Microsoft Kills Official Way to Activate Windows 11/10 Without Internet
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Microsoft's decision to axe the official offline activation method for Windows 11 and 10 has sparked a heated debate about the company's priorities. Commenters are calling out Microsoft's "corporate idiocy" and suggesting that if employees actually used their own products, they might think twice before implementing boneheaded changes. The discussion reveals a consensus that Microsoft's focus has shifted from selling Windows to extracting as much value as possible from its user base, with some commenters noting that the company's employees aren't even using their own products, with one attendee at a Python conference recalling that every Microsoft dev they saw was using a MacBook. As one commenter put it, "consumers need to remember how to wield a pitchfork," highlighting the growing frustration with the company's profit-driven approach.
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able to run on any hardware
free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage
lightweight, simple, stripped of all cruft and extras
consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies
But they didn't - so people are looking for alternatives.
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
They don't make money (put bread on the table) by selling Windows any more. That is soooo 2000s.
Income is from data mining and from subscriptions to cloudy offerings that are mostly MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Oh, and hyping their perceived value to the point that the term "meme stock" is no longer just a joke.
Yes, they do. Unfortunately even MS employees are powerless to do anything about the crap that gets shoved into Windows by other employees working at the company, and the ones who complain about it are quietly shown the door or have already left of their own will, leaving only those who are completely apathetic or...
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Exactly. That and the desire to remain in the country --- part of the reason why companies like H-1Bs so much is because they are going to be far more docile and less willing to resist doing things they feel are wrong.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?
It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
Who's the "whale" in this context? Windows users who subscribe to copilot? Enterprise? Advertisers?
So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.
The only positive is all the interest in Linux and software optimization though.
I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.
and, unfortunately, they are not alone. Google has been doing this for years and Apple is slowly following suit.
Desktops existed before punching in your credit card numbers was a common thing, that history is hard to shrug.
Xbox for gamers, mobile for everyone else and business editions of windows for the enterprise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Minimum 50% of cases (in anything). Probably higher
Math is hard.
Says who? I did a gap year service project and graduated at age 23. My business partner did a 3-2 program and graduated at 23.
Plus, anyone working as an engineer then has a 8 figure net worth and the overwhelming majority moved on long ago.
And lose all the OEM license money?
Just hypothetically... of course they're not actually doing this?
----
Anywho, doesn't matter cause my Xeon went from Windows 10 to Linux, this year. Still rocking a Win7Pro Core2Duo (as my second favorite machine).
Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.
A few industries reward that. Telcos and other parts of critical infrastructure come to mind.
Is goal is increase revenue! Create project to roll out fibre to a new rural community. Sign up all 40 houses in that community at $100 a month.
Project cost $10 mil.
Bonuses and promotions for increased revenue!
They're $9.04 million in the red.
Windows is an OS for the people who use the users.
Now, it should be "where do we want you to go today?"
"Let Copilot decide where you want to go today!"
I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.
As was Windows NT & 2000 for their time.
95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...
The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."
I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.
... While also maintaining their famous backwards compatibility?
People here (not me) forgot how that company became successful at first place and thought things changed.
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
Happy diving.
With Arch Linux + the nvidia-open package, the Linux desktop experience is miles better than when I last tried in 2017 with Ubuntu
And until Linux implements similar abstractions in the Kernel akin to Filter Drivers in Windows, Linux will never have a proper anticheat.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
It’s one of the bigger failures of antitrust enforcement I can think of
(I can think of much larger screw ups involving lack of antitrust enforcement, to be clear.)
Some Valve guy gave a great talk about their cheating detection a while back; I found it incredibly impressive: https://youtu.be/ObhK8lUfIlc (can't comment on their effectiveness these days, haven't played CS in a long time)
For example, I've seen other programs refuse to run if you had Sysinternals Procmon running, or various standalone debuggers. Would you be deemed a "risky" user if you used tools like that?
EDIT: sorry, I completely misread your comment. You're right about the latency issue, but that's also an issue with client-side prediction implementations, which provide a small window in which all client packets are trusted, rather than just the latest ones (eg to be able to rewind when computing collision detection in a fast paced shooter)
The real challenge to solve is botting, which includes things like aimbots, macros the negate recoil, etc. It's basically impossible to solve this, regardless of operating system or hardware (eg external cheat peripherals)
I see it as a moderation issue, which is unavoidable. Just focus on building tools to help users report cheaters rather than try to automate the whole thing via flawed anticheat spyware, and missing out on potentially the next big PC gaming platform in the process.
It's not. But it is much more expensive on the server-side, i.e. paid by the company, so the real solution of mainframe + thin clients is not one that companies want to implement. Instead, they rely on computing on the client model, which is what opens up the door to cheats.
E.g. Aimbots and Recoil suppressors are non existent if it's the server calculating trajectories and telling the clients "your bullet hit exactly here (X, Y, Z), go draw an impact texture in there". But as said, that means a lot of computing done on the server. Not cheap, but given the $millions invested so far in anticheat tech over the years, one has to wonder if it wouldn't really be cheaper, after all...
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
But I know what you mean. Another niche that really doesn't go well on Linux is VR.
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
I'm glad none of the games that require this really appeal to me these days
I don't mind Windows being relegated to a niche of the stuff that runs CS while Linux based OS works for every other purpose.
Name one thing that needs it.
It doesn't just check if a cheat process is running, because obviously cheats know not to let themselves be discoverable that way. Heck, there are hardware cheats now that simulate various PCIe devices but with extra sneaky DMA operations. (I bought one because it's a cheap way to have an FPGA in my computer)
It's a political problem, though. They don't pass Linux because few people are avoiding buying their games just because they refuse to run on Linux. If people did do that, they'd have to change the anticheat, no matter the consequences. Probably higher cheating, since there is no true official blessed unmodified Linux system to compare against.
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
How does one get into this, preferably without having to be a yardie for a few years (I'm an electrician with a degree in chemistry)?
Fellow Win7Pro retro machiner.
I work in the refurb division. I walk though the receiving and demanufacturing areas looking for things that would be worth our time to resell. Laptops, desktops, and servers above a certain spec, CPUs, drives (hot right now), RAM (very hot right now), power adapters, docking stations, switches, etc.
Though if you have a chemistry degree, you'd probably be more helpful to the people we sell scrap to. From what the boss told me, they're the ones who shred PCBs, drives, etc. and dissolve them in acid to extract metals and other materials, like one would with mined ore.
And our certifications require us to use buyers who don't turn around and ship things off to the third world for "processing": https://sustainableelectronics.org/welcome-to-r2v3/
>I had a friend working there
Also how I got my first tech job, working in a laptop repair facility (on-site for a large engineering team).
>you'd probably be more helpful to the people we sell scrap to
Thanks for the certification links (which has a map with hundreds of locations — none near me, but have been looking for a smaller community and this is helpful information).
Have they closed the double install trick?
1. Install once with ms account and activate.
2. Reinstall offline with local account.
3. It will be activated when you go back online.
I suspect the remote server remember your computer hardware generated guid
Then upgrade and reboot until it deactivates, then it should let you fix it with your microsoft account... Once that happens, you can remove the microsoft account from your computer.
Even if for now the stats (e.g. steam hardware survey), show only a slight increase in Linux users (and a lot of them could be dual booting)
This functionality was taken for granted 30+ years ago!
Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.
Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.
I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.
Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users
Mint is very similar to Windows UI
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