An odd thing happened to me the other day and I’m both puzzled by, and pissed at Microsoft.<\/p>\n

Here’s what happened:<\/p>\n

I built a PC for my daughter. Then I went to Best Buy and bought a FULL version (no upgrade: I’m an honest man) of Windows XP Home Edition (version 2002, so 5 years old!) for $200.<\/p>\n

I installed it, but I didn’t activate it, since I first wanted to be sure I could get everything to work right (Windows didn’t recognize the integrated sound card).<\/p>\n

Then I downloaded and tried to install Windows Live Messenger.<\/p>\n

This failed, because it didn’t get past the ‘Genuine Microsoft’ test: it said something about the fact that this copy hadn’t been activated yet, which apparently is a requirement for this ‘Genuine Microsoft’ test.<\/p>\n

And here it comes:<\/p>\n

It said: If this is indeed a non-Genuine Microsoft copy (i.e. “if you are a thief”), then we would happily turn it into a Genuine Microsoft copy for you and send you a valid product key, no questions asked, for … 99 bucks!<\/p>\n

So, here I am, with a $200 version of Windows XP, and Microsoft now tells me if I had STOLEN it, rather than paying $200 for it, I could have had it at half price.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine a big sign at Walmart saying something like:<\/p>\n

“If we catch you shoplifting, we will politely offer you to purchase the stolen goods at half the price honest and decent people pay for it: no questions asked”<\/p>\n

That would certainly make for shorter lines at the cash registers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An odd thing happened to me the other day and I’m both puzzled by, and pissed at Microsoft. Here’s what happened: I built a PC for my daughter. Then I went to Best Buy and bought a FULL version (no upgrade: I’m an honest man) of Windows XP Home Edition (version 2002, so 5 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","category-spitting-nails"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}