U.S. Army Base Allegedly Using Pirated Windows 7

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There is no personal accountability; if indeed using pirated copies, the Army will end paying the tab for this. Now, if an individual pirated a movie or a program, he/she can easily end up in jail and having to pay the equivalent of an entire Blockbuster store full of movies. But in this case... nah.
 

sactownbwoy

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I'm currently in the military and this happens all the time. It isn't blatant piracy like the soldier tries to make it out to be. The military has corporate licences for the machines. There was/is probably a probelm with the KMS.

I just returned from a deployment and we were having problems with our KMS which caused our machines to say we were using unlicensed copies of Win7 and Office. Once we got it fixed, the was problem solved.
 

techguy911

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This story is fictional the US Army uses Windows 7 Enterprise license they have no need to pirate windows what is happening is their installs are managed through centralized PXE servers which image a given computer with the relevant AGM image.
An update breaks WGA and has to be fixed or re-imaged, AGM-imaged machines are configured to receive updates only through a military Altiris server.
People should really research stuff like this before making a big deal of it and thinking it's news worthy material.
 

Zetto

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"This story is fictional the US Army uses Windows 7 Enterprise license they have no need to pirate windows"
Indeed, for this to even generate an article shows the lack of knowledge or sensationalist tendency of the editor/publisher. The whole article should be removed ASAP, what is this, IT Enquirer?
 

maddad

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After spending 20 years in the Air Force and working as both an Air Force and an Army contractor; I can tell you the military goes out of its way to try to make sure all of its software are genuine licensed copies. No activated does not mean pirated. I love Toms Hardware, but this is just an attempt at sensationalism. This story should not have been printed. So how much did this soldier get paid from the media outlets!!!! I guess you don't need any proof to print a story that bashes the government or DOD. Shame on you Toms!
 

thundervore

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This happens in my office from time to time and it has nothing to do with priacy. It just means that the machine either fell off the domain and needs to be rejoined to be activated or the machine never contacted the licence server while it was being imaged from the server.
 
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The army actually blows up men, women and children. I don't think non-licensed software is such a big deal in the larger scheme of things.
 

SteelCity1981

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"$617 million licensing deal to bring Windows 8 to the Army, Air Force, and Defense Information Systems Agency."

So let me get this straight the arm forces just signed a 617 million dollar deal with ms for windows 8? now I can actually see where my tax dollars are getting wasted.
 

nbelote

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Someone installed VL copies of Windows 7 on several non-domain PCs in our organization before I started here. They sat there, not activated, for a very long time until I manually pointed them to the KMS host since they were set up in their own workgroup outside the domain. After that, they just call the assigned address instead of checking with the DNS server, and it works just fine.

Chances are, this particular army base's IT guru isn't really knowledgeable enough to get it done correctly.
 

bison88

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in the middle east piracy isn't a crime. Ask this soldier how many hollywood movies he bought for $2 haaji and I'll call bullsh*t if he says he never bought one. Not to mention all the other reasons already specified as to why this could be a false alarm.
 

Xenophage

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The biggest takeaway here was that the Army will soon be running Windows 8, which means the U.S. will be totally defenseless for the next several years. What happens when France attacks us with nuclear missiles and our Army guys have to navigate that Metrosexual U.I to figure out how to install Missile Command? I'll tell you what happens: Game over man.
 

mikemike162012

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Read "This copy of Windows is not genuine" at the bottom right of desktop." Meaning the key code is invalid, in short counterfeit or not legit key. Make excuse all you want how to intrepid it.
 

Teeroy32

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My question is why is a military organisation doing even using windows, sure its good for gamers and the average computer user. I thought a locked down version of Linux would be better, easier to keep sensitive data away from prying eyes and I guess they didn't learn from the Navy's incident on the USS Yorktown
 
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