EFF, ACLU Asks Ninth Circuit Court To Rehear Two Recent CFAA Cases

DRM: Still Hurting Paying Customers The Most

from the the-internet-is-for-opening-client-side-PDFs-apparently dept

Thu, Sep 1st 2016 10:45am — Tim Cushing

Today's Stupid DRM Trick is brought to you by Adobe LiveCycle ES3 and Windows 10.

Starting in August, we started to receive noise from end-users on unable to open DRM protected PDFs, ones that are protected with 2016-17 policy, with the use of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. Users are mostly facing issue on seeing the below message when opening the PDFs:

Error Message:

"This computer must be connected to the Internet in order to open this document. Your permission to open this document offline has expired. Make sure this computer is connected to the network and the Adobe Experience Manager- Forms Server(Document Security) is running."

or

"This computer must be connected to the network in order to open this document. Your permission to open this document offline has expired. Make sure this computer is connected to the network and the Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management Server is running."

While I can understand some companies might want to prevent unauthorized users from reading PDFs possibly containing sensitive material, the fact that an authorized user's computer has to "phone home" to Adobe to read a PDF generated (and held) by a third party is ridiculous. While password-protection schemes may have their drawbacks, the LiveCycle solution doesn't do much for employees (or students -- LiveCycle is also used for courseware) who might not have access to an internet connection (an unfortunate reality when traveling) but still need access to these documents.

However, this problem isn't completely Adobe's fault (although the DRM's insistence on an internet connection still is). It appears a Windows update is what's preventing LiveCycle from phoning home.

Today, I am unable to access the pdf courseware on my system due to the following error message:

"This computer must be connected to the Internet in order to open this document. Your permission to open this document offline has expired. Make sure this computer is connected to the network and the Adobe Experience Manager- Forms Server(Document Security) is running."

Now, I know my system is connected to the network but I can't figure out what else is wrong. Usually, when I open these pdfs, I get a login prompt but this time, nothing. Please help ASAP. But even after re-downloading the material from aspen portal once again, it still doesn't work. I had installed the Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems (KB3163018) on 30-06-2016 and the only issue I faced before was that the login prompt was not appearing but I could still open the document. Now, I can't even open the document.

Once again, a Windows update breaks something that was working, leaving end users to clean up the company's mess. Another user had the same update kill their VPN access. And if it's not blocking connections, it's killing webpages accessed through Microsoft's own Edge browser. Fun stuff. These not-all-that-optional cumulative updates tend to create as many problems as they solve and Microsoft's own "help" isn't all that helpful, leading to this sort of exasperated response.

The trouble we have is I have over 200 Windows 10 machines and cannot go to each one and run a tool to view the updates. We use WSUS and I had hoped that there would be a way to split out the Cumulative update so we can disable the two patches I mentioned and then have that push. I have for the time being approved the update for removal in WSUS so it will handle removing it. I am concerned about the other fixes and not having them. Does MSFT QA these updates or are they blaming Cisco on this one?

So, we have two issues, neither of them useful to end users. On Adobe's end, we have a protection scheme that requires an internet connection. That's classic DRM -- phone home, get permission… all well and good (NOT REALLY) until someone needs access to documents but can't because they're not connected to the internet.

Then we have an update that breaks the connection Adobe's DRM relies on, forcing the same problem on users who do have internet access. The problem with DRM schemes like these is that they rely on a bunch of parts that aren't interconnected (Adobe, Windows) but both have to be working properly to get the job done... rather than just, say, open Adobe Reader and be done with it. Subtract an internet connection and Adobe's documents are useless, even to authorized users. Throw a suprisingly volatile Windows update into the mix and end users doing everything right are still screwed. Combine the two and sensitive documents are suddenly so "protected" that a majority of users can't even view them. And, remember, this is a "privilege" corporate customers pay for.

DRM: still mostly useless and still mainly a pain in the ass for paying customers.

