Unless you used one of the serials on the distribution you downloaded, and used the keygen to make your own serial like I have done, you don't have to worry about it, in my opinion. And if you did use one of the serials listed, you probably had trouble installing SP1, because they tried to block pirate users then, too.
It doesn't seem as though microsoft actually has a record of actual serial numbers put on CD's - they just have an algorithm that determines whether a key is valid or not. They keygens are good at picking out valid serials, although they are very slow (it can take hours to generate a valid number.)
Of course, then there's the MSDN type versions of XP that don't even require a serial number at all to be installed.
It's just hype. I'll be able to install SP2 without much trouble, if any at all.
All it'll take is 15 minutes and a smart cracker to allow you to install SP2 in all it's glory.
Not to mention that almost all the XP users that have an illegal copy run a "corporate" version with a legit serial number anyways, so this won't even affect them.
Of course, then there's the users that actually won't be able to install it, and we'll all pay for it with clogged up networks due to all the bugs and crap still in there.
Well obviously I own it or I wouldn't have said that.
The thing is, there's so many subscribers that unless you go crazy you won't be found out. I mean, if you're good with hacking firmware, I see no reason you could tell the firmware to simply ignore the caps and blocked ports without reporting this via SNMP.
I mean, even things like.. staticly assigning yourself an IP address for the last two years don't go noticed.
I have no faith in the general technical prowess of my cable ISP. It took them over six months to fix the blocked ICMP issue. It takes them two months to fix a problem on the line at the pole. These people are not likely to be running packet sniffers on every IP address when they can't even unblock ICMP from two out of five routers.
Daemon Tools is indespensible. I got my work to convert the large software library to cd images, that you can mount with daemon tools. Not to mention, we use a lot of Vmware stuff, and mounting ISO's on VMware is so easy and fast.
It wasn't a hard sell. "Get three 250GB IDE Drives, raid them, and put the entire CD library on fault tolerant space for less then $600 and never worry about a lost CD again, and have the entire library available anywhere in the world."
That's exactly it, it's all about the sauce. Cheeze is cheeze, and the dough can only take you so far. But the sauce is what contains all the major flavor.
I think Papa John's is better pizza then most of the little hole in the wall greasy pizza parlors. Those always taste the same; cheap. Papa John's pizza has a sweet sauce that I think it pretty good. And I like how they embed the toppings in the cheeze, and the garlic sauce is just plain tastey.
I have only had domino's pizza a few times but from what I tasted it was just fine. Tastey and filling.
I don't know what your idea of pizza is, I guess. I mean, to me, it's the traditional american pizza - dough, sauce, cheeze, and conventional toppings like pepperoni and mushrooms. That's the common pizza in the northeast, at least. All that gormet pizza crap just isn't pizza anymore, it's a whole different type of food.
Over here in Pawtucket, RI, the best pizza you can get is at Uncle Tony's Pizza. Mmmmm, so good. Their sauce is very very good and the whole thing is just absolutely delicious. And it's not some fancy crap pizza, it's just your normal pie.
TFTP is fine except for the fact that *I* own my cablemodem and yet they have complete control over it.
I wish I were a firmware hacker. Man, those guys probably have unlimited speed internet access and their ISP's are none the wiser. All the port blocks and speed caps on my cable service are done at the modem. I know this because I happen to have the SNMP string for my ISP.. unfortunately it's the read-only string..
But anyways, this comcast bullshit doesn't even matter. WiFi "broadband routers" are so cheap now you'll just get one of those if you're aware of the shortcomings of this offering, or even care.
Let me guess, you also don't watch TV anymore and you tell everyone every chance you get?
Domino's and Papa Johns are fine. It might not be "authentic" bullshit from some overpriced crap, but I think it's just fine for most occations where you just want a few slices of pizza.
While what you say is true, companies will buy the computers available at the time when the old PC's break down.
So, if in 2006 (or maybe 2007 when companies start releasing all their PC's with Longhorn) the PC makers only sell PC's with 2GB RAM and a terrabyte of space, that's what businesses will buy.
They won't NEED it to do word processing, but they WILL need it if they want to keep using Microsoft.
I'm sure MS will have some "gotcha" in Longhorn that will make it difficult to avoid. They will probably stop releasing versions of Office and their other products that run on older windows. Kinda like how Office 2003 won't run on 98 and you can't buy Office XP anymore.
While I do believe that there's a lot of good *points* one can make about Windows (2000 or higher.. took them what? 10 years to make something that resembles a stable OS?) but you're clearly speaking out of your ass.
"they no longer need to steal features, they just have to continue to improve their own product."
This is what Microsoft does best. They sit on something until some form of competition pops up. Then they add all these "new features" into their OS. Otherwise all MS software stagnates.
