Further Proof That It Is Always Best To Pirate.

Between the DRM fiasco of Bioshock and various other crap that has been going on for years, I've often railed against how current software copy protection schemes do nothing but inconvenience or punish bona fide users while simultaneously encouraging the very piracy it is meant to prevent, but this takes the cake.

Apparently, Microsoft is having a wee bit of trouble with their WGA "tattle" servers, so until they fix it, every single person using non-cracked versions of XP and Vista risks product deactivation with every moment they are online, living in fear that their operating system will revolt when it can't successfully "phone home."

From Ars Technica:

Late last night we started receiving reports from readers experiencing problems with Windows Genuine Advantage authentication. Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service.
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We contacted our sources at Microsoft, who told us off the record that the company is aware of a major WGA server outage affecting users across the globe. The Windows Genuine Advantage support forum has exploded with complaints, as a result, and Phil Liu, WGA project manager, says that he won't sleep until the problem is fixed. Windows Vista and XP are affected, 32- and 64-bit versions.

...

How does this affect you?

If you use Windows, do your best to avoid anything that requires a ping to WGA. That means you should stay away from patches and add-ons until the coast is clear. WGA will not reach out across the Internet and deactivate your copy of Windows, but you should avoid talking to a WGA server for any reason.

For those of you doing installations and upgrades this weekend, we recommend that you avoid activation at this time. Remember that you can run Windows legally for 30 days without activating.

If you attempt a validation and it fails, your install may be marked as non-genuine, which could lead to several annoyances. First things first, do not reboot a Windows machine that has been marked as non-genuine. Once you do so, you will lose functionality and the Aero interface. It would be best to wait until this problem has been resolved.

Read more in the source article.

So there you have it. Sucks to be you, the next few days, if you don't happen to be using a cracked copy of XP Pro Corporate SP2 with WGA disabled.

...(shifty glance).