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Vista Can Run Without Activation for a Year

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the procrastinists-in-luck dept.

An anonymous reader gave us a heads up on this article for people who like putting things off. It begins: "Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end-run around one of Microsoft's key anti-piracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today. Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely."

7 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Why bother? by BiggyP · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since microsoft have made it perfectly clear that they don't want anyone running their OS without paying, why continue to try, how about giving one of the many shiny desktop linux distros a go instead?

    --
    Software Freedom Day!.
    1. Re:Why bother? by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is what they say, but I don't think that's true. They rather have me running Vista illegally than running Linux legally. Why? Because it increases their market share, which in turn benefits to them. I am also more likely to choose Windows in my business decisions or demand Windows Vista from my employer because "that is what I know".

      For students and poorer people they damn well want them to pirate Vista.... They might one day become paying customers.

      Piracy is a form of advertisement, as odd as it may sound.

      (I run Debian Etch, thank you very much)

    2. Re:Why bother? by tomstdenis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Piano doesn't come with WGA. And I don't need a DRM key to play pieces out of a book :-)

      That automatically tips the favour to the piano.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    3. Re:Why bother? by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But the attitude of these guys was just take it, we don't care which surprised me a lot.

      Not me... You have to realise that many IT people are not real IT people. Some just ended up on the job. They don't care about licenses. Heck, even those that studied IT often don't care. The prime task to them is: "Get it work". That this implies a pirated Windows is irrelevant to them. (Often they don't have to care because the company they work for has a Volume License anyway).

      This is mostly an ethical question. Even more so than a legal one. To me at least... I don't really care that it's illegal to pirate, but I care about not *being* a pirate. However, many people do not make that distinction: "it'll get the job done, and that is enough". I admit to pirating Windows XP (I got a volume license copy), but I slowly but surely phasing out all my illegal copies to Linux or stick with the OEM copies I have. It's one of the reasons that my brothers machine runs XP Home instead of my highly customized XP Pro installation. It came with his OEM computer and is legal... but it does give me much more grief than my customized pirated versions....

    4. Re:Why bother? by BiggyP · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, it could be argued that an ubuntu, fedora, mandriva, suse, well, just about any non source system, could be up and running somewhat quicker and with less fuss than a Gentoo installation.

      --
      Software Freedom Day!.
  2. How long before Microsoft patches Vista by lthown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, they do have this little windows update thing that sends out updates, I'm sure it's mostly trivial for them to fix the flaw

  3. Re:More DRM madness by aeschenkarnos · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This is the first time I've heard of Windows Activation being referred to as DRM.

    Digital? Check. Rights? Check. Management? Sure looks like it to me.