Take Office for example. Compare Office 97 all the way through office XP. Yup, it's the same. Besides a few interface changes and the annoying shuffling of menu options every version, it's no different. Ohh hey, look, OpenOffice and company are getting pretty damned good! So out comes Office 2003 with a redesigned interface and a boat load of new features.
"It may not be the most secure, but its getting there."
That's not good enough! It's GETTING THERE? Says who? Every week there's a slew of new bugs. Do you know how many lines of code make up Windows XP? Millions! How many bugs could be in there? Yes, a lot. Obviously you're being swayed by the illusion of it becoming more secure with the weekly patches. All I see with every patch is another reason to seek alternatives.
"Its not the most stable, but it definitely beats most of the other OS's out there."
Such as? Windows 98? Windows ME?
"you can go to any store and get software, and you can get just about any type of program you can think of to run on it"
That has nothing to do with the product quality like you said and everything to do with userbase.
"Anyone who bitches about Windows crashing either has a crappy computer or is still living in 1997.".. or simply browses web sites and gets spyware (or worse) installed via weaknesses in IE.. or gets infected by the latest virus.. It's all about perception.
Maybe you don't like Linux or just like to play devil's advocate. But even if linux won't dominate the desktop anytime soon you can clearly see that competition is good for the consumer and blindly following the top dog is just screwing yourself in the end.
Re:More information -err, no way on those salaries
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 1
"Sure, secretaries, IT folks, etc. probably don't make that much,"
PROBABLY?
"but thats about the going rate for a senior software designer"
And how many of the 18,000 people supposedly employed at Google fit into this category?
I didn't say that some people don't make big bucks, but to assume that every one of the 18k employees is going to make between 50k and 150k you live in another world.
Re:More information -err, no way on those salaries
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 1
Okay but I still don't think you're thinking real world here man. You've been making too much money for too long? Not that I don't agree that an employee costs more then their salary alone, but c'mon.
Typical salary is more like 25-35k for clerical and data entry type positions. These positions generally greatly out number high salary ones. However, I don't know the internal google organization, but neither do you..
You're approaching "total cost of business" with that rap sheet.
A large company you worked for must have wasted a lot of money or used gold plated keyboards, because I'll be damned if I've EVER cost a company twice my salary ever; taking into account even pens and pencils there's just no way.
Re:More information -err, no way on those salaries
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 1
Typical salary 200k? Tell me where you live, I'm coming down.
I'd be more willing to accept that only 20% of the people are technical, another 20% are executives and management, and the rest are lower paid clerics, administrative, and help desk people making siginificantly less.
Even after you factor in the +'s I'm sure the majority of the company falls well short of the 100K mark.
I'm not a GPL zealot by any means. The thing is, most people do own a copy of windows somewhere. Whether you got the box from work, or whether it was preinstalled on some machine you now own, you probably own a copy.
The people that allow you to download a package of windows binaries for media playing state that you must own windows or the applicable software package in order to use them, but they don't check to see if you do.
So yea, it's a grey area. You're not supposed to use them without a license/contract agreement, but they are freely available and nobody cares (right now) if you do.
I really don't think my post was very zealotish, but hey, if you're looking for it you'll see it everywhere I guess.
I don't know why you think that the shows of today are LESS INTELLIGENT then the shows of the 70's and 80's. The airwaves were full of crap citcoms and even crappier cop shows.
Today we have much better quality TV. And no, not all of it, but a lot of it is smarter and has continuity.
I am not a huge fan of Andromeda but the episodes I watched were okay. I mean, not everything has to be a masterpeice! It's entertainment for gods sake!
The thing I dislike about the whole thing is how Scifi picks up and drops shows so fast. Even when they have a hit (Farscape) they dump it because they aren't making *enough* money. Scifi channel will never be a really big network because they just don't hold onto shows long enough due to greed.
I'm surprised that SG-1 has been on the air for as long as it has, but I'm sure they will cancel that one soon too. What will we be left with? Reruns of The Outer Limits, and the old ones at that.
It's too bad, too. I like Scifi (not just the channel..) I like how writers are free to explore things they way they want without being limited to the "real" world. It's interesting and entertaining, and can really make you think. Too bad it has this stigma attached to it, where you "must be a geek" if you like it.
But it's a grey area and although never really pushed into court, you're not technically supposed to use some of those DLL's without a windows license.
Most of the codec packages are given to you "if you own a legal copy of windows."
So yea, it works, but if a major distribution started making big bucks and came with these dll's on the CD, it might see the courtroom..
Slashdot Mirror
If it's indeed compatible with XP, then no porting would be required.
... it will take 15 minutes for someone to develop a crack, not 15 minutes to install sp2.
Unless you used one of the serials on the distribution you downloaded, and used the keygen to make your own serial like I have done, you don't have to worry about it, in my opinion. And if you did use one of the serials listed, you probably had trouble installing SP1, because they tried to block pirate users then, too.
