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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.
I really hate the direction software and computers are heading.
I'm not that old.. but it just seems like every new thing makes me cringe. Maybe it's for the best and this is the way people want it, and maybe I'm just too attached to the way things are now (or I guess the way things were) to adapt to all this new thinking, but dammit if I don't feel something I'm passionate about is slipping away.
Maybe I should just go plant trees for a living or something :(