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SP1 Unsuccessful in Preventing Vista Hacks
"The other A. N. Other" writes "It seems that Microsoft has been unsuccessful with SP1 in preventing hackers from turning a pirated, non-genuine copy of Vista into genuine copies that pass activation. The article initially looked at two of the most popular hacks (OEM BIOS hack and the grace timer hack) but after a little digging ZDNet were able to transform a non-genuine install into a genuine one. 'After a few minutes of searching the darker corners of the Internet and a few seconds in the Command Prompt I was able to fool Windows into thinking that it was genuine.'"
And it's because of people doing this that stuff gets tightened down and in the end, its not the thieving bastards who suffer but the rest of us who pay for what we use instead of stealing it.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
MS doesn't want to stop all Vista piracy. Sure, they want to stop commercial outfits producing fake Vista DVDs but stopping all Vista piracy is bad business. Using Vista (even a pirated copy) keeps you locked-in and makes it easier for MS to get people using more MS software. After all, Vista was an industry-wide attempt to get everyone buying new hardware. Yeah it failed (hardware sales have been well below expectations) but using free Vista still encourages you to get new hardware like DX10 video cards & other DRM-riddled hardware.
I'm torn here. Should I be happy I can now install and activate the ISO of Ultimate I've had for the last six months, or be sad that Microsoft haven't played their usual PR ace and made about a quarter of a million legit systems go 640 x 480 x 16 colours?
You may not agree with what I say, but you should fight to the death to allow me to say it, by modding me up.
M$ could lock it down and make it much more difficult but why? With everyone using it because it's easy to pirate they maintain their market share, and it appears there is no shortage of people willing to pay for that crap called Vista.
I have to say the other post about "the ones that steal it making it harder for everyone else" is one of the most naive and ignorant post I have ever seen.
It isn't "stealing" it's copyright violation, and you have fairly naive view of human behavior.
Relax there are more important things to worry about than some crappy OS.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Actually, you are correct. They will not convict you of piracy: they will convict you for violating the DMCA. Well, if you live in the USA anyway.
morcego
Exactly. A lot of people tell me that MS Office is better than OpenOffice, but is it really $400 better? For a few classes of user, maybe. For most? Probably not. But if you're pirating MS Office, then the cost is exactly the same as OpenOffice, so if it's any better at all then it will get used.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No matter what the price there is always going to be someone out there who'll pirate the software just because they can. Just for the hell of it. The goal is to get as many people as possible to pay for it. And the best way to do that is to turn out a good product for a good price - not by making it harder to pirate.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
That's an unpopular sentiment around here, where the upgrade-Vista-by-installing-XP +5 funny post apparently never loses its humor, but there's a lot of truth to what you said. Linux has come a long way towards desktop/user friendliness and distributions like Ubuntu are a huge leap forward, but they still haven't achieved the holy grail of but-can-my-grandmother-use-it. Getting closer, though.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
in the linux world you are lucky to find a vendor offering more than a year of security update overlap for desktop versions. Unless of course you consider the service packs, which by themselves introduced and broke quite a bit of functionality, to be the equivalent of releases with other distros. My experience with distro upgrades have certainly not been more painful than that, and plain XP as well as XP SP1 are no longer supported. And you're certainly counting if you bought XP in 2001, if you bought XP right before Vista was released there's no 7 years of support for you, more like 2.5 years. Well, the LTS versions of Ubuntu has 3 years on the desktop with a 1.5 year release cycle, in the worst case this means 1.5 years remaining support. It is somewhat poorer but nowhere as much as you make it out to. That also doesn't take into the account that two of the main reasons for not upgrading is the upgrade price and new anti-features, none of which are present on Linux. Personally I've found the 6 month release cycle to be more preferable than the LTS release because they keep introducing nice features, though I suppose evil tounges will say that's because Linux has so much catching up to do. I disagree but still, 1. It's not Windows and 2. Some Windows applications don't run well under WINE means it's not for everyone just yet...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings