Current location:	Here
Current mood:	cynical
Current music:	"Blue Scream" by General Protection

Conspiracy or Coincidence
On Friday, I get a call from a friend -- Microsoft has invalidated his server license without warning. He bought it from Dell, Dell installed the software, he has the paperwork, the receipt, and the hologram on the side of the machine.

Sunday, Tamara turns on her XP box and it blue screens at boot. She's furious, and I know first hand she also has a legal copy from Dell. She has been nothing but diligent with anti-virus and spyware.

Monday, as we were repairing it, I got a call from my sister. Apparently her system rebooted and blue screened. As it's a 2000 machine, and Microsoft isn't supporting that anymore, this raises new problems. XP Home, of course, ends support at the end of this year. And Vista requires far more computing power than she can afford. We're not sure what she's going to do.

As that phone call was ending, I got a call from someone I used to do support for. Her system just locked up and won't boot now.

While that was happening, and I swear I'm not making this up, my friend's sister (she does IT for the government) called his cell phone -- her XP system at home just crashed.

This is all on the heels of my dad's machine blowing up so that he got a Macbook Pro.

...so five machines in 48 hours... something's up. Has anyone else had a problem?

UPDATE 27-Jun-2006: You need to go read this now... MS Adds a Kill Switch

UPDATE 28-Jun-2006: Came into work, unprompted, my co-worker reported that his Windows box at home was blue screening at the login screen. It started this weekend.

UPDATE 30-JUN-2006 2:18pm: TechDirt reports users are having problems, and Microsoft is being sued over WGA. GrokLaw explains.