Adventures in DRM land: Sony

[George Macdonald]

Sounds like a very impatient bunch. Very accident-prone.

Yep and they add resident running progs, which slows the startup so people
think they "need a faster computer".

Who runs with "Auto-Updates" turned on? It's a horrible virus,
just waiting to strike at the worst possible moment.

We're coming full circle here - auto-updates claim to provide security
fixes which are err, "popular" and it's generally the default on installs
of all software I've seen. Note that Flash is currently going through a
major change in this repect - no more standalone install DLs that I see....
feels suspicious/ominous to me. Is that the pong of DRM I sense?

There's a perversity here: the same people who will insist on leaving M$
auto-update on full time -- or pull them on Patch Tuesday immediately --
"because it's advised by M$", will blithely ignore the strong M$ advice not
to run with admin privilege -- it's in the Help -- when connected to the

So complain about defective installs. This one ain't the
OS' fault.

Yeah but... you have to work within the bounds of what you can control.;-)

These, like non-Auto-Updating, are admin tasks run during
an admin session.

M$ Auto Update run like that *can* try anybody's patience and we've already
established that criterion. I'm surprised I haven't read anything about
a recent bungle by M$ here - Auto Update has not worked properly in many
systems for the October patch tuesday fixes: I had 6 systems which failed
with msgs in the log that downloads failed "due to regulation" - no error
pop-up or any other notification - the Update icon would just disappear
from the Systray. It was fixed a week ago and update started to proceed
normally on those systems... not a peep out of M$ on the subject.<shrug>

 

[Nate Edel]

That makes sense, I guess. I don't have a "welcome" screen.

Most people with sense don't.

Ah, but can I "run as" when installing software? Why doesn't IE
have a "run as"? Several apps don't seem to have the feechur.
Thanks.

"Run as" has worked for most setup.exe for me; I've never needed to try it
on an .msi file but it looks like *that* doesn't work.

Some installers will actually request the administrator password from you if
you try to install them as a non-privileged user; I've seen a few other
things prompt like that.

 

[Nate Edel]

Run As does not work properly at all - try using a command which needs
switches or arguments.

Take a page from unix su, and do a RunAs on cmd.exe ; you can then run
things with switched.

Or do your runas FROM the command line, and include the switches there.

 

[George Macdonald]

Take a page from unix su, and do a RunAs on cmd.exe ; you can then run
things with switched.

A little better I suppose but RunAs on cmd.exe doesn't accept a null
password and when it does work, with a passworded acct., you still don't
have access to some of the commands which have a registry specified
explicit "App Path" like msconfig.exe without specifying the full path to
it. It's all so bloody wearisome.

Or do your runas FROM the command line, and include the switches there.

That's where it didn't work - I'm tired of trying different permutations
with it - kinda like trying to figure out how to use the COPY command of
MS-DOS.