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Free Upgrade From XP Home to XP Pro Lite
Novus writes "The Register reports that many of the features of Windows XP Pro, such as Remote Desktop and user management, can be enabled in Windows XP Home simply by changing two bytes in an installation data file. Another explanation can be found here."
If you are so bent on having the pro features and are willing to copy all the files off the CD, hack it, and then re-burn it (not to mention making sure not to screw up the bootable ability of the CD), why not just download Windows XP Pro? Both are illegal(take a look at the EULA), and downloading is easier and will still allow you to upgrade to SP2.
I see a Service Pack 3 coming soon for XP Home.
I thought Crippleware died out years ago , aparently not.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
EULAs are dubious.
The EULA is not proven in court , however copyright law is .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Uh, no... You don't "own" the software on that CD. You license it, and if you're not licensed to use certain features then you are breaking just as many laws as copying the CD.
Ok, yes in fact they do... somehow. They credit the c't magazine in their first sentence for the report. Shouldn't the editor also credit heise (c't) for that?
Or will we see some RSS-IT-news channel being credited for everything interesting in the near future?
of Microsoft's business tactics. Not that I blame them, from a business standpoint why have one product when you can have two with none of the extra work? Personally though, I don't agree with selling two versions if the difference is apparently so small, once the public learns of the tricky afoot it's not good publicity for the company (like they need anymore of it).
A two byte hack to get rid of Winblows activation would be more useful...
Oh well, what the hell...
Well, the industry tricked you into believing that line of shit, but I ain't falling for it.
I'll modify MY purchase in any way I like, thank you.
I'll believe that argument when you show me a music CD with an EULA. Until then, there's such a thing as fair use. And using software for which you've paid still fits that bill.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
But I'd hardly call it an upgrade, unless windows is being overwritten by a real OS. Upgrade from windows to OSX, upgrade from windows to BSD, upgrade from windows to linux...
This is like a samegrade.
Actually, copyright violation is a civil matter as well.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
If you really belive that, I suggest you try it and then send a letter to MS telling them what you've done and see what happens. Or perhaps the line of shit is yours.
absolutely. This whole article is total BS.
Hidden conditions are illegal in a contract, as are unnegotiable terms, changing terms, terms that violated enunicated rights, and just about everything else in an EULA. Hence, an EULA is not a legal contract.
Do the slashdot editors think that all information should be considered like the information in radio waves? That once the information comes your way, you can do with it as you please? This would view would make cracking a shareware program perfectly ethical, if we are to believe the slashdot editors are ethical.
How about legality? Any lawyers reading this?
VNC is far better? *cough* RDP has a ton of features missing in VNC, such as:
- Sound support
- Automatic color depth and resolution changing support
- Remote printer/serial port access
- Client file access
Remote Desktop is also much speedier. Even with the latest, greatest, fastest version of VNC, Remote Desktop is still much more responsive. On Windows XP, you can even use a certain file from an old Service Pack 2 beta and support multiple remote users on the same machine.and the eaiest way I've found to avoid getting "crap" is to not run as administrator. *poof*, no more problems. I'm surprised more people haven't figured that out yet.
Yeah, that's way harder than using regedit to modify install files and copying the boot sector of the install CD to a new one...
Sincerely,
Your friendly neighborhood slipstreaming advocate
It's not like it's easier on Adobe to make differerent, variously crippled versions of Photoshop. It's actually more work. They do it because it works for their shareholders: you sell a basic version with features disabled for $x, and make users pay for more features. Yeah, it's the same cost to them to print a CD either way, but the price of things is ALWAYS set by what people are willing to pay, not by what it costs you to make.
At least in the non-free software world. Rather different economics there.
No it's not false advertising at all.
It's like buying a ford advertised has having the power of a V6, and then finding out that the way ford made it was by turning off two cylinders of a V8.
You still have a V6 - it's just been implemented as a { V8 - 2 } rather than a { V6 } itself - but the end result is the same.
As for your lawsuit statement regarding appleshare clients - complete nonsense. You can't sue someone for not providing something that you weren't entitled to.
This isn't really false advertising. First off, you really don't "buy" software. You buy a licence to run the software, and the "pro" and "home" versions are basically different licences for running different functions of the software. At least that's what Microsoft's lawyers will probably contend. A car is not the same thing as a piece of software, so I won't even get into that. And the reason that Apple doesn't have a pro version? They don't have a big enough market share to warrant splitting the product line and competing against themselves. Do you think that "millions" of users even know what these features are? Okay, once they hear "advanced security features" I guess they probably will be breaking down the door on that one. Even if they don't know what they do.
That's because Big Money doesn't like what you're doing. It's a threat to their source of income. Therefore they lobby (bribe) officials to make such action illegal.
The whole game is corrupt. Why anybody has any respect for it anymore is beyond me.