It doesn't seem as though microsoft actually has a record of actual serial numbers put on CD's - they just have an algorithm that determines whether a key is valid or not. They keygens are good at picking out valid serials, although they are very slow (it can take hours to generate a valid number.)
Of course, then there's the MSDN type versions of XP that don't even require a serial number at all to be installed.
It's just hype. I'll be able to install SP2 without much trouble, if any at all.
Of course, that's a very unlikely scenerio considering how many possibilities there are in serial numbers.
All it'll take is 15 minutes and a smart cracker to allow you to install SP2 in all it's glory.
Not to mention that almost all the XP users that have an illegal copy run a "corporate" version with a legit serial number anyways, so this won't even affect them.
Of course, then there's the users that actually won't be able to install it, and we'll all pay for it with clogged up networks due to all the bugs and crap still in there.
Sure they would, they just couldn't do it because they would be sued by cisco..
And not only that, but if you scale the length of the patent to the production to today's standards, they would have held the patent for 100 years.
Technology is too fast paced for this kind of crap. Patents on high tech should only last a couple years at the most.
Well obviously I own it or I wouldn't have said that.
.. staticly assigning yourself an IP address for the last two years don't go noticed.
The thing is, there's so many subscribers that unless you go crazy you won't be found out. I mean, if you're good with hacking firmware, I see no reason you could tell the firmware to simply ignore the caps and blocked ports without reporting this via SNMP.
I mean, even things like
I have no faith in the general technical prowess of my cable ISP. It took them over six months to fix the blocked ICMP issue. It takes them two months to fix a problem on the line at the pole. These people are not likely to be running packet sniffers on every IP address when they can't even unblock ICMP from two out of five routers.
Daemon Tools is indespensible. I got my work to convert the large software library to cd images, that you can mount with daemon tools. Not to mention, we use a lot of Vmware stuff, and mounting ISO's on VMware is so easy and fast.
It wasn't a hard sell. "Get three 250GB IDE Drives, raid them, and put the entire CD library on fault tolerant space for less then $600 and never worry about a lost CD again, and have the entire library available anywhere in the world."
That's exactly it, it's all about the sauce. Cheeze is cheeze, and the dough can only take you so far. But the sauce is what contains all the major flavor.
I think Papa John's is better pizza then most of the little hole in the wall greasy pizza parlors. Those always taste the same; cheap. Papa John's pizza has a sweet sauce that I think it pretty good. And I like how they embed the toppings in the cheeze, and the garlic sauce is just plain tastey.
I have only had domino's pizza a few times but from what I tasted it was just fine. Tastey and filling.
I don't know what your idea of pizza is, I guess. I mean, to me, it's the traditional american pizza - dough, sauce, cheeze, and conventional toppings like pepperoni and mushrooms. That's the common pizza in the northeast, at least. All that gormet pizza crap just isn't pizza anymore, it's a whole different type of food.
Over here in Pawtucket, RI, the best pizza you can get is at Uncle Tony's Pizza. Mmmmm, so good. Their sauce is very very good and the whole thing is just absolutely delicious. And it's not some fancy crap pizza, it's just your normal pie.
TFTP is fine except for the fact that *I* own my cablemodem and yet they have complete control over it.
I wish I were a firmware hacker. Man, those guys probably have unlimited speed internet access and their ISP's are none the wiser. All the port blocks and speed caps on my cable service are done at the modem. I know this because I happen to have the SNMP string for my ISP.. unfortunately it's the read-only string..
But anyways, this comcast bullshit doesn't even matter. WiFi "broadband routers" are so cheap now you'll just get one of those if you're aware of the shortcomings of this offering, or even care.
Let me guess, you also don't watch TV anymore and you tell everyone every chance you get?
Domino's and Papa Johns are fine. It might not be "authentic" bullshit from some overpriced crap, but I think it's just fine for most occations where you just want a few slices of pizza.
And kick or ban, not boot..
Cheap and Fast.
It's not hypocritical, because we also willingly pay less then half for the pair of DDR's today then we would have paid for the pair of RAMBUS's.
See: OS/2. And countless hundreds of other software packages.
OS/2 was far superior to the current offerings by Microsoft, and was never able to gain enough market share.
While what you say is true, companies will buy the computers available at the time when the old PC's break down.
So, if in 2006 (or maybe 2007 when companies start releasing all their PC's with Longhorn) the PC makers only sell PC's with 2GB RAM and a terrabyte of space, that's what businesses will buy.
They won't NEED it to do word processing, but they WILL need it if they want to keep using Microsoft.
I'm sure MS will have some "gotcha" in Longhorn that will make it difficult to avoid. They will probably stop releasing versions of Office and their other products that run on older windows. Kinda like how Office 2003 won't run on 98 and you can't buy Office XP anymore.
Gosh, you gotta love a good monopoly...
