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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."
...would Vista be pirated less or more?
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
that they are supposed t look for that to see of the copy they have is legit?
And it only assumes the buyer cares.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And by fascinating I mean WHO CARES?
Yes, cuz a tiny little photo is going to stop the piracy. Stop the presses... gather 'round children... PIRACY HAS BEEN ELIMINATED!!!!
All pirates care about is 1) Does it install? 2) Can I "activate" it?
Cheers.
Mark
For the majority of slashdotters that don't have a Vista DVD and a magnifying glass sitting on their desk, the engadget article has pictures.
Then, if the disk is illegally copied, they send the soul to Microsoft Hell. And if the disk is genuine, the soul goes to Microsoft Heaven.
... if I worked on the 'Vista' team I sure wouldn't want my picture printed on the DVD. What if someone recognized me on the street? Or in prison?? Or on /.???
The problem is that when I got my Vista upgrade discs through Dell for systems bought just before Vista was released, I don't have pretty hologram discs like that at all. I have just plain printed Dell labeled junk that anybody could counterfeit.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Microsoft is more worried about the large-scale pirates - the ones that sell the disks to unwitting consumers, either standalone or as part of a new PC. This would allow them to more easily show that the disks themselves are counterfeit.
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!
If they really did it would eliminate the fallback excuse of why no one is buying it unless being forced to. The local CompUSA here was going out of business and even at 75% off during the final days they were open there were still dozens and dozens of vista boxes just sitting there.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Real story
no ads.
This isn't an anti-piracy measure, Microsoft is actually pretty upset about it. They don't like easter eggs because it makes them look unprofessional. If they find the guys that did this, they will probably be fired.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
... they didn't use this one.
actually at the community college i graduated from in may, every non-geek i knew of with vista either had trouble with it or just outright hated it.
geeks tand to get things fixed or returned, while non-geeks are more likely to live with the problems and bitch a lot.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Hmmm Embeded holographic images... So wait a second, is this why Vista is so Expensive? I mean are people who are paying $300 bucks for vista paying really $1 for the OS and $299 for the Hologram?
Sweet!
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
It only takes one customer (or test buyer) to spot a counterfeit and provide information allowing the counterfieter to be traced.
Plain pirates who do nothing to disguise what they are selling as legit may do some damage but buisness customers are easilly scared away from them by the threat of audits, counterfieers OTOH can sell at a much higher price to buisness customers taking sales directly from MS.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
One point of reference would be to check the number of seeders/peers on any given torrent site for a particular OEM version of Vista Ultimate, pre-activated.
Last time I checked there were a couple hundred seeders and about a thousand plus peers, keeping in mind of course that once you download a new OS, chances are you're gonna get straight to burning and installing it, which reduces the seeder level a lot.
Funnily enough, I also saw torrents for XP which had HIGHER levels of seeders/peers than Vista. Weird.
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)
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
So does anyone have a torrent of this hologram? The Vista I have really needs it.
Dude, for most of us Slashdot might as well be the planet. So shut up and (sudo) get me a sandwich!
That's not a nerdy photo.
If there were really serious, THIS should have been the embedded image.
To date, I have already had 28 people come to me to wipe Vista and put XP on Vista pre-loads. What part of the planet is switching?
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.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Nobody has cared to look at the Vista Business Install CD.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If an explosion occurs nearby, won't it shatter the hologram releasing these three criminals that were imprisoned on Krypton nearly 3 decades ago? You know they must be pissed! They would have super human powers, and superman is nowhere to be found!
Boredom's not a burden anyone should bear.
This is not about buying a cheap copy for $5 and "wondering" if it's real or not (hint: it's not). A contrived example of why this is important:
You go to your local mom and pop PC shop. You buy a PC for $1000 including Vista. They give you a disk that has a nice color silkscreened vista logo. 9 months later, the activation hack they applied and didn't tell you was applied is fixed via update, and you call MS to deal with validation. They ask you about your disk, which has no holograms. They tell you you've been "had," so you go back to the mom and pop shop and require a real copy, this time knowing what to look for and demand.
The same story could be told about small businesses who are not large enough to use corporate version with their own keyserver, and thus buy bulk professional licenses and have the CDs as proof of license.