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Filed Under: drm, livecycle es3, pdf, windows 10
Companies: adobe, microsoft

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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 10:54am

DRM, Like Microsoft
it's all guaranteed to break. It keeps people like me employed. Despite the fact that I bitch about stupid people, I am secretly happy they exist because it creates demand for my skills which keeps me employed and earning well over the average income.

Bring it on, the People Deserve DRM and I need job security! Win & WIN!
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Jason, 1 Sep 2016 @ 10:57am

My sympathies to the people having this problem, and best of luck in getting Adobe to pay attention to it. Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but in my experience Adobe's concern for customer satisfaction ends the very instant your money is safely deposited in their account.
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Thad, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:14am

Pirates, as always, are unaffected.
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Underprepared Hiker, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:14am

My story
There I was stranded in the Alaskan wilderness freezing, I managed to gather up some sticks to make a fire but I had no idea how to make a fire.

No big deal I thought and grabbed my smartphone and opened up my copy of "Wilderness Survival Guide" only to be presented with some stupid message about how I had to be on the Internet to read it! I mean WTF, the time I need this e-book the most and it will not open!?>!?!?!K!@#

So I yelled as loud as I could "F$*# you DRM!" fortunately some mountain man heard me and guided me to safety.

Thank god my e-book had DRM, without it I'd still be sitting there next to my fire following the books directions of "when lost, stay put, help will come"

Thank you DRM, you saved my life!
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Christenson, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:17am

Repeat after me: DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT!
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT

Seriously, folks, not only is copying not theft, but if a reasonably technically able person has seen it or heard it, and wants a copy, they can make a usable version in a baker's dozen different ways, all of them easy!
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Darkhog, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:21am

DRM raises misfortunes
What was said in the headline is precisely what is wrong with DRM. It never protects the work, hell, even uncrackable (yeah, right) Denuvo has been cracked and when it goes wrong, it goes wrong for the legit buyers.

It's extremely hard (not impossible, because there are no impossible things, there is only lack of skills needed to complete the task) to write a DRM scheme that isn't easily crackable or bypassable, does flag pirates AND on top of that never show any false positives (flags legit customers as pirates). So far no one managed to do so.

Given the fact that DRM rarely works and you would have hard time making one that keeps right people in and wrong people out, why even try? Why waste money on such BS systems?

I am a game developer. I am working on a game that I intend to sell. But I have very adamant, anti-DRM and pro-filesharing stance. Why? Because people who'll like my game will buy it even if they pirate it initially.

If they are jerks, they wouldn't buy it anyway just to spite me and if they can't afford it/live in a country where my game was banned for some stupid reason (happened before even to totally innocent games such as Pokemon) and enjoy it, they will spread the word about it which ultimately would lead to legit sales from people who actually can afford it.
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Roger Strong (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:24am

> the LiveCycle solution doesn't do much for employees (or students -- LiveCycle is also used for courseware)

College textbooks are ridiculously over-priced. They're intentionally rendered worthless after two years by a new edition with cosmetic changes - to prevent students from selling them to the following year's students. Courseware publishers WANT PDFs that can be killed remotely from a central server at the end of a school year. And they're the ones paying Adobe for products, not the students.

Publishers want to time-limit other books too, but students are the perfect place to debug and establish the practice. (For the same reason that the military wants 18-20-year-olds; they're still used to obeying authority without questioning.)

As for the rest of us, anything Windows 10 does to neuter Adobe Reader's functions beyond reading documents is a GOOD thing.

Adobe now lets creators embed auto-executing programs in PDFs, making it a major vector for ransomware viruses. Combined with the password protected encryption feature, they can't be scanned for viruses at the firewall, mail server or desktop. Just send companies a fake invoice - they're probably already receiving real password-protected PDF invoices - and start demanding bitcoin.
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I.T. Guy, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:24am

Windows 10 is grrrrrate!!!
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Roger Strong (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:27am

Re: Repeat after me: DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT!
I've lost a lot of paid-for content to faulty or abandoned DRM. Perhaps a 'DRM is Theft' t-shirt is in order.
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mcinsand, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:32am

Re: Re: Repeat after me: DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT!
>>Perhaps a 'DRM is Theft' t-shirt is in order.

Now that's a great idea! After all, I thought that courts ruled that we had rights (not privileges) to make archival copies, and DRM has stolen much of that from us.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:36am

Microsoft keeps crowing about the number of users who have moved to Windows 10 but fail to add in the part about them being forced into the upgrade by the tactics used. i still haven't migrated, nor will i but the worrying thing is, especially with all the surveillance being carried out via Windows 10 is what is Microsoft and the mostly USA security services expecting to gain? i am pretty sure Microsoft has signed a deal with the Devil (NSA, FBI, HS, CIA, etc). it must have unless it intends raiding the bank accounts of every user. apart from that, what other idea makes any sense out of forcing people to use a particular computer operating system that is then constantly broken by the 'necessary and enforced updates'?
the other way of looking at things yet again is the way the entertainment industries are trying their damnedest to take control of the internet and use it as their own personal distribution service that everyone else has to get permission to use after paying a fee. if the industries, and that's music, movies, games, publishing etc, etc, are getting Microsoft to spy for them, relaying back what software is installed on each computer, what music and movies are being downloaded/played and what news articles are being read, they can then go to law makers and get even worse laws introduced that remove even more privacy and freedom from the people. no one seems to realise that little by little these industries are taking control of the net and are getting more and more laws in place that force payments to them for doing nothing. there is a new law afoot in the EU that yet again tries to get monies for 'rights holders' out of the likes of YouTube and it wont stop there!
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GunSheep (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 11:43am

Re: DRM, Like Microsoft
I've always said that while Microsoft, VMware, Kaspersky, Cisco, continue to make software I will continue to be gainfully employed. I mean, I've seen failures of basic math. If rotating logs use X amount of space and you configured the log partition to Y amount of space....then Y damn well better be bigger than X. This was on a 'preconfigured' appliance.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 12:43pm

The Rosetta Stone
wouldn't give up its secrets, because it's "phone home" DRM couldn't connect via 300 baud modem.

I think DRM was first conceived in the Code of Hammurabi -- that is, if Disney lawyers can be believed...
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Cho Seung Hui, 1 Sep 2016 @ 12:51pm

Re:
Since Windows Vista i planned to move to another OS. After testing and cursing the bad driver compatibility with Windows 10, i finally moved to Linux.

While Win10 has worse plug and play options than Win7/8, Kernel 4.x for Linux gained support for old and new hardware. This plus the bullshit called MS Answers.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 1:34pm

Re:
I don't use Win10 as my primary OS, but my wife does, and I've got it set up on the HTPC in my living room. (Reason it's Windows and not Linux: games. Reason it's Windows 10 and not Windows 7: some usability fixes in Win10. Among other things, Windows 7 liked to reset my audio settings from 5.1 to stereo every single time I turned off my receiver, and Win10 preserves the 5.1 setting.)

I was planning on building a hardware firewall anyway, but the increased spyware in Windows 10 Anniversary Edition helped convince me to do it sooner rather than later.

It's not such a bad OS, but shame about all the damn spyware.
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Thad, 1 Sep 2016 @ 1:38pm

Re: Re: Re: Repeat after me: DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT!
I have pretty mixed feelings about using The Enemy's rhetoric against him. There's a poetic justice to it that I can appreciate, but ultimately fighting dishonest hyperbole with dishonest hyperbole is still dishonest.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
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Stephen, 1 Sep 2016 @ 1:44pm

Then we have an update that breaks the connection Adobe's DRM relies on, forcing the same problem on users who do have internet access.
The most likely reason why the Windows Update caused this problem was because LiveCycle was accessing some part of the Windows OS in a non-standard fashion. That is, LiveCycle at some point was NOT going through the standard interface routines to do its business but accessing some part of the Windows runtime files directly, possibly for performance reasons. When the update changed the file in question it broke LiveCycle.

