Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Tuesday 28 November 2006, 10:11 AM
Vista - not suitable for mission critical work?
He replied:
"Rupert
I am a manager at a subsidiary company of the Malaysian Sapura group, focused on government and defence sector. We supply systems such as military flight simulators which for security reasons cannot be connected to the Internet. The Malaysian government has good relations with the USA, but as a Muslim country, has to be sensitive to a possible future change of status.
I presume that there must be versions of Vista without the remote
disabling feature for the US government as I cannot imagine them
accepting that situation."
Thinking about it, it's hard to see how you could certify Vista for any mission critical situation when its functionality is dependent on an external process over which you have no control -- indeed, no information at all. Modern, complex operating systems are very hard to properly characterise at the best of times, but how do you cope with that?
Definitely something we'll be keeping an eye on, and another one for the list of ways in which DRM and its ilk harm the market far more than they protect the supplier.
PreviousComments on this post
Sheesh! A good point and, in this case, a scary one...
From past experience I'd guess the Volume License Key edition won't phone back. Banks don't like it either and MS does a special version of the "Report this error to Microsoft" server for them which intercepts the reports and lets them check out whats happening.
Just checked with the current documentation (it's on technet). I reckon that some of the bigger folks really won't like this. You can run your own key server if you have more than 25 machines but this requires each machine to reconnect every 180 days.
The problem I find here is that of who ends up suffering. It really does not go far to put a dent into piracy, as I have yet to see a mainstream game, mainstream Software (Adobe Creative Suite etc..), Windows release, or Office release that isn't fully cracked, including the ability to update, within the space of a week. Those that don't want to license their software will find a way of not having to, and will continue along on their merry way without hassle.
Through the Summer of this year M$ did their very best to consistently change the WGA process on Windows Update, and IIRC each new release was cracked within a week at most, a couple of days at best.
So who exactly do these steps cause a problem for. Ok, the average home user that has bought some boot-legged software without realising it may suddenly come unstuck, often without the ability to reclaim their money from the "vendor" that provided them with the software. They suffer, possibly undeservedly dependent on their naivety regarding the purchase itself.
The other people to suffer are those caught in the situation highlighted in the blog - those with valid licenses that don't want to be tied irrevocably to a company who are based in the country that could decide they want to kill the ability to reconnect for those countries "not on good terms". No wonder piracy is so rampant in those parts of Asia.
It seems the only people hurt by these measures are not the intended targets (pirates) but those who are likely to try to play by the book anyway.
A sorry state of affairs.
Here's the TechWeb article to which Peteri refers. (Everyone should feel free to put in links to points of interest, no matter where. We don't care!)
This ties in with the FlexGo remote deactivation technology MS has developed and is deploying in Brazil - Gilliam fans take note. Add in the increasingly onerous EULA requirements, and the future takes shape - Microsoft will have a very clear-cut and puritan approach to what threatens its revenue, and will enforce it. I'll be interested to see what happens when some of the stupider, more loathsome aspects of the Vista EULA are broken - no running the home editions on a virtual machine, for example - and whether MS then disables the software. Or if someone DOS's the verification system: what then?
DRM - Poisoning The Well Since 2001.
R
