Microsoft Genuine Advantage was thrust upon me some time ago and to begin with it was little more than a minor irritation. What was it really doing? What information was it obtaining from my PC? How was it validating my serial number? For all I know it could be transmitting all my passwords to Microsoft or perhaps a keystroke log so they can access my bank account.
Today it crossed my ethical boundary from being an irritation to being something I need to defeat. The cause of my now enormous irritation is that I have had an update thrust upon me under the guise of a “Critical Update”. This implies to me that Microsoft have discovered yet another vulnerability in the piece of Swiss cheese they call an operating system. Installing the update resulted in me getting popup nag boxes every time I log in or out and at various intervals througout the day. Whether I have a license code is not the issue with this, the issue is that Microsoft sneaked a piece of malicious software on to my machine using the false description of “Critical Update”. If this is a critial update then Bill Gates is a aardvark! Is it malicious? Yes, it is designed to irritate me with popup nag boxes in just the same way as porn advertising or a virus might. The difference between them is that I once ticked a box saying I trusted Microsoft. My penance for that tick is now to install Windows all over again and to get my updates from somewhere I can trust, like www.softwarepatch.com or
www.autopatcher.com.
Damn you Microsoft. Damn you and your dreadfully invasive commercial practices. I hope this drives more and more people to finding out just how good Linux really is.