That sort of thing happens all the time to all modern operating systems and basically means that a programmer has not followed the rules the OS designers have set.
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Charles (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:19pm

Re: Of course
Of course you're right. Windows could never be at fault.
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David, 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:21pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Repeat after me: DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT!
Joke's on the abyss though as it is gazing into me via one of my less favorable ports.
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I.T. Guy, 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:29pm

Re: Re:
DX12 is the only reason my gaming rig has w10. It gets turned on, games played, then turned off. That's all I will ever do with windows 10.

I think it sucks personally. Win 7 took 20 seconds from button press to desktop... win 10 45 seconds. Oh the humanity!!!! But seriously going from 20 sec boots for a couple months to more than double that time seems forever.

I am seriously looking at Linux to use for daily surfing, email, etc.
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Wyrm (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:31pm

First thought: Microsoft + Adobe? What could possibly go wrong?

Second thought: I remember an old comment from some DRM-enthusiast who tried to convince others that customers want DRM. The argument that customers buy products with DRM is of course complete BS, but it was impossible to make him admit that customers want the products, not the DRM, and that they will buy despite the DRM, not because of them.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:37pm

Worse still, what happens when the company running the DRM server shuts down? Many people who "bought" music from the many iTunes copycats that popped up in the early 2000s -- and soon shut down -- were permanently left high and dry.
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That One Guy (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:42pm

Re:
Easy enough to confirm/dubunk though. Simply have two products available, the 'standard' where the DRM isn't mentioned, and a 'Now with DRM!' bit added, along with information plainly available before purchase as to what the what the DRM will and will not allow you to do.

If they really are buying it because of the DRM then the latter should easily outsell the former, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that that would very much not be the case and they know it.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:45pm

>Many people who "bought" music from the many iTunes copycats that popped up in the early 2000s -- and soon shut down -- were permanently left high and dry.

More fool they. They should have bought from some big-name company, like, say, Microsoft, that they could be confident would still be around.

("Plays for sure ... but not forever")
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:46pm

Good thing no one mocks Techdirt behind their back for being pro-encryption and anti-DRM...
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That One Guy (profile), 1 Sep 2016 @ 2:47pm

Re:
Two things:

First, you get a whole slew of people faced with the fact that if they want the stuff they paid for then it's 'Yarr!' for them, leading to a number of people going the path of the parrot and eyepatch just to regain access to what they've already paid for, and second a good many of those people are going to be asking themselves why they should even pay in the first place if something like that's just going to happen.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 3:01pm

Re: Re: Re:
I am seriously looking at Linux to use for daily surfing, email, etc.

Look at all the other software that is available for Linux, and you will only be limited in what you use a computer for by time and interests, rather than your wallet.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 3:07pm

DRM, a publishers wet dream to
Drive Repeated Monetization of the same product.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 3:34pm

Re: Re:
I was once on the other side of this debate. Thankfully I was set straight by expensive purchases that were unusable by the paying customer (me) but delightfully nice for the "pirate" .
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 4:28pm

Re:
It is a very good thing, because they would be making a false equivalence and be making fools of themselves. They would also be cowards who don't have the intestinal fortitude to come right out and talk their shit in the open. I'm glad we agree.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 5:43pm

Re:
No, they simply troll on as usual and make absolute fools of themselves. See antidirt, out_of_the_blue, Slonecker, Whatever, etc.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2016 @ 7:02pm

Niagra Falls, part two...
Slowly I turned, page by page, screencap by screencap, I archived and rebound the document, and I OCR'd it, and I tore it to pieces and I indexed it.

Every time I hear that word, DRM, it tears me apart...
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PaulT (profile), 2 Sep 2016 @ 12:40am

Re:
I'm sure they do.

