Vista Activation problems

It's a shame Microsoft persist with the intrusive and buggy Windows Genuine Activation program. It seems to go from bad to worse. The latest problems with Vista show this is going to be a pain for those affected.

At least Microsoft have acknowledged the problem in their knowledge base. But the real concern is that a game can cause this problem. Isn't Vista supposed to stop things accessing critical system files?

The real disappointment is that Microsoft insist on treating their customers like thieves: A critical system file changes? Well, you must be try to hack our software.

The only comforting thought about this is it will tie up a few millions of Microsoft's money in supporting users who want to reactivate.

More Vista hall of shame

Australian Personal Computer adds to the Vista hall of shame with it's list of mobile phones that don't support Vista, which is pretty well every single brand with the exception of iMate and Palm.

It really is a joke.

Wasting taxes on technology

The state government is accused of wasting $100 million on a defective email program for NSW school students. It's a shame politicians have to waste scarce funds on gimmicks like this. There's a thousand other things this money could have been spent on in our state schools.

Computers and the Internet are useful educational tools. But they are not substitutes for good teachers or well resourced schools. It's far more important for kids to be taught to read and write rather than just learning powerpoint and how to rip stuff off Wikipedia.

The real problem is that parents and voters are easily impressed by this stuff. Politicians know it wins them votes and school administrators know it allows them to get away with higher fees. We all need to question these people more on what exactly they intend to achieve with technology.

It's the Active X stupid!

The US CERT advisory that common support tools have security problems is barely a surprise. Anything that uses ActiveX is a risk to the computer. It's no surprise that much of the malware that causes us so much grief uses it to infect victims.

While thinking that Firefox, Opera and other browser users are totally immune from bugs is a mistake, Internet Explorer's inbuilt support for ActiveX makes it by far the biggest and easiest target.

Why support companies have to use ActiveX based programs is beyond me. Given the known problems and prevalence of spyware you'd think they would avoid them. Instead they seem to rely on them.

The biggest joke is Symantec, where their Norton products are ActiveX dependent. When a Norton machine is infected with ActiveX based spyware, Norton crashes which in turn crashes the computer. To add insult to injury, the damaged system won't even let you uninstall Norton properly because, surprise, it requires ActiveX.

It's really time for ActiveX to get the flick, it's buggy, slow and vendor specific. Programmers and website designers who use it are lazy and letting down their users.