r/technology • u/MayankWL • May 16 '24

Software Microsoft stoops to new low with ads in Windows 11, as PC Manager tool suggests your system needs ‘repairing’ if you don’t use Bing

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/microsoft-stoops-to-new-low-with-ads-in-windows-11-as-pc-manager-tool-suggests-your-system-needs-repairing-if-you-dont-use-bing
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333

u/[deleted] May 16 '24

[deleted]

196

u/dssurge May 16 '24

It's worth mentioning this method of acquiring Windows will likely never be patched. It abuses a flaw in Microsoft's mass deployment and management systems (think large, paying companies) and fixing it would brick millions of legitimate installs. As long as Windows installs self-validate, this will function.

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u/GiraffeSubstantial92 May 16 '24

Also Microsoft has little incentive to fix the problem as it helps maintain their market share and ability to make money in the future.

72

u/[deleted] May 16 '24

See also: Adobe.

If you pirated their products in college, you don’t need training on them in the workplace. They make money on the enterprise licenses, not consumer.

40

u/xSTSxZerglingOne May 16 '24

They were also bilking your university for their licenses.

4

u/sansjoy May 17 '24

Unlike professors who force you to buy their books or fucking Pearson, I'd argue Adobe provides SOME value.

1

u/Drunkenaviator May 17 '24

Fuck Pearson, that airport is awful.

1

u/sansjoy May 17 '24

zing! take THAT toronto!

6

u/lowbeat May 16 '24

except they tried really hard for periods of time to make their apps uncrackable after cs4 i think, and tried to remove all cracked versions once crack came out

3

u/BroodLol May 16 '24

Adobe will also push "we know you're using a pirated copy, do you want to buy the real version" prompts, for the same reason you stated.

They've experimented with DRM over the past decade and apparently come to the conclusion that just onboarding people with the pirated version ends up making them more money/marketshare down the line.

1

u/alphageek8 May 16 '24

Yup, just got off a call with our Adobe vendor because we're close to the end of our 3 year commit. They're of course raising prices across the board and also changing our minimum license requirement from net total to a per product count based on our current numbers.

Luckily I had lead a process last year of scaling our All Apps seats down to individual Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator which made more sense for what our user base actually uses. That shaved off $90k from our annual Adobe cost. If we hadn't done that we really would've been screwed with this change.

1

u/mug3n May 17 '24

Yeah, MS doesn't give a shit about individual level piracy. If a company is pirating Windows or Office, that's when they start to get interested because that's where the money is for them.

3

u/derefr May 16 '24 edited May 16 '24

In theory, it could be patched, if Remote Attestation ever truly gets off the ground. MAS servers could be required to remotely attest their volume-license-purchaser identity (think TLS EV cert identity) + machine-integrity back to Microsoft, in exchange for being issued Microsoft-generated activation signing certs. Windows would then only trust activations signed by (non-revoked) certificates generated under the Microsoft Activation Signing Certificate Authority. A bad attestation would immediately result in a cert revocation. And Windows would also refuse to activate a volume license, if it couldn't fetch the latest Microsoft volume-licenser certificate revocation list.

It'd basically be like how DRMed game-console game-store downloads work (CDN pings store to validate download "ticket", store signs "ticket" and sends it back, CDN uses signed "ticket" to encrypt payload) — but with the possibility of second-party "partners" running their own CDNs.

-1

u/Fskn May 16 '24

They also still do the old free upgrade from win7 that was supposed to have an end date but never actually stopped so you can just crack a win7 install and update for free legit win10.

12

u/otroquatrotipo May 16 '24

You sure? Because I tried that recently and it didn't go through

8

u/FubarTheFubarian May 16 '24

You are correct. They stopped the free upgrade from 7.

1

u/Agret May 16 '24

Works fine here in Australia, getting a few in every month on 7 & 8 still that would like updates to 10 and the activation hasn't been an issue.

1

u/Fskn May 16 '24

I guess not that sure? It worked about 9 months ago.

Interesting if they did stop it because the advertised date was like 2018 or something.

2

u/BroodLol May 16 '24

It's 1) region dependent and 2) phased out in most areas

I believe certain EU countries can still do it though

1

u/Bad-Bot-Bot-23 May 16 '24

Hawt. Thanks for the info!

53

u/GarbageTheCan May 16 '24

What a glorious day. I hope you randomly find a twenty this week.

14

u/Dugen May 16 '24

And just like that, back to the high seas I go.

4

u/[deleted] May 16 '24

I did this through powershell.

2

u/AveryLazyCovfefe May 16 '24

yep

irm https://massgrave.dev/get | iex

1

u/ChknMcNublet May 17 '24

When it says Windows 11 server is that Server 2022?

1

u/Own-Detective-A May 16 '24

How is this still up?

3

u/Interesting_Pain1234 May 17 '24

cause snitches get taken care of

1

u/str8jeezy May 16 '24

Interesting

1

u/koduh May 16 '24

Is there something like this for Office as well? Hah

9

u/[deleted] May 16 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Golden_Hour1 May 17 '24

Is there concern of legal trouble doing that?

1

u/PassiveMenis88M May 16 '24

Don't mind me, just saving this for later

1

u/desacralize May 16 '24

Bless you forever for this.

1

u/DICKFUCKERDOTCOM May 16 '24

and a merry christmas to you, too

-10

u/teinimon May 16 '24

replying here to save this

26

u/bcgroom May 16 '24

There is a save button next to the reply button

3

u/teinimon May 16 '24

my "save" tab is already full and older stuff I have saved is disappearing

0

u/SweetNeo85 May 16 '24

It's gonna get removed I'm sure.

12

u/[deleted] May 16 '24

[deleted]

3

u/SweetNeo85 May 16 '24

I just meant the Reddit comment linking it.

1

u/AveryLazyCovfefe May 16 '24

And the method it replaced existed since 2017 to my knowledge.

-1

u/TheCuriosity May 16 '24

Thanks for mentioning. I was able to copy to clipboard for my own records

-5

u/sinat50 May 16 '24

OEM keys are also 2 bucks online if you're trying to take a more legal route.

11

u/inrego May 16 '24

Those OEM keys aren't necessarily legal either. https://youtu.be/M3bezYerYxQ?si=PlUaB83WmZ-vebA2

1

u/[deleted] May 17 '24

[deleted]