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January 29, 2005
MS cuts off patches to unauthorized Windows copies
Microsoft has decided not to provide patches to unauthorized users of Windows. Obviously, Microsoft's intention here is to disincentivize people from using pirated versions of Windows. The interesting question for me is what the false positive rate is here: what percentage of legitimate Windows installations will be refused patches? If there are any significant number of false positives, Microsoft could easily end up spending more money in support costs for those users as they make from people who decide to buy legitimate versions.Posted by ekr at January 29, 2005 4:05 PM | Filed under:
Comments
I'll question the wisdom of this decision. An infested system (pirated or not) can degarde QoS for a lot of authorized systems.
Posted by: Bennyp at January 30, 2005 12:41 AM