There is so much about your post that's ignorant.
.. or simply browses web sites and gets spyware (or worse) installed via weaknesses in IE.. or gets infected by the latest virus.. It's all about perception.
While I do believe that there's a lot of good *points* one can make about Windows (2000 or higher.. took them what? 10 years to make something that resembles a stable OS?) but you're clearly speaking out of your ass.
"they no longer need to steal features, they just have to continue to improve their own product."
This is what Microsoft does best. They sit on something until some form of competition pops up. Then they add all these "new features" into their OS. Otherwise all MS software stagnates.
Take Office for example. Compare Office 97 all the way through office XP. Yup, it's the same. Besides a few interface changes and the annoying shuffling of menu options every version, it's no different. Ohh hey, look, OpenOffice and company are getting pretty damned good! So out comes Office 2003 with a redesigned interface and a boat load of new features.
"It may not be the most secure, but its getting there."
That's not good enough! It's GETTING THERE? Says who? Every week there's a slew of new bugs. Do you know how many lines of code make up Windows XP? Millions! How many bugs could be in there? Yes, a lot. Obviously you're being swayed by the illusion of it becoming more secure with the weekly patches. All I see with every patch is another reason to seek alternatives.
"Its not the most stable, but it definitely beats most of the other OS's out there."
Such as? Windows 98? Windows ME?
"you can go to any store and get software, and you can get just about any type of program you can think of to run on it"
That has nothing to do with the product quality like you said and everything to do with userbase.
"Anyone who bitches about Windows crashing either has a crappy computer or is still living in 1997."
Maybe you don't like Linux or just like to play devil's advocate. But even if linux won't dominate the desktop anytime soon you can clearly see that competition is good for the consumer and blindly following the top dog is just screwing yourself in the end.
"Sure, secretaries, IT folks, etc. probably don't make that much,"
PROBABLY?
"but thats about the going rate for a senior software designer"
And how many of the 18,000 people supposedly employed at Google fit into this category?
I didn't say that some people don't make big bucks, but to assume that every one of the 18k employees is going to make between 50k and 150k you live in another world.
Okay but I still don't think you're thinking real world here man. You've been making too much money for too long? Not that I don't agree that an employee costs more then their salary alone, but c'mon.
Typical salary is more like 25-35k for clerical and data entry type positions. These positions generally greatly out number high salary ones. However, I don't know the internal google organization, but neither do you..
You're approaching "total cost of business" with that rap sheet.
A large company you worked for must have wasted a lot of money or used gold plated keyboards, because I'll be damned if I've EVER cost a company twice my salary ever; taking into account even pens and pencils there's just no way.
Typical salary 200k? Tell me where you live, I'm coming down.
I'd be more willing to accept that only 20% of the people are technical, another 20% are executives and management, and the rest are lower paid clerics, administrative, and help desk people making siginificantly less.
Even after you factor in the +'s I'm sure the majority of the company falls well short of the 100K mark.
I'm not a GPL zealot by any means. The thing is, most people do own a copy of windows somewhere. Whether you got the box from work, or whether it was preinstalled on some machine you now own, you probably own a copy.
The people that allow you to download a package of windows binaries for media playing state that you must own windows or the applicable software package in order to use them, but they don't check to see if you do.
So yea, it's a grey area. You're not supposed to use them without a license/contract agreement, but they are freely available and nobody cares (right now) if you do.
I really don't think my post was very zealotish, but hey, if you're looking for it you'll see it everywhere I guess.
That's bullshit.
I don't know why you think that the shows of today are LESS INTELLIGENT then the shows of the 70's and 80's. The airwaves were full of crap citcoms and even crappier cop shows.
Today we have much better quality TV. And no, not all of it, but a lot of it is smarter and has continuity.
I am not a huge fan of Andromeda but the episodes I watched were okay. I mean, not everything has to be a masterpeice! It's entertainment for gods sake!
The thing I dislike about the whole thing is how Scifi picks up and drops shows so fast. Even when they have a hit (Farscape) they dump it because they aren't making *enough* money. Scifi channel will never be a really big network because they just don't hold onto shows long enough due to greed.
I'm surprised that SG-1 has been on the air for as long as it has, but I'm sure they will cancel that one soon too. What will we be left with? Reruns of The Outer Limits, and the old ones at that.
It's too bad, too. I like Scifi (not just the channel..) I like how writers are free to explore things they way they want without being limited to the "real" world. It's interesting and entertaining, and can really make you think. Too bad it has this stigma attached to it, where you "must be a geek" if you like it.
But it's a grey area and although never really pushed into court, you're not technically supposed to use some of those DLL's without a windows license.
Most of the codec packages are given to you "if you own a legal copy of windows."
So yea, it works, but if a major distribution started making big bucks and came with these dll's on the CD, it might see the courtroom..
.. or another iPod article..