Windows Genuine Advantage as kill switch?
If this rumor is true, this is about the stupidest move that Microsoft will have every made. Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report on ZDNET, Is Microsoft about to release a Windows “kill switch”?, says that there is a rumor going around that Microsoft will turn the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) thingy into a way of killing Windows XP. The basic idea is that if you don’t have WGA installed by September, then Windows will give you 30 days warning to install it and then simply stop working.
If this is true, apparently Microsoft is a lot dumber then it looks. No wonder they can’t get their products out on time. Let’s see, October 1st a whole bunch of computers simply stop working. Me personally, I will probably go with either Windows 2000 or Ubuntu, I am not sure which one yet. Further down the road, I will switch to a Mac and OS X. And I have a feeling that I won’t be the only one.
So far I have refused to install WGA and I am not stopping now. If my computer stops working, so be it. There are lots of other operating systems in the sea.
