Karaoke Forums

Sorry, but microsoft allowed the piracy to continue unabated till now. They did that for a reason.

MS allowed the piracy to grow until it became a harvestable crop....Now they will reap huge profits by simply turning on the features contained in WGA that they sercretly implanted in every machine that was set to receive critical updates automatically.

WGA is the most profitable virus ever unleashed on the planet.

well if thats true you only have yourselves to blaim. You are the victims of your own crime!

If everyone was honest and decent there would be no need, but thats not the case.
People have always abused the copyright of microsoft and been very casual about it.

They have every right to try to protect their interests. You'd be pretty pissed if someone stole only one karaoke disk from you nevermind millions of dollars worth.

Whilst I can also see that some people have problems with WGA even though they are legitimate for the most part it is a good thing and can only serve to benefit everyone.

Like I said if you've got such a problem with it you have alternatives.

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Dan Bayley

Nope, i blame the fact I trusted Microsoft to provide me a measure of security via auto updates...I never agreed to allow them to plant an 'off' switch in my computer.

As to the alternatives you allude to, please offer all of us us here an alternative to Windows....Please.

If you know of an OS that will allow us to perform computer karaoke, then please share it with us....We need an OS that will support a decent hosting app,  soundcards that patch in at pro levels, various dual display video cards, Winamp-like players and CDG plugins as a minimum.

Don't just berate me that there are alternatives, list them for us...then berate me if I fail to use them.

It's no worse than the phone company cutting you off for not paying your bills and yes they cut people off by mistake.

I'm sure if you can come up with a viable alterative Bill will be only to happy to listen to you.

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Dan Bayley

I kinda figured you had nothing to suggest, but still I asked politely....and I bet you suggested that nothing from a windows computer.....!

Oh boy!

So in your mind, if you have to replace a motherboard, it's okay to invalidate a key? In your mind, it's okay to invalidate a key due to a hard drive crash?? I've had that happen on a single afternoon... went thru three motherboards trying to install on a new machine... the motherboards were crud, as were the cases they came in...

but the initial complaint filed by Keith is valid... when he got referred to a Microsoft help desk and they said that he was on his last try on his machine?? or he'd have to get a brand new key?? that's complete horse hockey!

I've only suggested what everyone else has suggested (Notice the quotes).

It always amuses me the way people slag off microsoft and hype up other platforms but then when they come to do something it's difficult or impossible to do with others.

It only goes to prove that Microsoft is a very well rounded highly versatile product that you simply won't get from a "free" product. It's because it's not free that people try to rip it off. As a result Microsoft are forced to protect themselves from fraud.

Again I say if you come up with a better way to prevent fraud I know Microsoft will listen to you and they will listen to feedback regardless.

Anyway ....This is only the beginning and things are changing  in the software world. More and more products will be protected from fraud more agressively and some will eventually only be sold as SAAS (software as a service).

It's unfortunate that some honest people are caught out but we all know someone who has installed a copy of office or windows on another computer without a licence.

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Dan Bayley

but you don't cutt off the whole FOOT to cure a hangnail...

That's my issue.

We're NOT talking about stolen licenses. What we're talking about is when you change a motherboard, or when you replace ANY hardware, the code goes invalid. I honestly have no trouble with that EXCEPT the fargin' runaround you get from India's help desk. THAT's the bull factor that I choke on.

Security procedures shouldn't be choking. I'm in IT and have been for 23 years. If a license is registered to abc user, then by god, it's THEIRS. Once you reverify certification, the license shouldn't be suspect. If their scanner sees the code on multiple machines, FINE. But that's not the point we're addressing.

I agree.  If they can tell you it's invalid.  They should be able to verify it also.   The technology shouldn't be one way.

I guess I'm lucky all 22 times I had to reactivate I didnt have any trouble.

Put 2 hard drives in your system with OS on both One OS is a backup.. Hookup another  usb harddrive and funny things start happening Add a flash drive and start really working it over a period of time both OS are totally hosed and wont even bootup...I have got more time expended in fighting or reinstalling XP than maintenance on 3 karaoke systems and I am not bs.  It is the poorest software program ever written. The first abortion was ME the first to get rid of DOS as the kernel And none since have improved..

yeah, I love win2K... screw that xp! oy!

If it had dual video capabilities like xp Id run it as long as it supported the new software coming out...It had trouble with big drives too but sp4 I think it was solved alot f that...

What does it do void your 25 number ID code?     Will it let you start it up at all?   Like a new install.     Or is it dead in the water?   No way to reauthenticate the ID code?    You would think there would be a way to reenter your number and go.

win2k does support the dual and more video options...

and the larger drives, I got a patch from Maxtor that allowed the larger drives, just not for the C drive. Which is fine with me. Who the heck wants a C drive that big... talk about taking forever to defrag.

Tig showed me that.  I used to get a big drive and partition it... nowadays, I do that, but with a much smaller one (80gb)

But isn't W2K going backwards?   XP is a step forward, right or wrong?

I'd go with XP over 2000 unless you havent got the horse power to handle XP.

Actually *someone* made a good point there.....

When I originally read about WGA (which is goin back some time) Microsoft were using a variety of things to identify your system and so you could get away with swappinging out say a graphics card. Maybe things have changed more recently.


but even still if they block you for changing one piece of hardware I don't see that as a huge problem (maybe annoying) but in my experience they have reactivated.

they SHOULD be able to identify that only one component has changed.

Maybe it's this damn outsourcing to india thing that is the problem. That's bitten me before for utility bills. So maybe we should critisise Microsoft for that instead as I do see that as a problem and I have encountered "communication barriers" when dealing with outsourced call centers.

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Dan Bayley

Yea but it stretches the desktop screws up the resolution and doesnt allow true multiple display. Its not dual disply its stretched display... Neither win2k or xp will handle mulutiple bulky drives if you are running a program that it is stretching the limits off system resources. Its too busy looking for illegal crap and crap to report to big brother.

there are some technical reasons too :p

Try a decent SATA raid controller or if you've got the money go for SCSI as this will make better use of system resources.

However for shear throughput an volumne (which I doubt you are really interested in) SATA is probably better.

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Dan Bayley

Yes my latest mobo is sata capable and plan to shift as budget allows.. I dont know do you need throughput volume for 10-20 tracks in sonar?

I would have thought not. Even wave audio files arn't that demanding when it comes to sustainable throughput so if you are dealing with mp3's wma's etc they are typically very small (less than 10Mb) and so can probably be loaded straight into memory quickly.

I guess because you have large track databases you need  rapid search and access times so you can move around and queue up your track quickly so my view would be that SCSI is preferable.

Although having said that without knowing the load on such systems it's hard to say whther SCSI would actually give any real performance gains.

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Dan Bayley