Muddybulldog

From the thumbnail I thought we were getting “Thirsty Sluts” for a half second.

And plenty who don’t know you can GNU without Linux.

I hate the fact that I know I’m inevitably going to buy this.

Mixed feelings on this. Cool tool, great idea. On the other hand, it’s also an effective tracker. Not privacy friendly.

Can’t be purchased standalone. Part of a prebuilt only.

Seems completely appropriate and acceptable.

Lots of steps to “figure it out”. Could’ve just pinged the hostname.

Not a big secret. Pretty sure they even announced it.

I like to save them for a rainy day when I need an OCD fix.

$4 would get you an egg sandwich, a coffee and a pack a smokes in ‘83.

Because the alternative makes a lot more money.

Agreed. I’ve probably got 100 keys registered with GitHub and 98 of them the private key is long destroyed due to OS reinstalls or whatnot. Format machine, new key. New machine, new key.

As you suspect, only during the sixty or so seconds that they are valid.

SMS-based codes tend to be longer lived.

They’re useless without your other authentication factors, e.g. login, password.

Because every OS they ship with they need to support. Lenovo already has a viable, cost effective, support model for endlessos because they ship and support it for educational customers.

It’s not commercially viable for them support other OS that there is near no demand for relative to their overall sales.

Your assertions are not supported by industry analysis.

While this years survey is closed, the results haven’t been published. In last year’s survey, MacOS slightly edged out Linux, moving to second place.

Credential stuffing is, first and foremost, a user issue. There’s only so much you can do when people use the same password for all their different websites.

That being said, there are some “above and beyond” steps a platform can take and most companies definitely don’t.

Two thoughts on StackSocial. Even if they legitimately are an MS partner that bar is so low as to be irrelevant. I know, I’m an MS Partner. All it takes is an email address and two (maybe three) checkboxes to become a Partner at the lowest levels. Additionally, the product isn’t actually being sold by SS. the vendor is “SmartTrainingLab” which appears to only exist in the context of selling cheap keys via Stack Social and it’s clone, other clone, e-commerce sites.

As for selling Windows at a loss… They’ve always been split-brained on that front. They only just stopped giving away free upgrades to Windows 10/11 in the past few weeks despite that offer having expired over seven years ago. The real Windows Desktop OS money has historically been from the fees that OEMs pay for licensing. That’s why the retail price is so high; it establishes the baseline from which OEM discounts get negotiated. The $199 actually is pretty reasonable considering inflation, etc. Windows 3.1 was $149, Windows 95 was $209 and Windows NT 4.0, which current Windows is descended from, was $319. I wouldn’t even pretend to know what they’re going to do on that front but a subscription service seems highly possible, though I see it most likely being bundled as part of the Microsoft 365 products; you get the upgrades for “free” with one of the (product formerly known as) Office 365 consumer subscriptions OR you get ad-laden upgrades for free OR you pay $99 upgrade pricing.

It eludes me why people purchase these grey market products over just running unactivated. They’re not valid licenses, they just overcome the technical limitations of non-activation. Generally speaking, you’re supporting criminal enterprise for the sake of being able to change your wallpaper.

Edit: Truth hurts, I guess.

Beauty of FOSS is anybody can just remove it.

Nothing. It’s one of the alluring aspects of using third-parties. You pay a flat fee, people do work. You avoid all the overhead of HR, benefits, workers compensation and unemployment insurance. If you want someone gone there’s no process, you simply tell the third party that Joe doesn’t need to come back to work, ever, and you’re done.

Amazon and Google are not alone in this practice, nor is it exclusive to Fortune 500 companies.

Funny thing being that the only reason SONY is in gaming was to screw Nintendo. They had a hardware partnership that fell apart because SONY was putting the thumbscrews to Nintendo over revenue sharing. Nintendo said, you’re not the only one who can provide what we need, and dumped them. PlayStation was the direct result.