Microsoft slipped another bomb into their "critical updates" in the form of a Windows Desktop Search. The reports say that besides being an unwanted feature, it has been slowing machines down considerably. The worst part is that somehow Microsoft thinks they can change the way our machines work without our consent. But this wouldn't be the first time. Tags: Microsoft, Windows Update

Hellgate, a soon-to-be-released video game includes a license agreement that forces players to accept the harvesting of identifying information from their machine. This is part of an in-game advertising scheme that, so far, doesn't quite reach the level of what the Penny Arcade cartoonists prophesied, but it's getting closer. (H/T to slashdot for the link) Tags: Microsoft

Rather than try to prevent people from copying or sharing music with drm, Microsoft has patented a watermarking procedure that will allow them to tag music with IDs that are very hard to remove. First take: this is bad, bad news. While Ars Technica believes that this could help to get rid of the much hated DRM, I believe the replacement is far worse. Now instead of merely being annoying in preventing you from copying a CD, the RIAA will be able to track music by ID to see where (and who) it came from. If your son shares a song online that's from your CD collection, you will be much easier to find and prosecute. Tags: Microsoft

After one hour of use, a Vista machine that thinks it’s illegitimate will go to a black screen with no functionality of any kind. Remember the article about the activation servers failing and disabling thousands of computers a week or two ago? Combine that with this new policy and things should get pretty interesting. Does it seem to anyone that Microsoft is starting to go a little crazy in the head? It’s like a paranoid king who starts killing off the subjects thinking they’re going to turn on him. The scary thing (if I hadn’t seen it coming) is that this “feature” was built in to Vista and just needed to be remotely activated by Microsoft. Right now it’s an hour then a black screen, but I wonder how far it can go? 10 minutes then self destruction? Tags: Microsoft

Microsoft uses the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool, a piece of DRM software with a catchy marketing slogan, to spy on your computer and then make a decision whether or not your version of Windows is valid. Assuming that it decides it's not (even if it is), it will disable your computer. The best part of the deal is that on Windows XP machines, they slipped the "tool" into the list of critical system updates so that anyone who didn't bother to look over the list of installs on the last update (or just has fully automatic updating turned on), would get the software without knowing about it. Well, it turns out that problems with the WGA server can shut down a lot of computers, very fast. It's nice to know that DRM works isn't it? Tags: Microsoft

Very interesting:

It has long been suspected that there is a silent policy that makes Hotmail automatically delete the majority of attachments to save on bandwidth and internal disk space. Therefore it really doesn't matter if every client has access to 2GB of storage since they don't deliver the attachments to fill that space up anyway. If that truly is the case, then Microsoft may be liable for several hundred million cases of conspiracy and mail fraud

The real question is whether or not they'll actually get away with it if that's what they're doing. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined Tags: Microsoft

I've blogged about how Microsoft has a wealth of spyware on your computer (Vista) for "piracy" reasons, but this is altogether far more sinister. Feel free to read the article itself, but this is bad, bad news. What they're going to do is scan the content of your files, e-mail, music, and system status alerts to profile you and target you with ads. Penny Arcade covered this concept in one of their comics titled "Advertising in the Future". That was last October. (For non-gamers, the comic describes a situation where two guys are playing a game, but see different in-game advertising based on the contents of their Internet browser history). Tags: Microsoft

A Slashdot user warns us not to use the “Try before you buy” deal based on his experience with the same deal and Office 2003. He said it changed all the file types to 2003 so when the trial was over, he wasn’t able to access any of his files. Usually, the program will warn you before updating the format, but it won’t warn you that anything you create from scratch during the trial will be locked into the newer program. And as you can read in the comments, most people agree that it’s ridiculous that Microsoft refuses to make the files backwards compatible. Tags: Microsoft

Let’s hear it for the winning team! Yeah! Tags: Microsoft

What’s the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers’ letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond’s software better.

Oh wow! First they give him an award (the Most Valuable Professionals MVP award), and then they threaten lawsuits. Classic Microsoft. I’m going to be watching this to see how it turns out. Tags: Microsoft, Utter Failure