Redstate

I think I was actually lucky in terms of activation because Microsoft apparently relaxed its draconian activation policies after thousands of people complained about not being able to reactivate the OS after mirroring it to a new disk drive on the same system.

Originally my reading is that even moving Vista to a bigger hard drive was verboten. Of course, with Vista, after a couple of months of using it you *need* a bigger hard drive, so Microsoft had gotten itself into a bit of a pickle.

I can report that once I fixed the Master Boot Record and boot into Vista32 and 64 I was able to activate them without incident over the web. But based on my reading that represents a relatively recent change in Microsoft's lockdown policy on Vista, which was patently absurd to begin with.

I can understand a one-license per seat enforcement scheme but not when it locks people into not just a buggy operating system but also hardware that becomes obsolete every six months. The 100GB drive that I originally installed Vista on filled up very quickly and a larger capacity drive was in order. Looking at the posting history on this particular issue it seems that Microsoft wasn't even willing to allow people to upgrade their hard drives until recently.

My conjecture is that they finally capitulated to allow that simple, essential hardware upgrade at the behest of retail hard disk manufacturers like Seagate. If you can't upgrade the drive when it runs out of space, why buy a new drive?

In my case, once I got the installation(s) to boot after fixing the MBR, the activation was successful from within each OS by clicking the normal "activate now" link.

I wasn't opposed to the concept of product activation and I'm still not. But like too many other things recently, Microsoft did it badly. There has to be some flexibility built into it, and that flexibility requires some forethought and responsiveness, which Microsoft seems to have in very short supply.

Are worlds apart. Microsoft feels that you rent the software and didn't actually buy it.

Yes, and I think until they stop treating people as tenants instead of owners we're going to see this kind of problem. I was musing last night on the One Microsoft Way philosophy last night and I'm now thinking of it in terms of a larger Redmond Philosophy, which I had been reluctant to do in the past. Now that I've been confronted directly with these problems that worldview is much clearer, and there are a lot of parts of it that I disagree with, or at least have concerns about. Hence all these posts.

Defend Liberty -- Join the NRA | Live in Massachusetts? Join GOAL.

I didn't ditch Microsoft software because of source code, flexibility, auditing, trust, vendor lockdown, or anything like that. I got rid of it because the problems were literally giving me headaches.

Only later did I look at the underlying issues and decided that for me, as a customer, I want more control than the Microsoft business model would allow me to have.

Control is the key. Hippy-dippy GNU lefties love to talk about freedom, but Microsoft doesn't hinder my freedom. They merely hinder control over my own computer, and my data stored in it.

Ditch Microsoft and take control back.

HTML Help for Red Staters
"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

HTML Help for Red Staters
"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

If only Microsoft had learned from that ad what they needed to learn, I don't think this discussion would have ever happened.

And IBM probably understood it before Apple produced it. I kinda wish I had my original PC/AT right now...

I do have some regret about how so much in the world of computers has become so shoddy even though the prices aren't much better for top-of-the-line systems.

Does anyone remember printed, bound manuals? In quality binders with three rings? IBM had the most beautiful set of manuals that came with every PC. Now I buy computers with a sheet that's printed in a loosely-translated group of languages on the chintziest stuff they can find and someone tells me to visit some website or use Google to find the answers to my unsolvable problems. And if my recent experience is any guide, nothing has improved very much as a result. The American computer industry has virtualized itself almost out of existence.

Sigh.

Guides to PC hardware. The green basic book not so much.

...improving the display of your recent comments in RS 3, making it much harder for trolls to bug us, and the rest.

I spent countless hours reading it and messing around with MS Advanced Basic. At least until I was reaching the limits of what I could do practically in that runtime and wanted a real language. I started bugging my parents for a compiler. I didn't care what language.

They then bought me a new computer to replace my IBM PC, one that had a big 40MB hard drive and came with Borland Turbo Pascal (version 4 I think, but whichever it was, it was the version before they added Objects).

That kept me happy for some time.

HTML Help for Red Staters
"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

I go back to the 1.0 version. It blew the microsoft equivalent products away. The integrated IDE, the debugger and the sheer speed were unmatched. Their flat price and no nonsense licensing meant that when you bought it, you bought a viable development platform.

The book that came with it, was perhaps the best documentation of a programming language I had ever seen.

I still love the Borland products, well codegear now. They just went insane with their pricing. 900 for the entry level environment to nearly 3000 for the full boat is just over the top.

Apple is not free of its lockdowns. However Apple, unlike Microsoft, has chosen the more traditional model. They center everything on the hardware. If you're using their hardware, they're happy.

The only exceptions to this are related to their growing relationships with members of the RIAA and MPAA. In the past, the iPod wasn't really locked down at all. People were able not only to use their own workstation-side software to sync it, but they were able to replace the firmware and run their own software on the iPod itself. The only lockdown came when you bought from the iTMS due to the DRM there.

That's changing though. Even as Apple is limiting the use of DRM on iTMS, they're increasing control of iPod. The data formats are different now. The firmware is signed and restricted.

Also there are some kernel things to appease various other entities. Kernel debug tools are crippled vs. iTunes, and there are other controls put in for DVDs and movies and other content inputs.

If none of that will affect you, and for most of us it will have nothing to do with business, Apple can do the job. If not, there's always FreeBSD.

HTML Help for Red Staters
"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

At least they could rethink it in terms of a condominium association or something.... :)

Just curious.

Although I do have a "friend" who has a pirated version on his work computer...

Proudly supporting John S. McCain for President (McCain/Romney?)

My most recent machines run XP, which is plenty recent enough for all but a few games (and most of those rely, not on DirectX 10, but on the silly Games for Windows service, and are all XBox/XBox 360 ports, if I'm not mistaken).

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This too shall pass.