Slashdot Mirror
Asus Ships Cracking Software On Recovery DVD
Barence writes "Asus is accidentally shipping software crackers and confidential documents on the recovery DVDs that come with its laptops. The startling discovery was made by a PC Pro reader whose antivirus software was triggered by a key cracker for the WinRAR compression software, which was located on the recovery DVD for his Asus laptop. Along with the key cracker the disc also contained confidential Asus documents including a PowerPoint presentation that details 'major problems' identified by the company, including application compatibility issues. The UK reader is not alone, either — several users in the US and Australia have also found suspicious files on Asus discs."
Do they come with cheese?
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
If only they'd used 7zip instead! Oh, you fools!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
To that person: If your goal was to get your resume noticed, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
I suspect perhaps they already were getting fired anyhow and decided to leave behind a 'legacy' they could be remembered for.
I think the tool is actually for extracting the passwords for any protected archives created with the WinRAR application...
I suspect perhaps they already were getting fired anyhow and decided to leave behind a 'legacy' they could be remembered for.
Good thing they included their résumé in there. : p
This guy's the limit!
I would think that this would be of much more interest than some cracking tool one can download. Even the Asus source code should be of more interest as it could be used to improve FLOSS support.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If you can't keep it off your distribution CDs, you just have WAAAAAAY too much of it around.
A guy burns a master CD while smoking a joint in Taiwan... Somewhere in Redmond, a large office chair is hurtled through a pane of glass.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Which, for the benefit of those who have never used 7-Zip, fully supports unpacking RAR archives out of the box without having to have unrar or WinRAR at all.
Now if you want to make RAR files, then you'll need rar or WinRAR. But also you should note that 7-Zip's native 7z format gets rather better compression than RAR. ;)
My blog
LISTB INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5
Was present in the files, a sign that a pirated version of Sound Forge from Deepz0ne of the Radium warez crew.
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
"The quality checking will be happening as optional."
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
True, I wonder why the BSA never got involved ;)
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
> Was it not Windows XP, before any service packs, which came with a file in the 'My Videos' which, when opened in a text editor,
> showed the cracked software version used to create it?
This was apparently surprising only to people who don't work for companies that actually make it easy for developers to BUY software without having to get approval up the management chain all the way up to god himself. Half the software my co-workers and I use ends up being pirated, because our company makes it damn near impossible to buy anything that's not on the list of officially-sanctioned software (almost all of which is stuff that the "business" users need). I can blow $150 on lunch when I'm traveling without even needing to get my immediate manager to sign off an approve the reimbursement as long as I don't spend more than $250/day on meals/incidentals/entertainment, but getting reimbursed $29.95 for some shareware app I can't live without requires approval by the vice-president (my boss' boss' boss), who requires our department to submit purchase requests in batches no more than once per quarter. Of course, if we're 5 weeks into the current quarter, and I need the damn app TODAY (or at least by next week)... well... time to visit astalavista.box.sk (under vmware, of course) to get the crack and run the app (also under vmware, with write access to nothing besides a usb thumbdrive, of course).
Personally, I think 99% of free software's appeal to people who work for big, oblivious corporations is the fact that it's not just free as in beer or liberty... it's also free of bureaucratic grief.
Getting back to the Microsoft example... name any app produced by Microsoft that does something remotely close to what SoundForge does. Um, none? OK, now picture the hapless employee, who works for the largest software company on earth, dealing with THEIR bureaucracy trying to get permission to buy a program sold by one of their "competitors", even though it's a niche they don't actually compete in. Especially with a looming deadline.
Or, alternatively... picture Microsoft hiring an outside consultant/musician to do the track. To save money, they hired a freelancer who's just getting started and doesn't quite do it as his/her "real" job yet. The individual hasn't gotten to the point yet where he/she's making enough money off of it for buying it to be a no-brainer (It IS usually one of the first 3 apps anyone who becomes halfway serious about music production ends up buying when "the time comes"), and the employees at the Microsoft end responsible for getting it on the disc were themselves under immense deadline pressure. The file played, normal users aren't going to view it in a hex editor looking for anything "funny", so on the disc it went.
I can blow $150 on lunch when I'm traveling without even needing to get my immediate manager to sign off an approve the reimbursement as long as I don't spend more than $250/day on meals/incidentals/entertainment, but getting reimbursed $29.95 for some shareware app I can't live without requires approval by the vice-president (my boss' boss' boss), who requires our department to submit purchase requests in batches no more than once per quarter.
Does that $150 lunch reside on your company's network?