Microsoft Shoots Own customers...er foot.

Well, M$ finally kicked in it's anti-piracy scheme.
You now have to authenticate your system before you can download updates.
What a load of crap.
Of course they and all their supporting sheep will have a 101 excuses why this is good, necessary, not-evil, etc. But whatever they say, they won't be able to deny the results. It will cause more customer alienation and give the competition another chink in their armour to exploit.

This is exactly the same kind of nonsense that Wal-Mart pulls with their 'greeters'.
Yeah, right. If you treat your customers like thieving scum, that's how they'll act, and how they'll re-act. After all, look around Wal-Mart. All the real good trash shops there. And their losses to theft are higher than their competition. Imagine that.

Here's Microsoft facing more and more pressure from OpenSource and others, they go and decide to start treating their customers like pirating scum. Good move morons.

Now, what about the poor hard working IT fools that have to deal with what will be a huge pain in the ass with regards to updates. What will they be asking Sysadmins to do to get updates now? What about systems with no Internet access?
Everyone has Internet these days you say? oh please. Many companies and government agencies have to isolate their internal networks from any Internet access because Windows is way too insecure to expose to the Internet.

Fortunately we live in a world of morons who will believe in anything, and buy anything. But as soon as a generation with an average IQ higher than the average annual temperature of Norway arrives, Microsoft will go out of business.

[UPDATE]
Apparently ZDNet agrees with me. See http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=389

I wonder if anyone realizes the degree to which Microsoft products are pirated. I mean I've never met anyone that bought a full, legit copy of MS Office. They either got it with their computer, or got it on some other deal like a student price or upgrade version. That or most of the rest of them pirate it. What happens when MS start checking every piece of their software?
People will flock away from Office in droves. I mean come on, there's not anyone that really believes Office is worth $300-$500. Probably because it isn't worth anywhere near that.
So many people pirate without thinking about it. Imagine what will happen when people have to buy every piece of software they use. Winzip, Nero, Office, Acrobat, etc.

Most people have software worth several times the cost of their computer. What will happen when they actually have to pay for it all. Suddenly they won't be so smug about Windows superiority anymore I think.
Open Source will start to sound pretty good. It's like piracy without the guilt.
Suddenly 7z, and OpenOffice and Gimp on Windows (Or heaven forbid, Linux) starts to have some real value.

I know I'd rather pay ($99) now $59 for SuSE Linux Pro and get an OS plus over two thousand appliactions, an office suite, graphics programs etc.