A big problem with the article is that they throw up "Trust" as this gigantic, vague moral litmus test and anything you "can't trust" is evil and To Be Avoided.

A big problem with the article is that they throw up "Trust" as this gigantic, vague moral litmus test and anything you "can't trust" is evil and To Be Avoided. In typical fox news fashion the article is so laden with presuppositions that it's hard to discuss rationally. There's an important distinction between what happened with WGA and the "Software as Service" model in general. Namely, that WGA is a mostly superfluous add-on only there to protect against piracy. The fact that the system shuts down or locks up when WGA is not available does nothing to support what the users bought the OS for in the first place. It's true that you can't trust 100% uptime from web servers. Millions of Myspace users are pretty solid evidence that people can live with this. The advantages of the server-based method are generally appreciated by customers, who are also generally aware of the drawbacks. In contrast, users tend not to appreciate being treated like criminals and having their OS crashed on purpose because it couldn't complete a minor validation step.