From the cited article:
…we think it’s unlikely that Microsoft actually intends to go after pirated games on the PC. The services agreement was clearly written originally for Xbox and Xbox Live, and when writtten was probably only intended to ever apply to them. However, because Microsoft has simply taken an existing services agreement and applied it to core Windows 10 services like Cortana means that, intentionally or accidentally, it could be applied to Windows 10. And until Microsoft clarifies things, we think this remains a legal grey area."
At least in terms of games and pirated software on a PC, while concerning for the half-assed wording of the EULA, it doesn’t sound to me very likely that Microsoft would commit OS-share suicide by disabling existing software on people’s systems. Not only would that be logistically almost impossible to pull off without a untenable number of false-positives, the negative PR would bury the OS in about 5 seconds flat.
Why the heck isn’t Linux there yet?
Apple and Microsoft are both horrid, unethical, egotistical beasts. Linux is still, mostly the home of software made for programmers, by programmers, with no UI conventions, no usability conventions, and software supported by a single person sitting in their basement, who drops support the second they get their degree and a real job. Linux has been “getting there” for 20 years now, and it still has major gaps in programs that normal people want, while having a surplus of technical tools for programmers, scientists, and power-using nerds.
I wanted to use Linux for my day-to-day computing, while still enjoying the occasional video game. There is no option here, outside of still running Windows for Steam, or buying a DRM laden, sub-par, console (shutting me off from the genres I enjoy in the process). I still try this every other year, though, and each time I give up after a month, since you need about a month to actually get everything to “work”, somewhat. You still need to delve into the CLI with arcane commands, using a syntax left-over from a different age and a different use. You’re still stuck with software with 70% of the functionality and 5% of the polish. You’re still stuck with egoistical design, serving no one but the creators ego (Unity and Gnome 3, and Ubuntu in general). You’re stuck with an OS designed in the 70’s for servers and universities for use by engineers and programmers, with some meager concessions to normal folk tacked on.
Technology demoralizes me, more and more. Computers were promising, they were going to allow us to do anything we wanted, create anything we wanted. And now we’re happy on locked down boxes run by giant corporations who we allow to access and control everything we do, everything we access. The internet was supposed to be freedom incarnate, but now its controlled by giant corporations who… you know the drill. And worse, we seem to like it this way. We WANT this, actively. We want our life ruled by Facebook. We don’t want to make anything, we want to consume. We want the government and corporations to control our media (really, people LOVE Twitter, but ignore the fact that a giant, faceless, amoral corporation controls the medium, and owns the message.
Sorry, it must be one of those days. I promise to stop ranting into the aether for the rest of the day, I swear it.
I’m glad i havent switched from my copy of Windows 7
I’m always wary of “free” software. Microsoft is going out of its way to demonstrate why.
I agree with that up to the point where I’d also want to say, “Yeah, and Amazon would never pull people’s copy of 1984 straight off of their reading devices.”
And as pointed out and corrected on Rock Paper Shotgun, this is only for your xbox/window store apps. Just like what Steam, Origins, etc do for things you purchase/register to use via that service.
It does not go oh you installed a local copy of Doombloodshooter and it wasn’t a legit copy lets get rid of that for you.
I don’t like a lot of the stuff that windows 10 is trying to turn on by default but this is only a problem if you link your cloud/office365/services/azure/etc account to the local account. The TOS is in reference to the same TOS you should have read and you agreed to on creating the Microsoft account.
Also this is the same things that Apple now collects if you go in for their cloud services, and Google, but there was no wailing and gnashing of teeth for them like I have seen for Microsoft.
Really it is simple, if you need windows use a local to the machine account only and DO NOT LINK IT TO THE ONLINE SERVICES.
They pulled copies that were sold via their store they should not have sold. Was it a dick move, most definitely but legally probably what they had to do.
Did they pull copies sold via other services? Did they pull copies that were loaded manually and not from the amazon store? Not that I am aware of.
I feel like this was discussed in one of the previous Win10 threads, and it was determined that this feature is more of a “Windows will recognize the software that you have installed, and if there are updates to that software, it may try to download them for you. If you’ve patched your pirated games so you can play them, this may overwrite your patches” - so, less of a “Microsoft is hunting down pirated software” situation, and more of a “Microsoft is trying to make sure that all of the software installed on your machine has all the latest patches (for your security!)” type thing.
I see you’re point, but consider the heat Amazon took for that one time incident for something that affected relatively few people for a product they themselves had distributed and that they refunded the purchase price of in the process–on a product they had complete control of for which there was no competition at anything close to Amazon’s scale.
If Microsoft were to do something that would affect potentially millions for products they didn’t sell–with no reimbursement–on an ongoing basis–in an almost certainly error-prone procedure–when there’s at least two very viable alternatives to the product people can migrate to at first word of this kind of shit happening (more if you count old versions of Windows)–yeah, no.
And this is the same stuff the Apple store does, Google play does, etc. Why are we all up in arms about Microsoft doing the same for the apps from their store?
Windows 10 will also not run old games with Securom DRM:
The workaround is to use a no-cd crack, which I guess Microsoft will detect as pirated software and disable the game…
You’d likely guess wrong then if you really think Microsoft is going to go out of it’s freaking way to disable cracks for ancient safedisc games.
As the article you posted mentioned, it’s for security reasons they don’t want to trust safedisc drm ladened games as the method can be exploited. And it makes sense. As the article also says–blame the DRM, not Microsoft. (But, honestly, if you really “guess” they’re going to put code in Windows 10 to prevent you from running your cracked no-cd version of Sims from 2001, you have a severe case of Microsoft derangement syndrome.)
They wouldn’t. The Xbox one runs Windows 10, so this states that you can’t use pirate games and modchips. No big deal.
That, and don’t pirate Windows Store games if you’re really worried? Peoples’ concern is really misapplied here.
Well securom and the related types of cdchecking are damn close to malware already and a big hole and I don’t really blame them for plugging it and from that article the vendors of the drm and games seem to not care either. So dammed if you whatever.
No. No it wouldn’t.
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to you, @TobinL, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. But yes, if anything, my metaphor is somewhat tangential, but arguably, it doesn’t go far enough, as you mention. Although this only seems like the end of a game M$ (and others) have been playing for a while–and specifically, I’m thinking back to all the media controls in Vista.
On behalf of nerdy programming power-user scientists everywhere, let me be the first to say “System already performing as required!”
I wouldn’t tell a neophyte to buy a Stihl 200T, because they’d end up in a hospital or morgue; I’d tell them to go to Home Despot and buy a hand saw or a cheap rear-handle husky with a tip guard. Similarly, I wouldn’t tell a computer gamer to load Kali linux or OpenBSD.
@Mausium: they can, but at the moment they don’t.
The only reason they don’t is because of the potential for consumer backlash if they tried it.
Sad that’s the only thing holding them back…
