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Is That Pirated Software?
underpar writes "According to this ZDNet.com article, Microsoft 'has launched a pilot program in which some visitors to the main Windows download page are being asked to let the software maker check to see whether their copy of the operating system is licensed.' The check is not required, but after the desired 20,000 users go through the program they might change their tune."
Actually, you can download Windows from the MSDN site, but you need a subscription. What you are paying for is the license, not the software itself. So downloading it would be useless unless you had a license to run it.
A few weeks ago I was trying a link to the next version of Windows Update, which was not publically released but someone had published it somewhere on the net. It checked my machine and told me my XP key was invalid. (My machine has a VLK 6n1 XP installed on it.) So there are indeed some windowsupdate URLs which do check and do reject!
p.s. I own three legal copies of XP of course, but the slipstreamed SP2 disc is just handy and the only one I keep laying around.
I can't justify buying Windows XP while Windows 2000 is still quite capable of playing all the latest games, which is the only real use for Windows now. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm often too afraid to download software for Windows, in fear that it will screw my system up, and so I tend to use my Linux box for most everything except gaming nowdays. That said, with activation, and everything else around these days, I don't think it's too big an issue. If you use the software, you should pay for it, or use something that you don't have to pay for, like Linux.
something like this:
Thank you for your interest in Windows Update
Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.
You need to be running a version of Internet Explorer 5 or higher in order to use Windows Update.
Download the latest version of Internet Explorer
Once Internet Explorer is installed, you can go to the Windows Update site by typing http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com into the address bar of Internet Explorer.
If you prefer to use a different Web browser, updates to Windows may be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.
no, you don't do a clean install then go on the net to download the patches. you download the full patches, burn those to disk, or if you are able to follow instructions, you slipstream sp1 & sp2 onto a bootable window xp disk, then you don't have to worry about the firewall or patching it after you do the clean install.
o otcd.html I have nothing to do with that web site, I just found it using google http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=slip stream+windows+xp+sp2+how+to&btnG=Google+Searc h it was the first link, there are many others.
for info on the slipstreaming, check out: http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-b
Also, the utility Nlite http://nuhi.msfn.org/ will slipstream service packs and updates onto a disk image for you. It will also remove stuff off the windows disk, like drivers you don't need, apps you don't need, even Internet Explorer. Personally, I like that you can take MSN Explorer, Messenger, and other non need programs that are security risks. I haven't used the program yet, but it seems like a very nice one. You can also put the cdkey in the install program so you don't have to enter it when your installing. sweet.
Be seeing you...
You won't generally get a bluescreen in XP because, by default, XP will reboot immediately when it encounters a blue screen condition. (See Control Panel | System | Startup and Recovery -- Automatic Restart).
(I leave my PC on 24/7 and only discovered this when I would return home and my PC was magically back at a fresh reboot state. For a while I thought I had a hardware problem because if Windows had crashed I would've seen a blue screen halt, right?)
While I get fewer blue screens then I did with 98, I get MORE blue screens than I did with Windows 2k.
Who are these people? Being a freelance computer tech (and knowing many others in my trade), I know exactly who these folks are. They're the ones who got a particularly good deal when buying a home-made computer from someone's garage. There's a second group here. The people that bought a computer from a mom-and-pop style computer store, which came with Windows XP "Pre-installed". There's a not insignificant number of these stores that are installing pirated copies. Great cost saving in a tight market.
The moral of this story is that Linux promoters should do all they can to help Microsoft stop Windows Piracy. Just like the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it rigorously, the best way to convince people of how expensive Windows really is, is to make sure they are paying for it.
You don't get BSOD's on XP, because XP is set to reboot instead.
[from http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php]
Right-click on My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab. Under "Startup & Recovery," click Settings. Under "System Failure," uncheck the box in front of "Automatically restart."
Do that, and you'll see all the typical BSOD's that you've been missing.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Simple, I don't want to be part of their license tracking system. Win2k didn't require activation but XP does.
The computer is mine, I bought the components and built it with my own hands. Those bastards can get stuffed. I'll run Win2k until it isn't useful as a dual boot solution for playing games. Hopefully by then Cedega will be good enough to play everything i'm interested in playing.
MS-DOS wouldn't have become as popular as it was, and Windows in its turn, if they weren't allowing rampant piracy via lack of copy protection and winking at the pirates. This hypocritical attempt to maximize profits is a bunch of bullshit and will ultimately result in Microsoft's downfall once they piss off the wrong entity. They may have done so already.
Anyone who thinks Microsoft is justified in the measures they are taking at this point is either a total shill or ignorant of history.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Savvy enough to pirate their own OS? In America, this is probably so. But you obviously have never been in countries like Russia. In Russia, everyone owns a pirated version of Windows. Getting a legal version is impossible. The huge stores all sell illegal copies. So all the "non-savvy" users still have pirated stuff.
I'm not sure what affect this will have on the people in other countries, (like Russia) but I doubt the effect will be noticable. The pirates will just introduce some russian site to give the updates or something, no big deal.
In my environment, where we have good and competent central IT support, but do not mandate what our clients (researchers) can run on their desktops, we've found that a lot of people simply do not see any compelling reason to upgrade Windows. By and large, people move from one Windows version to the next when they get a new PC. This is in contrast to our Mac OS X population, who upgrade quickly, and our Linux population, who are in between.
Licensing is not an issue, since we have site licenses for Windows, Mac OS X, and other systems. We have a Windows subscription that allows us to upgrade any Windows install to any later version; and the same for Mac OS X. For Linux, it is of course no problem.
Today, about 60% of the computers on our network are running Windows, according to my p0f results. About 15% each are running Linux and Mac OS X, and the remainder are running a "classic" Unix or Mac OS Classic. Of the Windows users, about 60% are running Windows 2000, 35% are running XP, and the remainder are running Windows NT, 98, or older versions.
So why don't Windows users upgrade? My suspicion is that there is not sufficient benefit from upgrading to make up for two persistent problems: retraining oneself, on the one hand; and broken or lagging third-party software, on the other.
First off, major releases of Windows make substantial disruptive user interface changes. Windows users, in my experience, tend to memorize a lot of rote behaviors -- I do this to dial up, that to search for files, the other to set up printers. The upgrade from Windows 98 to 2000, and then from 2000 to XP, each make a lot of relatively gratuitous changes. (Contrast the XP Control Panel with the 2000 one. Even if you like the XP one better, you've got to admit it looks unfamiliar to someone used to the other.)
Second, a lot of third-party apps break when you upgrade Windows. The version of Matlab the user has installed on Windows 2000 quits working on XP, and so they have to rev Matlab as well. Oops, the Matlab script they got from NASA doesn't work on the new Matlab; gotta get the new one of those. And so it goes. Scientific software is frequently not particularly robust over operating system changes. So an upgrade is a lot more pain for our users than it might be for a business user who does nothing but Word, Outlook, and IE.
Some contrasts from the other platforms:
Our Linux installed base is probably around 90% Red Hat, and the remainder Debian or SuSE -- with almost all of the Debian systems being central IT servers, since we prefer it for its stability there. The Red Hat users are impelled to upgrade chiefly by the obsolescence of older releases: when Red Hat dropped support for 6.2, we had a big migration to 7.x; when they dropped 7.3, to 9; and now to Fedora and RHEL. The driving force behind Red Hat upgrades, for our users, is chiefly the assurance of support and security fixes. I expect that this will calm down a lot now for our RHEL users, who have been promised a stabler upgrade cycle.
(For our Debian systems, in contrast, the drive to upgrade (when a new release comes out!) is to have access to the vast new supply of native packages.)
As for our Mac OS X users, they are the quickest to jump on new releases. Why? I think it's because Apple promotes their new releases with lots of new user features: utilities, non-disruptive appearance tweaks, and speed improvements. I can't emphasize the latter too much: each release of Mac OS X has made it faster, and this is a big reason for a scientist (or a ordinary end user, for that matter!) to upgrade.
It's been said that Microsoft's chief competition today is itself, five years ago -- that is, rather than contending for market share against Apple, Red Hat, or SuSE, each new re
Hmm? Could it be because Microsoft copied their OS from another popular operating system that was under copyright?
Yes, the beige box was a cultural landmark, not the actual IBM. So, what OS came with those beige boxes? A pirated copy of MS-DOS, more likely than not. I still have tens of the hand-labelled 5 1/4" floppy copies of DOS 2.1, 3.2, and 3.3 from those days. The trade in DOS copies was fairly brisk. No one had an excuse for paying for it. The 3.5" copies of 4.01, 5, etc are long gone, 3.5" floppies seem to bite the dust much faster. That was the favored format for Windows 2.03/2.10/3.0/3.1/3.11, so those copies are also gone. Had tons of them though. No serials there, just pirated OS goodness which nearly everyone shared in back in those days.
If people had to buy an operating system, due to not having friends who could execute the DISKCOPY command, the choice wasn't quite so clear then. IBM helpfully assisted by initially pricing PC-DOS at $60 and CP/M at $240, mostly due to the sweet deal on royalties Microsoft gave them initially due to their near-zero development cost.