Now, if only those people would talk to TD's face and provide a valid reason why they're wrong, we might have a conversation rather than a bunch of whining morons wondering why nobody wants to buy their broken crap or sacrifice their personal security...

Nobody's stepped up to do so, however. Can you?
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Darkhog, 2 Sep 2016 @ 7:02am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yep, esp. since Linux has Steam as well. So there are nice games there too.
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Darkhog, 2 Sep 2016 @ 7:05am

Re: Re:
There's easy way to test that tho: Games that were released both on GOG (no DRM) and Steam.
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PaulT (profile), 2 Sep 2016 @ 7:24am

Re: Re: Re:
True to an extent, but any results would be skewed by the relative popularity of the platform. From a quick search, there doesn't seem to be solid figures for the number of users on GoG, but it's probably significantly less than the 65 million apparently on Steam. You'd have to weight any results to account for that.
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Wyrm (profile), 2 Sep 2016 @ 8:49am

Re: Re: Re:
Several points to consider for a proper test:
You must release both on the same platform (popularity).
You must advertise both equally.
You must release both at the same price.
You must release both with the same features.

If, all else being equal, DRM version wins, I might admit many customers are indeed looking forward to them.
However, actions like releasing a game without DRM, but with less features and no DLC on a less popular platform, that would definitely tip the scales.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Sep 2016 @ 9:15am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
That can still be skewed by the other games available on each platform.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 2 Sep 2016 @ 9:17am

Re: Re: Re:
I was once on the other side of this debate. Thankfully I was set straight by expensive purchases that were unusable by the paying customer (me) but delightfully nice for the "pirate" .

I certainly purchase a lot of games, but the number of AAA games I've purchased in the last 10 years is somewhere south of 1 (unless you include Steam games, without any DRM other than what Steam provides, and even then, I tend to avoid steam games unless I absolutely can't.) The last EA game I purchased, back in the early 2000's, convinced me it just wasn't worth the hassle. I bought the shrink-wrapped game in the store (Command and Conquer Generals), attempted to install it and play it, and on first loading the game, the first five seconds of the campaign, I got the dreaded game over message and the game immediately exited. No matter what I did, it would fail. EA was no help, they blamed everything *but* the DRM in their game, and wouldn't offer a refund or any suggestions on how to get the game to work.

Eventually, looking online, I found the CDFix for the game, and was able to play it (by stripping off the DRM that was killing it.) But the effort left me with a horrible taste in my mouth, a pirate tool allowed me to play the game that I legally purchased. After that, I vowed never again, and that was the last game I purchased in shrink-wrap from a store. (Of course, until GoG game along and I ended up repurchasing most of the games from back then in DRM-free form, I had many more experiences trying to get games I had already purchased to run on newer OSs like Windows 7.)

Never been pro-piracy of games, but certainly am not into spending money for something that doesn't work.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Sep 2016 @ 10:13am

Re:
The most likely reason why the Windows Update caused this problem was because LiveCycle was accessing some part of the Windows OS in a non-standard fashion. That is, LiveCycle at some point was NOT going through the standard interface routines to do its business but accessing some part of the Windows runtime files directly, possibly for performance reasons. When the update changed the file in question it broke LiveCycle.

That sort of thing happens all the time to all modern operating systems and basically means that a programmer has not followed the rules the OS designers have set.
Your argument would be more convincing if Microsoft provided a decent way to detect during the QA cycle whether the program does disallowed things. Their documentation went to garbage around the release of Windows Vista. Checked builds were unreliable even before that, since they often raised debugging traps reporting bugs in Microsoft-supplied code (e.g. inappropriate access to loader facilities while inside the loader lock, inappropriate use of COM calls, ...). Much of their documentation now claims that things are not supported on systems older than Vista, when I have older copies of that same documentation showing the function existed back on Windows 2000. If I cannot trust their documentation to be right about simple things like when the API was first available, how can I count on it to be right about whether a particular call is guaranteed to keep working? If their checked builds throw errors even before I put my code on it, how can I justify the additional QA time of testing everything on the checked build and on the free build? Anything I find wrong on the checked build would have to be researched to see whether this is really a bug in my program or just another defect that was never addressed in the checked build itself. I can guarantee nobody will run a checked build in production, so management is not unreasonable in insisting that once QA is happy with the results on the free build, the program is ready to ship.
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nasch (profile), 2 Sep 2016 @ 10:35am

