Windows 8 To Fight Piracy With the Cloud

MrSeb writes "With the latest Windows 8 build (8064) that has been delivered to Intel, it's clear that the company is taking strides to make sure that its upcoming OS isn't quite so easy to pirate. For starters, the generic volume license keys that were so easily exploited during the early days of Windows 7 leaks will no longer be an option for pirates. Product keys also won't be shipped in the prodkey.txt file included in the build packages. Instead, installers will need to retrieve a unique key from a Microsoft web page. There's also a good possibility that the recently-surfaced fast booting patent could come into play as well. If Microsoft does indeed have designs on using a remote server to push OS code to systems at boot time, that code would be a very clever place to embed activation-related programming. Even if a crack was discovered, it would be neatly undone during a subsequent start-up sequence — similar to the way Microsoft's now-idle Windows Steady State could turn back the clock on an entire Windows installation after rebooting." Microsoft has also indirectly confirmed in a recent blog post that Windows 8 will make use of an app store.

Comments

As a Linux user...

[bmo]

I'm OK with this.

The sooner the theft of Microsoft products ends the better. Turn all the knobs to 11, Mr. Ballmer. The sound of gnashing teeth will be as sweet as Beethoven's Pastoral symphony.

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BMO

Re:"push OS code to systems at boot time"

[Baloroth]

Don't worry. ~80% of Windows 8 users (the other 19.9% are business users) won't be using this "feature", as TPB edition won't have it...

Re:Gawd

[armanox]

I consider Ubuntu to be an example of the problem.