The joys of software activation. (/Sarcasm)

(This post has nothing to do directly with magecrawl nor programming. Blogger doesn't apparently like pseudo-xml tags in the title or the post).

So this morning I woke up hoping to get some work done on magecrawl before I had to leave for Houston for the weekend. I log into my machine to find the background is black and a popup telling me my copy of Windows isn't "genuine". I find this amusing, since I have MSDN at work and am pretty blasted sure I used one of those images for this machine. It's the machine I use to VPN into work when I work from home.

Well, I so find the spot on "My Computer"'s properties to ask it to try to validate again, and it fails. Alright, I'm not sure why it's failing, I'll go grab another valid product key off MSDN and try again. Which I proceed to do, still doesn't validate. Sigh, so I kickoff another download of the 4 gigabyte Window ISO image off of MSDN.

So on Sunday when I return, instead of programming I get the fun of reinstalling Windows and all my applications. Less hacking on magecrawl time for me.

(Rant)

I understand the concept that Microsoft is a business and it needs to make money to keep paying people to improve things. I didn't pirate Windows, I have a blasted valid product key. Well, up to of them 10 it seems. What is frustrating is that me, one who didn't steal anything, is being called everything but a thief.

I love C#, I think it is the best programming technology out there right now. Using visual studio when programming C# is so easy that I don't even reach for gvim most of the time. But now, because Microsoft decided to audit my machine overnight without my permission, I get a black background, an annoying popup, and an afternoon of work, even though I didn't do anything wrong. If I would have used a pirated version of Windows, I bet I wouldn't be having this problem now.

I'm in the laptop market sometime this year, and I was deciding between a new Dell an a new Macbook Pro. Getting a Macbook Pro and installing Mono Develop on it is starting to sound very good right about now. They might cost more, but I hear they never call your a thief.

(/Rant)