It seems in MS’s sprint to collect as much cash from their little XP registration PITA, they have run out of license’s.
Whoops.
Morons. Boy, you’d think they would have a better handle on this, considering, they are, you know, a monopoly.
Thinks, they were simply overwhelmed by a greater-than-expected demand for this OS. How does that make them “morons”? (Unless you’re contesting they’re morons for including WPA, but that’s a different topic).
And just what does being a monopoly have to do with predicting supply and demand?
WPA isn’t to collect money (well, it is, but not that simple). It’s to restore the income they lose due to their historically pirated OS. There’s a huge difference.
Maybe you should be congratulating MS for making an OS that’s exceeding demands.
On what, exactly?
I find it weird that that they can’t just make more licenses. What does it take to create a valid XP license, I wonder? Obviously not just making up random sequences of letters and numbers.
Sorry, Monster, just a bit of MSBashing XL. Coming to work to a blue-screen-of-death that should have been displaying the results of an overnight, 6-hour series of tests then reading about their failure to accommodate customers who are ham-strung by the very OS they are trying to use, well, it stuck me as funny and fitting of some abuse. Normally, I don’ give a shit one way or the other about MS and their strangle-hold on the market, but the whole thing just irks me.
I understand about piracy concerns and all that, but still…it irks me. 'Course, I’m running Win2000 and Win98, so it’s really a non-starter, but still.
Revtim, it seems the problem is that they have to physically print paper copies, too, and that is holding the digital giant back.
Check that, Win2000 and WinNT 4.0.
I think this incident only goes to show that we’re the morons. Not only has MicroShaft slipped the monopoly hook, but they’ve finally managed to figure out a way to sell everyone a product that they already have.
Because in five years, when MS disables WindowsXP by no longer accepting product activation requests, buyers are going to need a new operating system. And Daddy Warbucks will be waiting for those buyers with open arms.
And all the doomsayers like me and our arguments will be long forgotten. Oh, well. Time to grab that copy of Linux for Dummies.
Holy Man, that’s a great point, Sofa King!
Think of all the people who are using Windows 95 right now - geez, we have about 6 machines here at work using. Now Microsoft decides it won’t support Windows 95, who cares? We figured it out a long time ago and we can support it ourselves - jesus, MS Tech Service is a bunch of idiots.
But, now with XP, they can say no more activation, so if you needed to take an old XP machine and upgrade to, say, a new hard drive or the 2006 equivalent of USB, you couldn’t do it and you would have to upgrade to XP2 or whatever.
Maybe this Lindows thing will work. http://www.lindows.com
Being a monopoly means always being able to tell your customers, “We don’t care that you’re having problems.” 
[sub]Don’t blame me, I use a Mac. The only monpolies I support are those for good design and reliable engineering. Why people put up with Windows is beyond me.[/sub]
So being a monopoly means never having to say your sorry?
You’re kidding, right?
Look. MicroSoft doesn’t even have a monopoly. They just have a very big market share. That may seem like nitpicking, but I AM an economist. 
Furthermore, having a big market share IS a major advantage when it comes to predicting demand. You’ve already sold X million copies of product X, which followed product W, which in turn followed product G. There’s a pattern to be discovered there. MicroSoft can reasonably predict how many people, that are now using 98/ME/2000, will buy XP. Sure, they may not make the BEST of predictions. But this XP thing has been on the shelves for what, 1 month? To have to admit to the world that your estimations were THAT far off is IMHO quite a blunder.
I’ll just pretend I didn’t see the remark about “predicting supply”. ANY company should be able to predict its supply.
I would like to close this post with a disclaimer.
I am a computer moron, and am happily using MicroSoft 98 and MicroSoft Office products. In general, it works just fine. I’m not looking for a debate about the virtues of XP, for I find bickering over stupid things like computer OS’s extremely silly. I do, however, have some opinions when it comes to MicroSoft as a corporation, and I air them as such.
another major problem with XP is that it has raw sockets.
i don’t remember what exactly that means to the computer, but i know that it means to everyone else that DDoS attacks will become almost unblockable.
eh… the gibson research center has a lot of stuff about it. enjoy.
Sockets are a means for programs to communicate over a network. They were originally developed under UNIX. According to GRC, earlier versions of Windows had partial versions of sockets available, but XP has the whole deal. As I understand it, UNIX is a hell of a lot more secure than Windows, because (among other things) it’s much stricter about not letting programs out of their assigned memory spaces, and having tighter controls on I/O operations. It’s possible that under Windows, a worm program could use sockets to let hackers walk all over your system.
Didn’t they just get convicted of monopolistic practices? And wouldn’t that make them a monopoly? This may seem like nitpicking, but it was a decision by a Federal court.