...you can download ISOs for Vista from Microsoft. Obviously, the disc itself is not important. It's the keys that determine legit or not. I'll bet they found out about this image only recently and this is the spin.
In an even smaller spot, this picture was found...
Many Poles? I certainly hadn't heard much about Polish bloggers before. I wonder why they're speaking out about Vista? :-)
My experience with Vista has been limited. It came on a friend's new (Dell) laptop. There weren't any particular problems with it, but the software I installed was Firefox, Thunderbird and a slew of Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, et al, from Creative Suite 3). I'm sure with more general software there'd be more problems, because I've certainly heard a lot of complaints from people.
But I didn't see anything in it to make me want it, either. It's got the 'shiny' (man, I miss "Firefly") Aero interface, and not a lot else that showed up in "what's new".
Oooh look, a statistic pulled out of thin air! It's magic!
The one reporter I've seen who experienced WGA first hand actually found out that the shrinkwrapped copy he had purchased was counterfeit.
Will cracked versions feature a pasty white buttocks of the nerd that cracked it?
Someone hates these cans.
My sister's friend's brother's girlfriend has a cousin that went to china and said she saw them throwing out the vista cds and pirating the clamshells.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
You don't say, we're only now upgrading to XP from 2K.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Yes, it may have been a while, but this is NOT the first time someone has taken a picture of 3 people and embedded it as an easter egg. Once again, MS is following the crowd.
1 7588.aspx
http://www.eeggs.com/items/26468.html
For those click weary, it is about the Tandy Color Computer 2, and the famous deveoplers picture. Now this was in the computer and you had to hold down certain keys, etc... but still it look very familiure to the "security" picture.
http://bink.nu/photos/news_article_images/picture
BTW, that small makes it an easter egg if you ask me... As the average person would not beable to look for that "SECURITY" check when purchasing the software. Really, nice try MS.. You've been egged, just accept the joke and move on.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
If you must comment on your penis size, Please use your journal.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
Microsoft don't make the Vista CDs themselves.
Other companies do. And I bet a fair number operate in China. So guess who can make 1mm holograms?
Most pirates won't bother because their target markets don't care. But how hard is it for a factory to have "production overruns" or "test runs"?
In fact, I've seen a 100% original MS CD that was a _low_quality_ stamp (and was not easily readable by some drives) - you could see the "shiny side" was "disfigured" - I've seen low quality pirate CDs that looked like that, but wasn't expecting MS to use the same el-cheapo manufacturers.
I bet if MS sues one of those Chinese factory after a few too many "overruns", it'll just close down, and reopen under a new name and "new management", and start making the same stuff.
Why is this article tagged with "DRM"? You need quite a lot of people to tag an article with something for it to show up these days -- do that many people really not know what DRM is that they think TFA is an example of it? Are people just mentally equating it with anti-copyright-infringement methods in general, and tagging without stopping to think about whether something actually is DRM?
Come on, people; if you dilute a phrase enough it is liable to lose its meaning; calling all anti-theft measures from holograms on discs to security guards at the entrance of a shop "DRM" will just detract from legitimate efforts opposing the use of actual DRM to prevent fair use, etc.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Four pictures, two with people in them, and two photos without faces.
Sounds to me like at least two people chickened out from putting their own faces on there and substituted a vacation photo and a photo of an old painting instead. I'm guessing originally there were to have been more photos on the Vista Business DVD, but they feared the notoriety.
Notice how the names haven't come out yet? If this was planned as an anti-piracy thing, there would be no need for such random images. Does this Easter Egg even remotely smell official? Not to me.
It's not because of professionalism that MS doesn't include easter eggs anymore. Its because of a court ruling that undocumented features also known as "Easter Eggs" were not allowed in software that is used by the government. And MS was a key proponent of easter eggs during that case.
Did they copy Tiger or something?
... and then they built the supercollider.
It also assumes that the factory did not print 16 million extra copies and that the "pirates" won't be able to duplicate the image. The widespread counterfieting of currency is evidence to the contrary.
And from a story the next day, a report of just that:
It's amazing how deeply you trolls will modbomb usefull and accurate information. Keep bombing, that's what Bill Gates pays you for.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.