From: "Geo." 

You're telling folks that solitaire doesn't communicate over the network as
a distraction when anyone who wants to can see solitaire fail to start with
such a simple test that it's almost funny. Your reasoning is a distraction,
it's meant to hide the real point I was trying to make, null routes caused
the system to start shutting down. Whether solitaire talks to MS directly
or via some other system component is unimportant.

Ok so how about this, yesterday at 1:45pm I stopped the software license
service, today at 1pm, less than 24 hours later solitaire doesn't work,
control panel doesn't work, network properties doesn't work. It's exactly
the same as when I had the null routes, the donut spins then nothing. So
your claims about solitaire not generating network traffic going to explain
this?

I started the software license service and presto like magic everything
works. Took me all of 2 seconds.

What I experienced the other day with solitaire and network properties not
working WAS reduced function mode. It didn't require me to not activate my
vista for 30 days, it's activated, all I did was null route a bunch of IP
addresses, and it didn't take any 30 days to go into reduced function mode
either. It took less than 3 days of null routing MS.

So don't give me this shit about solitaire not producing network traffic,
it's a system, solitaire talks to something in the system and if the system
can't phone home it goes into reduced function mode pretty damn quickly
(less than 3 days of null routing triggered it). Anyone can experience
reduced function mode by simply disabling the software license service (it
even tells you that is going to happen) to compare and see if the results
are the same as what they experience when they block traffic to MS and they
are exactly the same.

And the only thing in event log are these from the license service:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Security-Licensing-SLC

Event ID:      900
Description: The Software Licensing service is starting.

Event ID:      1033
Description: These policies are being excluded since they are only defined
with override-only attribute.
Policy Names=(IIS-W3SVC-MaxConcurrentRequests)
(PeerToPeerAdhocMeetings-CreateMeetings)
(PeerToPeerAdhocMeetings-CreateMeetings_w) (PeerToPeerAdhocMeetings-Start)
(PeerToPeerAdhocMeetings-Start_w) (Telnet-Server-EnableTelnetServer)
(Telnet-Server-EnableTelnetServer_w) (nfs-admincmdtools-enabled)
(nfs-adminmmc-enabled) (nfs-clientcmdtools-enabled)
(nfs-clientcore-enabled) (sua-EnableSUA)

Event ID:      1003
Description: The Software Licensing service has completed licensing status check.

Event ID:      1005
Description: The result of Windows Right consumption is: hr=0x0

Event ID:      902
Description: The Software Licensing service has started.

After I restarted SL service everything works as normal, like nothing was
wrong at all. Gee imagine that, just like when I removed the null routes,
within seconds the system functionality returned.

This clearly puts MS in control of all the worlds computers, you can't
block the systems from talking to MS either directly or via a relay
corporate key/update server. So now why would anyone want Microsoft in
their computer? Can you stop them, no. If you try, the computer slowly
becomes non-functional. This is not about copy protection, this is about
control.

MS can do whatever they want. They can shut the planet down, they can add
further restrictions, heck they have code running on the computer so by
your own claims about how once a hacker has code running the system is
owned they can do anything including checking what software you run, gross
sales figures for a company, there is nothing out of reach of their sticky
little fingers. It's like that movie, The Net..

On top of all that, if Microsoft should suddenly fall off the planet, 95%
of the computers slowly stop working (or whatever the percentage of Windows
machines is). One well aimed nuclear bomb and we go back to the stone age.
Or even more likely, as in that Yule Brenner movie what if something just
goes wrong.. goes wrong.. goes wrong.. oh right, that never happens with
computer systems.

IMO vista is the biggest computer security nightmare the planet has ever
faced, it's time people wake up and smell the smoke that's been blown up
their collective asses.

Geo. (ok Rich, it's not a technical disassembly of the function, but it's
standard trouble shooting techniques that clearly blow your no network
activity from solitaire logic out of the water)

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5