Re:
Still have not found anything that makes me think I should have upgraded to Windows 10.
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nasch (profile), 2 Sep 2016 @ 10:37am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Look at all the other software that is available for Linux, and you will only be limited in what you use a computer for by time and interests, rather than your wallet.

Actually skype is pretty badly broken on Linux (for me at least). If it weren't for that and Visual Studio (that doesn't exist on Linux does it?) I think I could switch.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Sep 2016 @ 2:01pm

Required Right-to-Read reference
Affected users may want to read Stallman's Right to Read for a vision of where this is headed if the public does nothing to stop it. Unlike their encumbered PDFs, they should be able to read it even on Windows 10. ;)
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Seegras (profile), 5 Sep 2016 @ 2:28am

Re: Repeat after me: DIGITAL RIGHTS MISMANAGEMENT!
I thought it was DIGITAL RESTRICTIONS MANAGEMENT.

Like "artificial scarcity for the digital age".
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Seegras (profile), 5 Sep 2016 @ 2:31am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Skype works, if you want to put up with 32bit software on your 64bit OS, and have a shitload of 32bit-libraries in ancient versions installed. Oh, and it's an older skype-version as well.

Visual Studio, of course, is not available.
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Seegras (profile), 5 Sep 2016 @ 2:37am

Re: Re:
Reason it's Windows and not Linux: games.

That's no reason. I've got around 2500 games on Linux. Around 2000 on steam and 500 more on GOG.com, humble bundle, itch.io and others.

So the reason can only be some "specific game", which neither runs natively on Linux, nor works with wine. Which, for all intents and purposes, is right now Fallout 4 in most cases ;).
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nasch (profile), 5 Sep 2016 @ 9:25am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Skype works, if you want to put up with 32bit software on your 64bit OS, and have a shitload of 32bit-libraries in ancient versions installed.

The version I got from just installing it as normal was a mess. Perhaps it was missing 32 bit dependencies, or maybe the wrong version got installed, I don't know.
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PaulT (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 12:46am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, the general problem there is that you're limited to brand names, one with a history of crippling non-Windows applications to boot. One of the problems with getting people to try alternative OS platforms is that they get too attached to brand names. They don't simply want to send email, they convinced themselves they need Outlook even if the features they need are available on other programs, etc.

If you really need "Skype" and "Visual Studio", it's harder to switch. If you just want "VoIP" and "development tools", it's relatively trivial by using different applications to achieve the same results. Just bear in mind that if you really are prevented by those specific applications, that's a Microsoft caused problem, not one caused by Linux.
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nasch (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 7:02am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

If you really need "Skype" and "Visual Studio", it's harder to switch. If you just want "VoIP" and "development tools", it's relatively trivial by using different applications to achieve the same results.

I have to have Skype. If there's another viable .NET IDE I could use it.

Just bear in mind that if you really are prevented by those specific applications, that's a Microsoft caused problem, not one caused by Linux.

Microsoft, and my employer.
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Scott (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 3:32pm

Just Use Linux
I have been using Ubuntu Linux since Dapper Drake (end of 2005). I kept a windows box for all the things I couldnt do or were too difficult with Linux. 11 Years later and its amazing the progress that Linux has made. There are occasional command line tweaks, but in general its a good out of the box system that YOU have control over, and there is very little (if anything) that you would need as an average day to day user that you cant do that you need windows for. If you havent looked at Linux as an alternative in a while...you need to take another look. Its always improving.
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