“Let’s be pragmatic, MS will never stop piracy of its products.”
Nonsense. If WGA can detect pirated copies of Windows and disable them, or turn off the Aero interface for pirated copies in Windows, then it would be able to shut off the copy of Windows entirely too.
“This is not a question of morality; it is a question of whether or not their anti piracy (WGA) initiative balances their good VS. the overall good of the net in general.”
The “overall good of the net in general?” Is there a color coded meter to measure this, like the DHS’ terrorism levels?
Since when is it the responsibility of a company to worry about the overall good of the Internet, or its equivalent (highways, the environment, airports, etc.)? Is it Freightliner’s responsibility to design trucks that do not cause pavement to buckle under heavy brake application? Is it Pepsi’s responsibility to ensure that the drinkers of their soda recycle the cans? Is it Delta’s responsibility to remind me to not graffiti in the bathroom at LaGuardia? No, no, and no. So why are you holding Microsoft responsibile for the “overall good of the net?” Why don’t you blast Oracle for their insecure products? Why don’t you blast people who download stuff via BitTorrent (over 50% of Internet traffic today)? Or people who do not use caching DNS servers (5% of Internet packets are DNS lookups)? Until the day that governments regulate thes things (“patch your servers or face up to $500 in fines!”), it is not the responsibility of any company (or individual, for that matter) to care about “the overall good of the net.”
If “the overall good of the net” not doing so well is Microsoft’s fault, does that mean that Microsoft is to be thanks and congratualted when “the overall good of the net” is high?
“An unpatched MS box is a bad thing for all of us and anything that impedes those boxes from being patched is just adding fuel to the fire.
Remember Blaster, I Love You, Nimda and Code Red?
ALL are issues caused by unpatched MS software.”
So if Microsoft *has* released a patch for something, and users do not install it, is it still Microsoft’s fault? Nimda and Code Red exploited vulnerabilities that were patched BEFORE the attack, and there was no WGA then. Should we fine people for not patching their systems, and hurting “the overall good of the net?”
“So when the next big one hits and your ability to do business on the net is impacted, just remember, it is probably an unpatched MS system you?ll have to thank.”
I would have to say that this is an incredibly improbably scenario. If so many Microsoft systems are flooding the network with so much traffic that backbones start shutting down, I am positive that the traffic will be filtered out. Even then, IP traffic is amazingly self healing. There has never been a bug or virus that has shut down the Internet, and most likely there probably never will be.
J.Ja
