My view of the world

The latest bit of crap from M$, Windows Genuine Advantage, calls home every day, I know this because I have a third party firewall and it asks me if I want to allow this. This first time it asked I said yes, the second time I thought about it an said yes, now I say F*** You.
This is supposed to be anti-piracy software. Excuse me, but since when do I reinstall winblows, from a “pirate” copy and keep the WGA intact. If that’s installed, then they’ve already checked my copy. This does tend to make a guy wonder what they’re up to, doesn’t it.

Does anybody else remember when Uncle Bill had one of his stooges announce that Windows 9x didn’t collect personal data when you registered online, then along came the report out of Spain, that showed exactly where they stored this data that they “didn’t collect.”

There is a thing called a GUID, this is sent to any website that requests it, that M$ swears contains no user identifiable data. It gives them the mac address of your machine, the id from your copy of Winblows and once you give M$ or one of their partners your personal data, say, by doing something silly, like registering a piece of software, they’ve then got your specifics in a database, complete with the GUID, neatly bundled and ready to cross-refencee.
It’s kind of like your SSN, this unique number contains no user identifiable information, until it’s cross-refenced in a database.

You need to remember, Corporations like M$ and Walmart and all the other Monolithic monsters out there, are not there for your benefit, they’re there to take as much of your money as is physically possible and then move on to the next sucker.
On the WGA homepage M$ tries to sell Windows Genuine Advantage as if it was there to protect you, it’s not, it’s there to protect their profits and they could care less about you.
They have no honor, only greed.