Corporations Suffer Microsoft Activation Bug 744
Uncle Bob writes "Trustworthy Computing, eat your heart out! As of the 2003-04-14 update, people are reporting that Office 2000 SR1a is now asking to be "registered" again. And again, and again. Very little information has been posted on the traditional news sites (the only link I could find was The Register. Note - The Register's story is not quite accurate, but the registration bug is real. Our company with approx 80,000 PCs has been hit...."
sue? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing I can think of protecting mircrosoft would be the EULA, but im no expert in that area.
Re:80,000 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This hit us. (Score:5, Interesting)
Where is this in the TCO? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've also never seen acquisition costs for free software, "well I've got a meeting with the vendor this afternoon. we're gonna haggle over the price of 20 seats."
Piracy (Score:5, Interesting)
So far we've seen:
products which won't work after 30 days until you "activate them" (Win XP, Office XP, Autocad, etc),
games which install fully to your hard-drive but require the CD in to be played,
games which require a CD key to be played online (try playing a second-hand game online!),
games which won't work with certain CD drives thanks to the way the Safedisk copy protection system works,
programs which require you to enter a particular word or phrase from the manual every time you want to use it,
CDs which stop you from making a legal backup copy,
DVDs which only work if you are in a particular region, or use a particular OS, not to mention Macrovision problems
etc etc. Yet the people who pirate products rarely have any of the above mentioned problems. OK, so they have to keep up-to-date with keygens and no-CD patches, but my point is that ordinary consumers are penalised for the crimes of others.
Re:80,000 (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I wondered about switching to Linux and how much that would *save* them.
I mentioned that to my mom and she said that they discussed it many times, but they ran figures on how much money they spent/lost just switching from one *program* to another (training and help desk support), let alone to a whole new operating system.
She was in the department that hired temps and they used software that scanned in resumes and then fed them to a database and allowed searches on it and such. At the time, I worked for a company that had a superior product to what they had, it was cheaper, and had a better UI. She said in order for them to switch (after they looked into it), due mostly to training, it would add on over $2million in costs to the overall price - and their current system "worked" so they were going to change. And that was just her group which was "only" a few thousand people.
You could argue that were the software easy enough to work with, you wouldn't need to train the users... but if you think that way, you give the users WAY too much credit - something one learns quickly in the software industry - if you are writing software for end users, remember that your end users are fat dumber than you can ever estimate.
Essentially the only way you could switch (easily and cost effectively) over an office is if it were very small, and if the users were already relatively tech savvy.
for the most part, any savings in OS and program cost is lost in productivity lost during the switch and the increased support for people that are essentially all newbies at that point.
Oh bloody hell. (Score:2, Interesting)
"Our company with approx 80,000 PCs has been hit...."
Maybe if your SysAdmin had spent some time testing the patch first, you wouldn't be in this situation now.
Here's the quick guide:
If your company needs some sysadmins with a clue, I'm sure you can find some over at Kuro5hin.
Re:Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically you got a piece of plastic which you had to fold and place onto your screen. You then had to line the plastic up with certain pixels and then look through the LENSLOCK device to "read" the scrambled symbol on screen.
Bear in mind that you plugged your Spectrum into your TV set, and you might have a 14" portable telly or a whopping great 30" beauty. In most cases (I think Elite was one of the culprits too) you only had 3 chances of getting it right. If you didn't THE COMPUTER WOULD RESET! And as the game was loaded from tape you had another 5-7 minute wait ahead of you.
In the end I bought a microdrive unit and a snapshot interface and saved the game to microdrive once I'd got past the copy protection. Happy days!
Re:Oh bloody hell. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
I looked on the net and discovered it was a SafeDisk problem - his CD drive wasn't behaving in a way which was compatible with Safedisk.
He could have returned the game to the shop, bought a new CDROM drive and hoped for the best, or resorted to www.gamecopyworld.com for a no-CD crack. In the end he chose the latter option, but he told me that he somehow feels like a software pirate even though he paid real money for the game!
Re:Not cost effective (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the the training costs and issues with switching office packages is nothing but FUD. There may be issues with a different office package not working with existing applications or addon's but that is a different issue all together and that is not limited to just office packages.
Hit most of my ex-clients too (Score:5, Interesting)
So far, one really big ex-client with 20000+ office2k installations has had their help desk swamped with calls from clueless/scared secretaries and PHBs. Since this place exists just to create huge amounts of worthless documentation, no M$Office means no work is getting done. Aparently there was a lot of screaming and shouting in the IT department yesterday, stress levels are through the roof, and finger pointing is the only activity going on.
Despite a huge support contract with the beast from redmond, they haven't been able to get a real response (they also got the set the clock back idiocy, which doesn't work). I've told the big boss to keep track of lost time, and to smack the M$ sales slime for the bill next contract renewal time. Guesstimates from the M$ support people is that they may have a fix to be rolled out by hand on all 21200 machines by the end of next week, at the earliest. So much for a 2 million euro/year support contract.
the AC
Re:This hit us. (Score:4, Interesting)
I got the impression that is exactly what his/her/it's point exactly was. They locked themselves into software that they only use because "everyone else does". I know I'm in the same boat despite everything I (litterally) prove otherwise. I'm surprised (from time to time) that I haven't got canned yet. I've been told (essentially) that I can't even say the "L" word anymore. OK, fine. I still speak up on alternatives, and also PROVE that they are viable ones (Mozzie, OOo, etc.). It's like talking to a wall, though.
Re:good example! (Score:5, Interesting)
The cause of the potential problems in this area when using DRM and online product activation is not the same as the registration thingy in Office 2000, but the result is the same: you are locked out of the product. Tell people about how product activation may lock you out of your own computer or data, and often you get the reply "surely they won't screw up that badly, and surely they wouldn't lock you out completely?". If they tell you that, counter with this example.
Re:This hit us. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do feel sorry for you about that, though. The Linux users group at my company had to shut down untder the same kind of threat. Funny thing, as they allow internally hosted employee group sites from quilting to fishing to almost anything you can think of, but LINUX, can't have a site for THAT.
Re:This hit us. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's definitely a way to implement this in the contract. As with any contract regarding constant service, from rental homes that require repairs to service contracts for air conditioners and heaters, a penalty for lack of service can be required either at a set rate, by percentage, or some other rate that can be proven through evidence instead of the unfounded claims of the client that is demanding a discount. Contracts for small, mid-size, large, and multinational businesses could have different set rates, a small percentage of the cost of the entire deal could be used as a penalty rate for all businesses, etc. The problem, however, is that A) this is not in the contract and Microsoft's clients are thus in no position to demand any sort of refund or penalty fee, B) Microsoft would never allow that sort of contract anyway because they have a de facto monopoly advantage in the workplace, and C) Microsoft would never make that sort of decision because both their older and hastily patched software is so horrifically buggy that they would lose tons of money on such a plan.
You missed a factor (Score:3, Interesting)
Right (if the licencing costs are not REALLY high.) But the training is once and the support costs are ongoing. Support cost differences quickly dominate once you're over the hump.
[... assume] 100 users need a support staff of 3-5 people [...] The avg. college kid can probably work as an intern in a lot of these when it comes to M$ based solutions, but when you go off into the world of Unices, where people actually need to have a basic understanding of what is happening support costs (and the avg. wage of the staff) would skyrocket
I think you're off on using an intern for support. That misses the added costs incurred when he hits the problems he CAN'T handle correctly - both the added costs of worker/application/business-process downtime while he calls for more trained help and the added costs ditto.
But the BIG thing your analysis missed - which the TCO studies funded by others than Microsoft catch - is the effect of the higher reliability of open-source solutions. This reduces costs two ways:
First: Though you need people who know what they're doing, you need a MUCH SMALLER NUMBER of them, because they put in much less time per-machine.
Second: Because things don't fail as often, your business processes have LESS DOWNTIME. So you get back a LOT of productivity in those hundreds of workers who spend more of their time working and less of it waiting for the helpdesk.
That last factor is another component of why open-source has achieved penetration in servers first. Different functions have different costs of downtime. For a generic worker it varies a lot depending on your particular business and the workers function in it, while the costs accrue in one department and the benefits in another. For a server - especially a business-critical-function server - the costs of downtime are almost always very high, while the server is bought and administered by the same department that handles its maintenance, making all three components of its TCO visible to the same bosses.
If sun had a clue.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me glad (Score:5, Interesting)
That our company has switched over to OpenOffice exclusively. It's been a year since we switched over from Microsoft Office, and there have only had a handful of documents that have had MS Office/Open Office incompatibilities.
Plus, OpenOffice is totally free. Retraining was a non-issue. We told the employees when we switched over that they were welcome to use MS Office, but they would have to buy the software themselves and keep the licenses handy. There were no complaints about switching over after that.
So we can sit back smugly as all of our branches are unaffected and read stories like this without blanching :) If you haven't checked out OpenOffice [openoffice.org], I highly recommend that you do.
Re:Piracy (Score:1, Interesting)
OT: Re:This hit us. (Score:2, Interesting)
It is their insecurity that hits you.
Big Blue to the rescue (Score:3, Interesting)
The parade is to dust that older sign saying "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Which also has exceptions but hush.
Get the management to contact IBM Services, a branch of Big Blue that make half the revenue of IBM these days. They would be very happy to discuss Linux solutions for the company and will do support as well -- for a price of course.
Then some PHB will notice that since this open source thingy is free and you only pay for service, Joe Schmoe in IT can install and use open source tools if that saves money.... And you win.
Re:QC? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, this is more an indication that MS doesn't have anything resembling a QC department.
This bug appears to be affecting so many people with such a clear cause-and-effect relationship to the upgrade, that I doubt anyone at Microsoft even tested the damn patch!
Perhaps more plausible is that internal Microsoft software doesn't have "activiation" or "licenses", meaning that even if they did try to test the patch, they really didn't test it.
Microsoft is setting the worst possible example for software engineering, here, folks.
Re:This hit us. (Score:5, Interesting)
For those of you who don't know how NDS works (and probably don't care), I'll spill some of my useless knowledge on you.
So, let's say you set the clock back on a Novell server. Most NDS transactions are timestamped, to allow auditing, and other such nice things. The problem is, let's say you set your time back now - it's 4/17/03, 12:40pm, and you set it back to 4/17/00, 12:40pm.
NDS isn't exactly *stupid* - it has transactions leading up to 4/17/03, and time very rarely goes backwards like that. So the server is forced to issue "synthetic time", so every transaction takes place a very short ammount of time after 4/17/03, 12:40:0000, then 12:40:00.01, 12:40:00.02, and so on. This will *never fix itself*...
Well, until 4/17/03, 12:40:xx.xx pm, when things catch up. Then everything will be fine.
Never fear! You can fix this. After you roll your clocks back, just run dsrepair with the -a switch (which allows you to do the stupid things - but for the really stupid things, you can use the switches -xk2 -xk3), and pick advanced options -> Global Schema Operations. Log in, and select "Declare a new Epoch."
Then you're just really telling the Novell server, yes, strange as it may seem, time *did* go backwards. And it deals with it.
I really don't know why I bothered to write that.
Re:Makes me glad (Score:5, Interesting)
How many companies donate money to OSS projects when they use it as replacement for proprietary products? With as little as 15% of the license-costs you'll normally pay for the commercial product (MS Office in this case), you can give most OSS projects a significant boost in their development.
Further Implications (Score:3, Interesting)
MS has effectively been able to disable an application suite that has been purchased, based on a date.
It won't take much more for them to figure out how to make it so that its part of an application service pack update.
And how much harder would this be to tie into an OS. Instead of a blue screen of death, you'd get nothing. Heck, imagine trying to boot your system and getting nothing.
Some say MS would never do this, that it would hurt the market too much.
But how many people don't rush out to get the new OS, who stay 2 or more versions behind, who really don't care about upgrading.
The next update you get from MS could render your system inoperable after a few years. ***wisecracks left out***
"Hmm... we need to disable Win2k systems so that we can drive market sales for our next OS we release in 2005."
Re:Sweet. (Score:2, Interesting)
As of April 15th Office 2000 SR1 no longer needs to be registered in those affected countries but it appears that things have gone a bit wrong.
Instead of bashing Microsoft, learn the facts.
Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature... (Score:2, Interesting)
As of April 15th Office 2000 SR1 no longer needs to be registered in those affected countries but it appears that things have gone a bit wrong.