Intel did the same thing with 486SX processors (turning of the FPU, though I've heard part of this was the frequency of bad FPUs) and the 487 (a 486DX that turns off the 486SX). Intel and AMD do it all the time when they underclock chips to meet demand. False advertising would be lying what the product is available to do, not what the product is capable of doing. So, as much as it might seem scummy to only have a two byte difference to differentiate products, it'd be legal. Of course, it sounds like some programs are left off of the XP Home CD, so it's a bit more than two bytes for the whole thing.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Can someone explain the difference between hacking XP Home to turn it into XP Pro and downloading a warez copy? Is one slightly less wrong than the other?
Alternatively swing by Best Buy and steal a copy.
after all, Microsoft did that with NT Server and NT Workstation. Andrew Schulman had shown that with a few registry tweaks, NT Workstation could be turned into NT Server quite a long time ago. It even fooled server programs like MS SQL Server, Exchange, SNA Server, etc that they were running on NT Server. The only big difference were the support files found on NT Server that NT Workstation did not have.
If someone looks at it hard enough, they can find registry tweaks to turn XP Starter Edition into a non-crippled version. It might resemble XP Home then. Then apply the XP Home tweaks to turn it into an XP Pro Lite type OS.
When you think about it, Microsoft keeps the kernels the same, but makes changes to the registry and support files. Tweak the registry, and you may be able to overcome limitations.
The IP connection limit is built into the TCP/IP stack of XP, but most P2P networks have a modified version that allows the user set their own number of connections, like say 100. I am sure that is against the EULA, but people run it anyway.
The more crippled Microsoft makes an OS, the more people will discover or find or invent a way around the crippling. Take DRM for example, people have already found ways around it, the new DRM on an Intel chip just makes it more of a challenge for people to find a way around it. Most likely someone will find or invent a way to fool the DRM functions that files are legit, via software or something.
Microsoft refuses to understand that it must meet the customers' needs, and that making a system more complex or trying to lock it down more, only upsets the customer. They will either seek underground methods to get around the limitations, find an alternative, use an older version of software/hardware, or just learn to suffer with it. In any case, it causes Microsoft bad PR, and a bad reputation.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Anybody that wants a secure and stable system won't have that computer hooked up to the internet, period
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So what you're saying is...
You, too are missing the point. All that info is there for me to see before I make any transaction. I make an agreement with the person selling the gas before I buy. He's not going to come back afterword to tell me I can't siphon off the gas in my car to put into another car. And he sure can't tell I'm not allowed to put additives to give me better milage(if that were possible). If he did, I would indeed tell him to fuck off. The EULA is hidden away until after the purchase. That's like a taxi driver not telling me the rate until I arrive at the destination(in which case, I would pay what I think is fair). That's why I ask "how much?" before I get in the cab(they don't use meters here). But that was a nice attempt at misinterpretation on your part. Either way, once I'm in possession of something I bought, it's mine to do with as I please.
What?
An entity sells an operating system. After purchasing the operating system, taking it home, opening the package and inserting the media into their computer they are informed that they must agree to an EULA, which is then presented on screen in such a way as nearly all people don't read it.
Some of the patches that are automatically installed by this entity on the purchaser's computer change the EULA.
The Purchaser uses the product in such a way as to not comply with the EULA
Ethical question: Is the purchaser simply stealing, are both parties at fault, or has the producer of the operating system tainted their hands, so that the purchaser's actions are justifiable?
Situation 2:
An entity steals an operating system from the late great Kildall. Using illegal practices to force their (and only their) stolen operating system on consumers, and abusing their monopoly to the extent that consumers pay so much above what would be market value in a competitive environment that the CEO of the entity becomes the unassailably richest man in the world. The entity is convicted of abusing the monopoly, but has become powerful enough that they can manipulate the penalty, and continue to practice in an illegally anti-competitive manner.
A person purchases a product from this entity, and pays for it.
Ethical question: Is paying for the product ethical, given that it increases the money and power of the criminal entity? Or is stealing the only conscionable way to acquire the products of this entity?
I can't find anything in the EULA that prohibits modifing the software. Usually it's under the reverse engineering section, but it's not there:
4. LIMITATIONS ON REVERSE ENGINEERING, DECOMPILATION, AND DISASSEMBLY. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.
Can someone explain the difference between hacking XP Home to turn it into XP Pro and downloading a warez copy?
The former only became illegal when the DMCA was passed. The DMCA makes a lot of previously legal and still necessary actions illegal, so the fact that it's illegal under the DMCA is by itself irrelevant to the morality of the act. So it comes down to the morality of boosting the performance of a factory-crippled product. You can buy products for doing that at any auto-parts store.
The latter? XP Pro includes software that isn't included in XP Home. Even if you bought a copy of XP Home you're not entitled to that. But if Microsoft sold you more than they claimed they did, and you can turn that extra software on?
Violating a EULA may be illegal, but I'm not going to call it unethical.
There are plenty of examples of cripple-ware. Mail servers are a good example: the communigate pro mail server software scales from 10 to 1,000,000s of accounts... all that's different is the license key enabling the larger number.
So you're saying that if you buy the cheap, small version, and they give you a license key that "cripples" their software for you by limiting it in its features, it should be just fine for you to steal by using a fake or hacked key to get past their protection!?
It is still stealing.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
He's right and you're right. That's because copyright violation is both a criminal and civil violation.
fuck you.