest setting: “you might be a pirate”
February 27th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
1[…] post by Blair and software by Elliott […]
Tyler
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:05 pm
2WTF, just stop being so cheap and lame, Microsoft. Jesus.
Narendil
May 27th, 2007 at 8:36 am
3Microsoft is DEAD!
It is not cool any more and there are many
other good products on the market.
Look at Vista. It has nothing new that could
be recognized as a real technical
improvement of OS. They spend about 5
years to implement so useful things such
as DRM, WGA, UAC … and other total
genuine sh…t.
Many big labels (such as Dell) are started to sell PCs with Windows XP and Linux.
Microsoft itself is started to sell Linux due
to the pact with Novell. 😉 UNIX rules!
Tech Questions?
Categories
Links
Expert Zone
Support Forums
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
What the Tech is powered by WordPress - © Geeks to Go, Inc. - All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy