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Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) 192

Posted by Zonk from the have-to-lock-up-those-.docs dept.
Ant writes "PC World is reporting that Microsoft's Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program will require mandatory validation of Office software starting October 27 (2006)." From the article: "Similarly, starting in January, users of Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service, Microsoft added. Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005."
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Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) More

Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage (OGA)

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  • Just gets easier (Score:5, Insightful)

    by krray ( 605395 ) * on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:06PM (#16615408)
    It is getting easier and easier to continue using Open Office is seems...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by indigest ( 974861 )
      Are there any medium to large businesses out there using OpenOffice instead of Office? I am all for OpenOffice, but it seems unimaginable for the business world to wean its way off of Microsoft Word and Powerpoint.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )
        Company wide or in parts of the company? I know 50% of the devs here use OOo even when reading word documents. It seems to process even those better.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by rainman_bc ( 735332 )
        but it seems unimaginable for the business world to wean its way off of Microsoft Word and Powerpoint.

        Not to mention that Excel beats the turd out of Calc in its ability to parse text files - at least at first glance.

        Maybe I'm a dumbass, but I couldn't figure out how to load a pipe delimited file into calc like I could do so in Excel.

        Excel is still more intuitive and provides more power to working with larger lists too. There's no AFAIK pivot tables in Calc either.

        Both really strong reasons for the enterpr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by VENONA ( 902751 )
        Sun for sure. I believe IBM uses it extensively. http://www.oasis-open.org/events/adoption_forum_2 0 05/slides/tenhumberg.pdf [oasis-open.org] is a pretty extensive adoption in the public sector document. I've seen surveys that talk about 'fifty large [some European country name] companies' and such.

        But I don't see the business world abandoning MS Office anytime soon, either. If nothing else, inertia is a powerful force. On the other hand, if I can read and write MS Office formats (and I've had no troubles with the sort of d

    • Who needs Open Office when you've got piracy? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Channard ( 693317 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:26PM (#16615740) Journal
      I work at a fairly large chain that sells, amongst other things, computers. None of these PCs come with Word or Office, rather they come with Works. I explain that Works may do what they want. I explain how much Office is, and sometimes I mention you can get Open Office for free, since I don't realistically think many people are going to lay out the cash in store for the software. Know what they say typically? 'I know someone who's got office, I can get them to copy it for free.' I used to mention product validation but now I just don't bother. It's just they know Word and Office and that's what they want, by hook or by crook.
      • It's just they know Word and Office and that's what they want, by hook or by crook.

        It used to be the case that knowing Word / Excel / Powerpoint / etc. was something that could help get you in the door for some of the better paying entry level jobs or temp work. I expect that is still the case. Skill with the MS Office products is a bread and butter skill in a lot of jobs. I doubt that there is much call for Works or Open Office in the job market regardless of their utility and price / performance.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Foofoobar ( 318279 )
      No kidding. PDF, Word docs, Excel docs and open docs all open great and convert nicely. We use it within the workplace on several desktops and have plans to move completely to it before moving to Vista or the next gen of Office.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sporadic ( 110921 )
      Great timing too, I just uninstalled Office 2000 from my main desktop yesterday and installed OO 2.0.4. I thought about checking out the Office 2003 standard edition (free 30 or 60 day eval from MSFT) but decided against it; what would be the point? OO is more than enough for my personal use, and appears to open all my existing doc and xls files correctly (granted not very complicated files).

      Sporadic

    • Re:Just gets easier (Score:5, Insightful)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:31PM (#16615820) Homepage
      Microsoft is betting that Windows and Office are so easy to use versus the open source counterparts that they can afford to decrease the ease of use a little bit with these shenanigans, and still come out on top. Which makes it all the more important to make sure open source software is as user-friendly as absolutely possible, so end users aren't forced to choose between two difficult options.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by murdocj ( 543661 )
        Microsoft is betting that Windows and Office are so easy to use versus the open source counterparts that they can afford to decrease the ease of use a little bit with these shenanigans, and still come out on top.

        What they are betting is that the number of users who get pissed off and quit using MS Office is going to be less than the number of people who pay for it instead of pirating it. And who knows, they might be right.

      • That's probably a valid point for linux vs. windows although there are improvements. But in the case of open office I can hardly notice any difficulty of use

        The next is unrelated to the parent:

        I own an hp deskjet 3420 printer, it has got `issues when I try to print it from MSOffice there's a chance that a System Error dialog pops up, my printer wouldn't print anything in that case, when that happened I used to have to restart the PC plenty of times before the errror is gone.

        After switching to OpenOffic

      • Linux just won't do what windows will. Tons of popular apps just won't work on Linux. Lots of popular hardware also.
    • This has been in the hopper since pre 1.0. But Calc still hasn't implemented basic useability functions that were present in Visicalc and every spreadsheet since. Meaning that spreadsheet power users can't easily start formulas with the numeric keypad.
  • Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005.

    Aren't you supposed to do user interface research before releasing a product out to the consumers? Why have your customers hate the product tbefore redesigning it to meet their needs?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 )
      Yeah, they need to just get with the program and do perpetual Beta versions, like Google.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MikeMoose ( 136353 )
      One is supposed to do research before a product release. However, this is Microsoft we're concerning ourselves with. If you are Microsoft, you have all of the rights and privileges that come to those who dominate market share:

      - The right to do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want.
      - Have the belief that you know what's best for the consumer - even when they tell you otherwise.
      - That you may abuse the "uneducated" consumer whenever you wish, via a graphical user interface, or
      • I agree with you. A friend of mine put it so succintly. MS is like McDonalds. They take some one else's idea and mass produce something that just slightly shittier than the original but most people haven't experienced the original so they don't know any better. McDonalds has the the McFlurry (DQ's blizzard), Their 1/4 pounders (BK's 1/4 Pounder's), Salads (Wendy's Salads) ect. MS has done the same with Tabs (Firefox, Netscape), Windows (Mac), plug and play (mac), Window's media player (Winamp anyone?), I'm

  • Customer as criminal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kherr ( 602366 ) <kevinNO@SPAMpuppethead.com> on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:07PM (#16615418) Homepage
    Microsoft is just one of the highest-profile examples of a company viewing their customers as criminals (Sony Music also comes to mind). Most of the piracy comes from people who would never buy the products in the first place. Punishing legitimate users won't end piracy and it won't boost sales. What is wrong with these companies? The more Microsoft blocks the use of Office the more likely alternatives will gain stronger position in the market. Which is fine by me, I'm tired of getting simple text documents in doc format.
    • And the reason is that 90% of the current "pirates" would *not purchase what they're using but switch to a free (as in good) alternative.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zxnos ( 813588 )
      you know, i dont feel punished when the screen pops up and asks me to validate windows. i dont feel that microsoft is treating me as a criminal either. by your logic you probably dont shop anyplace. look up next time you are in a store. see that black bubble? or even the obvious camera in mom and pops?. customer as criminal. ever buy gasoline, use the bank? to me it is a business trying to protect their bottom line.

      who cares if most pirates never buy the product, microsoft shouldnt feel obligated to suppor

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DMoylan ( 65079 )
        when i have to type in a 36 digit number on the phone after a 10 digit phone number and then type another 36 digit number into the pc and this takes 3-5 minutes then it wastes my time. when i have to do this a few times a week for customers systems that have come back infected and its taken them a few hours to find their original disks and licence code then it wastes their time.

        when the os is responsible for the infection in the first place and this same comapny are wasting mine and the customers time doub

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          when the os is responsible for the infection in the first place

          That's called blaming the victim. By that logic, anyone who gets mugged or beaten up is at fault for not being tough enough to deal with their attackers.

          • Not quite right. In this case, the "victim" is the OS — which has had plenty of time to come good with security — not the customer directly.

            The customer becomes the victim when the service people bill them for the time their defenceless machine chewed up getting fixed. And what else can the service-people do? Run a charity for MS OSes?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
        Okay, so next time you're at a store and HAVEN'T stolen anything imagine you leave, are accosted in the parking lot by security who then take away your... shoes, let's say. How does THAT make you feel?

        I think that's why the majority of people hate Genuine Advantage and it's predecessors.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Firehed ( 942385 )
        Except reducing piracy doesn't cause lower prices, unlike with reducing shoplifting. If a store has to jack their prices to cover their losses, that's one thing. But once software is developed (as anything shipping now is), it costs all of $1 to stock the shelves, and piracy doesn't affect those shelves anyways. The only way that piracy is actually going to have an effect on pricing is if people start wearing eyepatches into stores and start stuffing their backpacks full of software.

        I'm very happy to pay

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I agree, when they say $500 billion dollars were lost last year to piracy, that implies that everyone who would have pirated the software would have bought it if they weren't pirates.

      This is a false assumption imho, because although I may pirate software, it doesnt mean that I would buy it just to play with it, photoshop as an example, lots of people have photoshop installed and use it for hobby/educational reasons. If they couldnt pirate photoshop, they'd just use paintshop pro or the gimp or some other fr

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) *
      Most people never bought MS products because they were so easy to copy. That is why MS was the machine of choice. Buy the machine, steal the software. I saw many switch from Apple to Wintel as it became clear that on Apple one had to buy software, while on MS WIndows everything could be 'borrowed'.

      Now MS is demanding that everything be paid for. How much this is going to effect the market is unclear. Most MS software I have owned has either been paid for by my school or places that I work through th

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aero2600-5 ( 797736 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:07PM (#16615428)
    I don't understand Microsoft. The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is actually very easy to defeat, and I'm sure this new OGA will be just as easy. Why irritate customers when the people who intend to use without purchasing it will do so anyway? Did they buy a copy of Sony's playbook titled "How to piss away your loyal customers and then blame them for your lack of growth"?
    I really don't get it. Why continue to do something after it's been proven ineffective?
    Aero

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:14PM (#16615534)
      I really don't get it. Why continue to do something after it's been proven ineffective?

      "Stop crying. If you want to cry I'll give you something to cry about. Whack! There, how did you like that? Now stop crying."

      There's really no accounting for the behavior of people. That's why, on the whole I prefer hanging out with cats.

      KFG

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shados ( 741919 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @05:52PM (#16616796)
      That really shows how clueless the Slashdot crowd can be sometimes, considering how many places this comment pops up.
      Yes, WGA is easy to defeat. Thats not the point. There are douzans of thousands (dare I say hundreds of thousands?) of people who copy CDs and install them all over (even large corporations!) because they don't realise that its 1 license per user. Read that again: They don't realise it, they don't know it. Many -consulting firms- (thats geeks here!) buy 1 MSDN Universal subscriptions, and use them for 20 developers, thinking its what you're SUPPOSED to do. Same with Windows, same with Office, same with everything. These tools are ONLY meant to stop those people. No one else. Yes they will lose a few customers (a lot even) in the process. But they'll make it back up. You have no idea how many people I know purchased legit copies of Windows just because of the original WinXP's activation scheme, going "Wha? You mean if you own the CD its not enough to install it on my 8 computers? How come?", until they got explained how things work in the non-free world.
    • Simple as that. They get to capture revenue in the millions from many users easily.

      Look at it like a noose. Right now, the noose is loose. 3-5 years, along with Vista's set-top-box OS, the noose will be much tighter.

      Now is a great time to switch.
    • The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is actually very easy to defeat
      The early iterations of WGA were trivially breakable. Microsoft has steadily increased the sophistication. If you can download and install the final release version of Internet Explorer 7 on a Windows box that fails the WGA test now inside two days, without some fairly intensive Googling and web downloads, then you are really good. It took the Russian hackers a few days.
    • I don't understand Microsoft. The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is actually very easy to defeat, and I'm sure this new OGA will be just as easy.

      WGA is currently easy to defeat. But WGA and now OGA are part of a long-term strategy. It will get harder and harder to circumvent them. Some things they can (and probably will, eventually) do: validate Windows and Office every time you go online; use 'Trusted Computing' hardware to ensure that validation checks are not tampered with; have some of the code/cont
  • To Open Office- which I will do at home.

  • That's Responsiveness! (Score:4, Funny)

    by jazman_777 ( 44742 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:10PM (#16615458) Homepage
    Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005.


    Yes, users hated it, so they expanded the program to cover other products. Thanks, MS!

  • Office Update? What's that?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by denebian devil ( 944045 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:12PM (#16615500)
    ...any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy...


    ...users of Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service...


    The joke's on Microsoft. Exactly how many people use Online templates or Office Update? Compared to people who use Windows Update, I'm guessing not that many. And of those people who do use Office Update *and* don't have a legit copy of Office, how many of them are savvy enough to *ahem* figure out/find a way around the mandatory OGA?

    • Re:Office Update? What's that?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by daeg ( 828071 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:27PM (#16615764)
      Windows Update is being phased out and will be fully replaced with Microsoft Update, which will be expanded to provide updates for all Microsoft programs. Office updates will then become as routine as operating system ones.

      • Windows Update is being phased out and will be fully replaced with Microsoft Update, which will be expanded to provide updates for all Microsoft programs. Office updates will then become as routine as operating system ones.

        If that's so, then all I have to say is it's about time. It was rare enough before that people got Office Updates (or even knew they existed). With Automatic Updates I'm sure it became even easier for people to forget that Office Updates needed checking as well.

  • At least one person already switched (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:15PM (#16615546)
    An anecdote sure, but the old slightly technical guy in my office (fits the stereotype to a T) downloaded OpenOffice after MS Office was disabled on his computer. He had already activated it and registered it, but still had to activate it again to use any of the programs. Not even just update it, to use it at all according to him.

    Last week he was a big Microsoft fan, this week he's researching his options.

  • One more reason... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:15PM (#16615550) Journal
    ...To never, ever upgrade from Office 97.

    Seriously... The more companies make the old or cracked versions of their products more useful than the latest-n'-greatest, the less right they have to whine about illegal copying and decreased sales.

    Whether we talk about DVDs or WGA or software that phones home, people just want to use what they own (and spare me the BS about licensing-vs-owning). Making that harder will eventually drive people to the competition, up to and including piracy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by scruffy ( 29773 )
      ... to upgrade to OpenOffice.

  • this is good (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jmyers ( 208878 )
    This is good for open source software, such as openoffice or any competitor of MS. Software piracy helps Microsoft. When people can get the industry leading software for free (illegal copy) they will never consider the alternatives.
     

  • Oh No! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by x3nos ( 773066 )

    You mean all those worthless Office Online Templates will be unavailable to users with non-validated copies (*cough* er...pirated) of Microsoft Office?

    Oh my what a blow to the software piracy market . . .

  • Subscriptions? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by headkase ( 533448 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:20PM (#16615634)
    I think that WGA and now OGA are the first step down the slippery slope towards subscription based software. Valve's Steam already requires activation of products over the Internet and automatically updates the software as well and it has been very successful in frustrating copyright infringers. If Word was patched automatically everytime a new bug was discovered like Steam then OGA all-in-all wouldn't be that bad. Why (W|O)GA causes uproar is that you may experience a denial-of-service on your own software. If you're a pirate then too bad - go get OpenOffice, once ODF emerges you won't care about Microsoft Office anyway. But if you're a business then the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." principle kicks in - and sheeple buy what everyone else is using which at the moment is Microsoft Office. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft Office is really nice and all but once Open Document Format get's added then there is no problem of lock-in anymore - you'll buy your last version of Word to export your information into ODF and never look back.

  • I shall call you - Mini-DRM (Score:5, Funny)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:21PM (#16615656) Homepage Journal
    Come closer, little Microsoft Genuine Advantage. Don't worry, I won't hurt you.

    You're just so cute!

    I think I will call you, Mini-DRM, because you're unwanted, intrusive, and I keep tripping over you while trying to use my legitimately purchased WinVista PCs!

  • Up next... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DaveM753 ( 844913 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:25PM (#16615720)
    Coming soon:

    PC World is reporting that Microsoft's Notepad Genuine Advantage (NGA) program will require mandatory validation of Notepad.exe starting [insert happy date here]"

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:31PM (#16615810)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Time for refund (Score:2, Informative)

    by besenslon ( 918690 )
    As usual on /.: Does it run on linux?

    Jokes aside - but MS Office is a separate product. I may buy it and run it under wine. If OGA stops updates for wine users, MS may face some other (legal) problems.

    --
    Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by debest ( 471937 )

      MS Office is a separate product. I may buy it and run it under wine. If OGA stops updates for wine users, MS may face some other (legal) problems.

      Is providing security updates and bug fixes an implicit right granted to you as the purchaser of MS Office? I doubt it. When you plunk down your money, you get the binary that exists at the moment you purchased it.

      MS provides updates at no cost, and as far as I can tell they don't have to do diddly squat about providing a method for you to apply updates in any m

  • Home vs. Office (Score:2, Informative)

    by colinbg ( 757240 )
    I use M$ office at the office and at home, however, I will not pay the inflated prices for the suite at home, this just will give me the incentive to use open office at home, which when I get used to it, will make it easy to switch over to at the office. M$ is just shooting themselves in the foot here. I cannot be the only one who will do this now. Thier software is not worth that pricetag.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gonarat ( 177568 ) *

      I have already quit using MS Office at home -- I had a copy of Office 2000 on my desktop computer, but didn't bother to reinstall it after I replaced the hard drive and re-installed XP. Open Office went on it instead. We have 4 computers at home (my desktop, my laptop, my Daughter's desktop, and her laptop), and buying MS Office for all of these machines would be insanely expensive, so instead of pirating MS Office, I installed Open Office on all four machines. The price is right, and I have no worries a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fez ( 468752 ) *
      Actually, they have "work at home" licenses (I'd have to dig up the source, plenty of hits on Google for that phrase) that allow a copy at home if a license is purchased for a work computer. It's in the fine print, but last I heard it was still there -- at least it was for Academic Volume Licensing. I had thought a similar clause was in the retail edition but I could be wrong about that.

  • Google Docs et. al. (Score:3, Informative)

    by bgfay ( 5362 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @04:38PM (#16615906) Homepage
    I know that online office apps are nowhere near as functional as Office/OpenOffice/WordPerfect, but that doesn't matter much to me. I'm a teacher and just today switched all of my students to Google Docs (we all have Gmail accounts because the school system doesn't need to pay for the same service). We were using OpenOffice (because it's free and students could legally install it from the discs I provided), but Google Docs is easier, cheaper for us, and does what we need it to do.

    Are there features missing? You bet there are. But with Firefox 2.0 we now have real-time spellchecking, and I imagine that the features are going to grow as we go. For now, it does nearly everything that we need to do and if we don't, we can just shift to OpenOffice for that task and then move back to Google Docs for the rest of it.

    What I'm saying is that, for us, in our school, MS Office is unnecessary. We can't be the only ones.

    Doesn't that signal a problem for a company that makes tremendous amounts of money on the product?
    • It also works in 1.5.x whatever!

      But this really is a good point, that a web based "free" product with far better online collaboration and free online storage just punked any need I had for MS Office or Open Office.

      Can't wait for more features! :)
  • The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

    Or maybe MS likes pissing of it's customers...nah that can't be it!
  • Let 2/3rds of the Office users on the planet be using pirated versions of office. If MS Office market share disappears overnight after they start mandating this, I'll never ask for anything ever again! And I mean it this time!
  • No, seriously. At this point who really cares if Microsoft makes it even harder to legally use their products. The pirates wil just get around the problem the next day. Its us people that are trying to support a company that suffer. Pissed off customers will look elsewhere for their IT solutions.

    I stopped using their garbage at home long long ago, and NEVER recommend their products. Even when it means an extra hoop for the customer to jump thru, its still a better deal in the long run to 'just say no' t
  • Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005.

    Reversed it? I just recently had to download it to even get to the update screen. WTF? It's not reversed, it's still there.

    So, this leaves two questions:

    1. How can you get the updates without having to download WGA?

    2. Anybody know how I can get rid of it?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      0. Revised, not reversed.
      1. AutoPatcher [autopatcher.com]

  • Here we go again (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bassman59 ( 519820 )

    Clearly all of you whiney-ass titty-babies don't use your computers to do Real Work. All electronic-design automation (EDA) software uses FlexLM. Lots of high-end audio- and video-editing software uses an iLok key or similar. Yeah, it's all a big pain in the ass (I used to regularly fight with lmgrd) , but when the software costs tens of thousands of dollars per seat, there's a great incentive for vendors to lock it down.

