I'm up in ABQ. MIxed bag of hippies and non-hippies up here. 40 minutes north it's hippie central ;)

@Xabba

If you get Windows together with your computer (I believe it's called an OEM version) than this Windows will only install on the system with which it was delivered. If you change some major hardware this Windows won't recognise your computer any more and therefore won't install.

This does not happen with a "normal" Windows that was bought separately.

Albuquerque scares me as much as Chicago where I originally came from. We get the news feeds. Too dang many drunk drivers and gang shootings. Here we just have the occasional bum burning his partner on the side of the road. I think you have a corpse of ours up there now being looked at by the coroner. But you do have some decent resteraunts up there so I am envious of that. All we have is fast food joints unless you go to Las Cruces.

OEM versions of Windows dont have this problem, change some hddware no reactivation needed. Ive changed hddware over the years and never had to reactivate. In fact windows activation never had to go through all that crap with OEM, unless it just does it without me knowing. Retail windows though i hear is nothing but a pain in the ass if it fails. Plus OEM versions you can throw on more than one computer without needing a license. Otherwise i would be in sht creek with MS but both pcs get updates and pass the genuine check. OEM :rock:

Ahhh, but there is more to the Microsoft Saga..

You all know WGA..

.. But they have a NEW three letter combo for you...

......WAT, otherwise known as "Windows Activation Technology"

Now, every 90 days YOU have to resubmitt to the Microsoft servers a request to validate your authenticity. If you do not pass muster you are flagged a pirate and you get this annoying black screen with dire soul crushing news that you are running illegal software.

This software is self healing (thus you can not just glitch it to break it), goes around any firewall blocks you may invoke, and makes changes to your system without your authorization.

Right now it is not mandatory and it is limited to Windows 7. In the past when you had to verify you were 'Genuine' a simple WGA is all you have to pass. Now you have to have a WAT pass as well.

It is only a matter of time before it is backported to Vista.

They made their money off of XP so they do not really care if you pirate it now. Time will force you to update to a newer OS as new games, utilities and other things come out that just no longer work on the older software.

WGA was first bypassed in less than 24 hours in its early iteration, WAT will be broken rapidly meaning you, as a payign customer, can too turn that ****box off.

Yes, WPA is a very early form of DRM - presumably one of the reasons Microsoft didn't push its luck too far and kept it mild. However, as it is, I'm sure a major reason people bit the bullet is because they are all already entrapped in the Windows system, a factor that won't be for a game, nor does people's acceptance of it mean it is good, or proper, or anything ofr the matter.

As of the end of February 2010, Windows XP is the most widely used operating system in the world with a 58.4% market share, having peaked at 76.1% in January 2007. Support for XP from Microsoft will go on until 2013. I have it on all my comps as either standard XP or XP 64 bit. No way I will "upgrade" to any other OS until XP expires, and maybe not even then. I have NO doubt that WAT will be hacked quite quickly. Microsoft continuously underestimates the intelligence of it's users.

Considering software is still being written to XP, I doubt very much there is a worry about software compatibility. It takes a LONG time for an OS to be backwards incompatible with software. Heck, I have SH3 running on two comps with 64 bit operating systems and it runs super fast. What WILL be necessary to upgrade is HARDWARE. Games are being written to more and more advanced hardware specs and that's where the upgrading will be needed. That is, if you BUY those hardware-intensive games. With the hardware I have right now I can run the most hardware-intensive games at at least medium settings. But I don't really have any interest in those games. Most are 1st person shooters.


As to SHV, I think Ubi's "master plan" is to sell the game to as many people as possible that will buy it for it's current $50 price. When they reach a certain profit point, they will come out with a patch that will eliminate the need to be online to play. The hacks that are out there right now are all flawed because they don't give full functionality to the game.
Of course, it's still early and a new hack may come out that does give full functionality. You never know. But it's costing Ubisoft money to run those online servers and it's just a matter of time before the expense of running the servers outweighs their usefulness in preventing piracy. Plus we've already seen where the servers crashed and THAT does not make for happy users. The negative feelings from loyal SH3 and 4 users certainly isn't helping Ubi's cause. I have no doubt there are some that are so peed off about the online situation that they won't buy SH5 no matter if Ubi takes the online requirement out or not. And I sure don't blame them.

Well I must dispute this as the XP I have is the OEM type (comes on the recovery disk) and this was for both the laptop and my desktop and it installed no bother. The OEM one installed no problem on my other laptop, as I said I took the serial number from the knackered laptop and used that.

Worked no problem.

I had to call Microsoft once after swapping in a new drive just days after making a clean install of XP. Naturally they wanted to know why I was trying to activate so soon after the first, and my response was simply that my old drive had failed. No further questions, and I was able to reactivate immediately. What keeps me from upgrading to a newer Windows is cost. :DL

As for the Ubisoft approach to DRM, I probably won't be buying anything that requires a steady internet connection, simply because I don't like being tied to the internet unless I am actually using it (like right now). It's unfair, though, that the many are paying for the actions of a few rotten eggs. :salute:

Hello,
the day they develop games and good sims for Linux, i will instantly and gladly refrain from the Window$ DLL hell, the bloody "registry" and this activation crap.
:rock:
Up to then most games and "sims" will anyway only run on Sony, Nintendo and MS consoles.

Greetings,
Catfish

In case of SH5 it's probably the case that the many are paying for the actions of a few rotten eggs, but if you look at more popular games it's actually the other way round. Not that I like the scheme Ubisoft implemented, but piracy on the PC is a huge problem, Ubi could've chosen a better way to go about it though.

Hmmm....do these sub sims not work on Linux? I would gladly switch to that OS rather than Win 7.

The recent commercial ones don't, at least as far as I know none has managed to get SH4 working properly. SH5 doesn't even seem to work properly on Windows so that's probably another no-no.

SH3 should work with Wine if Starforce is taken care of, and then there's Danger from the Deep

Drat! So we are stuck with Windows as the OS. :x

I just edited the above post to include new info. In short SH3 and Danger from the Deep should work, the other ones don't.

Well that's something at least. :up:

You could always try running an SH in WINE. It won't run everything Windows, but the project has been in active development for years with steady improvements. Saw a YouTube the other day showing Mirror's Edge in WINE. Looked like it ran pretty smoothly.

Do you think SH5 will run in it?

@Deputy

Couldn't hurt to try. The WINE project maintains a list of programs that run. Here's the AppDB:

http://appdb.winehq.org/

And the main project website:

http://www.winehq.org/

My Linux buddy just fired me this link to results for SH5. Someone's trying it already:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...sion&iId=19549

EDIT:

My buddy doesn't seem to think the new DRM scheme would go well with it. *shrug*