Nerdy Photo in Vista DVDs Thwarts Disk Pirates

maximus1 writes "Microsoft says that the tiny photo on the Windows Vista Business Edition installation disks is an anti-piracy feature. The tiny photo of three grinning men — less that 1 mm in size — is one of several images incorporated into the hologram's design intended to make it harder to replicate a Vista DVD, according to Nick White on Microsoft's Vista team blog. 'The real story is interesting, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that it is not the result of a deliberate attempt to deceive,' White wrote."

Comments

Let's see what's wrong...

[perlhacker14]

First off, nerds like us are the ones who pirate stuff in the first place. Second, if the image is so small, which user is going to see it, and if the user cannot see it, then claims of amnesty are theoretically possible. Third, due to the traditionally nonintimidating nature of the nerd, what pirate who sees the image will think and stop what they are doing? It seems that Microsoft demonstrates its foolishness through oversight and arrogance once again. Though, the whole idea is quite funny for the rest of us!

exactly

[ihatewinXP]

The pirate copy I bought in here in Beijing had these security features:

1. Plastic sleeve
2. No box
3. Burned CD with "Vista 32 Eng" written in Sharpie on the front.

And it works great. Even came with the guys phone number in case I had problems applying the validation hacks.

If youre going to buy a pirate version what do you care? I have seen the nicer versions (with fake box et. al.) but trust me, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.

But my even more ghetto pirate version only cost $5 and it came with Office 2007 as well (which employed the same counter measures) ;)

Re:fail

[Pharmboy]

There isn't a lot of negative reaction to Vista.

Dell had to revert back to selling XP due to customer demand. Many poles, published on many sites, indicate that the business world is nonplussed with Vista and many have no plans to migrate over. This includes our shop that runs all XP on the desktop and Linux on the servers only.

Many, many people are not interested in Vista, particularly since it won't run a lot of popular software. By the time you can't get support for XP, we will have already migrated to either OS/X or Linux. There IS a lot of negative reaction to Vista. The average gamer or grandma may not care because it is their only choice, but many of us will stick with XP until a better choice comes along. I run IT and I haven't bothered installing it, although I can for free. Won't run all my hardware and software, is buggy as hell, so why would I?

What really matters: More people are trying to pirate XP than Vista. When people won't even STEAL a product, I would consider that a negative reaction to it.