    Face it, software activation is here, and here to stay. Get used to it. For the l

    • Face it, software activation is here, and here to stay. Get used to it. For the legit user, it's not a problem.

      I face it, but I don't want it here to stay. I don't want to get used to it.

      Instead, I have been migrating everything I do, even Real Work, to less annoying systems and software.

      I am the customer. I am the consumer. Face it, I am here to stay. I don't like dealing with licensing annoyances. For a legit vendor, this is not a problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xemu ( 50595 )
      when the software costs tens of thousands of dollars per seat, there's a great incentive for vendors to lock it down.

      Yes, the massive pirating by the 15 year old piratebay crews would surely hurt their revenues.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Crispy Critters ( 226798 )
      I might believe you if you didn't contradict yourself:

      For the legit user, it's not a problem.

      One real issue that vendors need to address is 24/7 availability of support staff so that legit users can get new license keys if a machine dies after hours or on the weekend.

      The second sentence means that activation is a problem for legitimate users.

      You are also making assumptions that are not necessarily valid, e.g. that all machines have internet access.

      You are also looking at this in the context of single-

    • Face it, software activation is here, and here to stay. Get used to it. For the legit user, it's not a problem.

      The Geek: Wah! Activation!
      The User: Click Yes to Install. Click. Click Yes to Activate. Click. Done.

  • Wake-up call! MS is between you & your data (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toby ( 759 ) * on Friday October 27, 2006 @05:15PM (#16616354) Homepage Journal

    Could anything more plainly prove that if you want access to your OWN data, you'd better not use any proprietary tool to create/store it -- especially not Microsoft.

    First they'll lock you out of the O/S; then they'll lock you out of the tools.

    "Nice lot of data you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it..."

  • MS owns the OS market because it owns the office applications market. It's the exchange of documents that forces corporations and institutions to standardize on MS Windows and MS Office, not the Windows operating system. MS's control of the office applications market depends on that everyone (that matters) uses MS Office. It's a vicious circle. That's why forcing people to pay up or switch may hurt MS, as it may actually create groups of users of alternative software suits large enough to give those solutio
  • Look at it from MS's perspective. They have millions of poeple stealing their software. Granated, its over priced and may not be worth it... but a high price tag doesn't warrant stealing. Should a company who's software is in this great of demand really rely on society to use the "honor system"... as in, I'll pay for each additonal install... no need to track it, "i'm honest."

    Then again, its just such an irritant to screw around with genuine advantage, but I'm just not sure what other realistic options t
  • The favorite meme of Bill Gates: "software piracy gobbles up the majority of the industry's theoretical income!"

    But from Microsoft's behavior, you wouldn't have thought he believed it. In fact, MS seemed aware of piracy and how to take Advantage of it. Office has always been overpriced and massively pirated by consumers. However, the specter of grueling, embarrassing license audits kept businesses honest. So, while employees pirated and grew familiar with Office at home, their employers were wedged into
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Why don't they just finish the exclamation off: OGAWD!!!
  • The crafty buggers, they're betting against their own stock (puts? calls? shorting? something like that!) and manipulating the company into outright collapse! First they've made a bajillion bucks on the stock going up, now they'll make another bajillion as the stock drops!

    Ya just can't beat a billionaire.
  • actually - yes I knew it existed but I don't go there. Never remember. but I religiously go to windowsupdate. NO person around here new it existed. So on several levels (and yes I know this is said elsewhere) WHO CARES???????????/

    if it becomes to much overhead then go to OpenOffice. What's the problem?

    (oh that spell check in FF is so cool)
  • Isn't.

    It's one of the most Orwellian concepts I've come across in the software industry. It's a genuine DISadvantage.

    Software Ownership doubleplusungood. Rectify: Microsoft ownership by minitrue goodthink: "Genuine Advantage".

    I hate MS when they pull this kind of crap. They need to go down.

    RS

  • The article doesn't make it clear (at all) what version of Office is being talked about. It says:

    "After that date, any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy."

    So, erm, just use a version lower than 2007, or what are we saying here?

    "Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service"

    And how is that different - really - from Office Update asking you for va

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