Disinfo: Got A Pirated Copy of XP? Expect to Be Nagged

Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle:When Windows Vista was first introduced, it came with a powerful defense against pirating. In fact, it was so powerful that paying customers complained when it malfunctioned, and Microsoft wound up making some big changes. Unless Vista was properly activated, it would drop into "reduced functionality mode", in which the only thing you could do with it was access the Internet in order to complete online activation — or buy a valid product key.Now, Microsoft is going to bring this "feature" to Windows XP Professional with a new version of the Windows Genuine Advantage. The desktop background can be reset to anything else in the usual ways, but every 60 minutes it will change back to the plain black background. This will continue to happen until that copy of Windows is genuine. Also, the user will see the addition of what we call the "persistent desktop notification." This notification is similar to a watermark but works a bit differently. The image (see below) appears over the system tray and is non-interactive in the sense that you can't click on it or do anything to it.