I believe they ultimately paid $75k for the MS-DOS code and IBM helpfully did the debugging for them. Why work? After all, they'd swiped the technology.
The wave they rode was piracy and deceit.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
In other news, the opensource native windows compatible ReactOS 0.2.4 was released a few days ago:
http://www.reactos.com/en/content/view/full/6056
Decode ......", where 'B'=0, 'C'=1, 'D'=2 ... we call the array "6 1 3 22..." base24[]
compute decoded = , the result is: 00 C5 31 77 E8 4D BE 73 2C 55 47 35 BD 8D 01 00 (little-endian)
The decoded result can be divided into 12bit + 31bit + 62bit + 9bit, and we call theses 4 parts 12bit: OS Family, 31bit: Hash, 62bit: Signature, and 9bit: Prefix.
The following computations are based on this product key: JCF8T-2MG8G-Q6BBK-MQKGT-X3GBB The character "-" does not contain any information, so, the MS product key is composed of 25-digit-character. Microsoft only uses "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789" to encode product key, in order to avoid ambiguous characters (e.g. "I" and "1", "0" and "O"). The quantity of information that a product key contain is at most . To convert a 25-digit key to binary data, we need to convert "JCF8T2MG8GQ6BBKMQKGTX3GBB" to "6 1 3 22
Verify
If you want to understand what I am talking about in this section, please refer to some Elliptic Curve Cryptography materials. Before verifying a product key, we need to compute the 4 parts mentioned above: OS Family, Hash, Signature, and Prefix.
Microsoft Product-key Identification program uses a public key stored in PIDGEN.DLL's BINK resource, which is an Elliptic Curve Cryptography public key, which is composed of: p, a, b construct an elliptic curve G(x,y) represents a point on the curve, and this point is so called "generator" K(x,y) represents a point on the curve, and this point is the product of integer k and the generator G.
Without knowing the private key k, we cannot produce a valid key, but we can validate a key using public key:{p, a, b, G, K}
compute H=SHA-1(5D OS Family,Hash, prefix, 00 00) the total length is 11 byte. H is 160-bit long, and we only need the first 2 words. Right lift H's second word by 2 bits. E.g. if SHA-1() returns FE DC BA 98 76 54 32 10, H= FE DC BA 98 1D 95 0C 04. compute R(rx,ry)= Signature * (Signature*G + H*K) (mod p) compute SHA-1(79 OS Family, rx, ry) the total input length = 1+2+64*2=131 bytes. And compare Hash and result, and if identical, the key is valid.
Producing A Valid Key!
We assume the private key k is known (sure, Microsoft won't public this value, so we have to break it by ourselves). The equation in the product key validation system is as below:
Hash=SHA(Signature*(Signature*G+SHA(Hash)*K) (mod p))
What we need is to calculate a Signature which satisfies the above equation. Randomly choose an integer r, and compute R(rx,ry)=r * G Compute Hash= SHA-1(79 OS Family, rx, ry) the total input length = 1+2+64*2=131 bytes, and we get the first 62bit result. compute H=SHA-1(5D OS Family,Hash, prefix, 00 00) the total length is 11 byte, and we need first 2 words, and right lift H's second word by 2 bits. And now, we get an equation as below:
Signature*(Signature*G+H*K) = r * G (mod p)
By replacing K with k * G, we get the next equation:
Signature*(Signature*G+H*k*G) = r * G (mod p) , where n is the order of point G on the curve
Note: not every number has a square root, so maybe we need to go back to step 1 for several times.
Get Private-key From Public Key
I've mentioned that the private key k is not included in the BINK resource, so we need to break it out by ourselves. In the public key:
K(x,y) = k * G, we only know the generator G, and the product K, but it is hard to get k. The effective method of getting k from K(x,y) = k * G is Pollard's Rho (or its variation) method, whose complexity is merely , where n is the order of G. (n is not included in public key resource, so, we need to get n by Schoof's algorithm) Because a user cannot suffer a too long product key, the Signature must be short enough to be convenient. And Microsoft chooses 62 bit as the length of signature, hence, n is merely 62-bit long. Therefore, the complexity
What are talking about? XP has exactly the same paths as 2000.
disable the "new" control panel (note that in the new control panel, there are icons that you cannot reach from the groups it displays, most notably 3rd party extensions, but a few microsoft things too), etc.
Again, eh? Open control panel, click "switch to classic view". How could you miss it?
XP is just as easy to use, if not more. And with the stuff provided by SP2 (firewall, virus check, update checks), it's the obvious choice for a non-techy user.