We Own Your System

Microsoft in an effort to continue to boost their dying OS franchise is planning to disable systems it thinks may be pirated.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061004-7898.html

Windows Vista will ship with anti-piracy technology that will lock down the OS if it has not been activated within 30 days of first use, Microsoft announced today. If the OS is not activated, Windows will switch to a reduced functionality mode that will cripple the OS. This is but one of many planned features of Microsoft's new Software Protection Platform (SPP), shared by both Windows Vista and the forthcoming Longhorn Server, due sometime late next year (at the earliest).

Considering there have been many known failures of the WGA this is outrageous. They keep siting some BSA bogus figure of $35 billion lost to piracy. Oh come on, that's how they accumulated all that money they now have. The only ones really punished by this absurd action will be legitimate users whose systems fail to pass WGA.