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Microsoft kills official way to activate windows without internet (www.neowin.net)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following: "Support for product activation has moved online.

Linux is this way, guys.

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[–] 22 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Well, I've never done it because it's not part of my tasks, but for example industrial PCs used for SCADA usually run Windows, and they are never allowed on the internet, so...

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Nah, they're run by the laziest chucklefucks you've ever met - they're plugged right into a broadband modem with no firewall running bog standard teamviewer or RDP awaiting any connection (no filtering) because the people setting up and using these systems have no concept of infosec. They know how to set up their industrial system, plug it into the 'computer thingy', and hand it off the the municipal water dude who is a flat earth, anti-fluoride, moon-landing hoax, J6-denialist who knows nothing about technology, but wants to run the town's water treatment from his cell phone.

    (not that I'm jaded by small town dynamics or anything)

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Other side of the same coin: I work for a municipality, and I can’t even connect my phone to the intranet because they use MAC whitelists for the entire network. The only thing non-whitelisted devices can even connect to is the (really shitty) public WiFi. Many cities used to be pretty lax about cybersecurity, but a few high profile attacks have made most of them (at least anything larger than a small town) rethink that stance. Hell, one city a few miles away had a ransomware attack that left their city services entirely unavailable for like three weeks. That was actually studied by lots of the local cities, to see what they can do to prevent similar attacks.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    We have our clients switch to Linux now. Ignition works well enough and it's so much cheaper. It has drawbacks compared to wonderware, or the Siemens stack though. But I'll take those issues over logging into their systems still running on winXP.

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