Submitted by “A genuine crack for Windows Vista has just been released by pirate group Pantheon, which allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational. Unlike cracks which have been floating around since Vista RTM was released in late November, this crack doesn’t simply get around product activation with beta activation files or timestop cracks – it actually makes use of the activation process.”
So in other words, Microsoft just got owned by their own defective design of the hated activation process? If that’s not poetic, I don’t know what is. 🙂
They actually got owned because they made system that would be good for even Mr. BigMac of Year. So main problem is that instead of asking OEMs to put simple sticker with 25-digit code with there products and ask customers to use it they went American way and made it simple enough to average BigMac eater to use it. I think easiest way for Microsoft would be just invalidate all OEM numbers, it would hurt those who actually bought the product but it would also stop this crack. Surely asking people to actually type that code would be just too much for the fatty fingers.
No sympathy for Microsoft, you blowed it yourself.
It’d be easiest not to bother with activation or product codes all together.
I just wonder how many millions of dollars spent on developing Vista’s activation protection have now just been wasted.
Same with AACS, execpt that’s probably closer to Billions.
The cost of DRM is passed onto the consumer, but it has always proven to be completely wasted money.
Agreed.
However, even if Vista didn’t get cracked and DRM was effective, product activation and Windows Genuine Advantage are wasted money because it ultimately drives customers away from Microsoft’s products.
If anything, cracking Vista will only help Microsoft because, like others here have said, it keeps its userbase from looking for alternatives. Keeping pirates away from the competition only reinforces Windows’ ubiquity, which encourages legitmate customers and OEMs to invest in Vista.
Edited 2007-03-04 17:42
Exactly. Microsoft has no real intention of stopping all piracy, as that would lower adoption of Windows as the primary desktop OS worldwide. Once it’s pirated and widespread use, then companies and governments are hooked, allowing MS to go after them and start charging. By then Windows is too entrenched with their users to seriously consider a switch to Linux (which they otherwise might have started out with).
Stoping people from feeling the cost-pain of Windows Vista is just hurting the alternatives. Ultimate costs 699 US $ in europe (529€). That made the decision for me to switch to Linux for work. Cracking Vista is advertising Microsoft.
Ultimate costs 699 US $ in europe (529€).
Where are you shopping? I saw it on sale for $250 here.
I have seen it for 250€ (329$) but that is the OEM Version. The drawback of the OEM Version is that you have to decide if you want the 32 bit version or the 64 bit version, because only the retail version includes both.
Maybe we germans get butfu**ed extreastrong here, but it is much nore expensive everywhere outside the US than it is over there. But anyway, even 300$ would be outrageous for Vista since it realy doesn’t come with that many new features.
Perhaps the cost is significantly higher in Germany, but the full, non-oem, version of Vista Ultimate is $379 US at Amazon.com. Chances are it could be found cheaper elsewhere. Where did you find it for sale at $699 US?
Personally I think $379 is too expensive as well, but I will exercise my right not to buy it. I strongly dislike illegal copying of software.
EDIT: It is EUR 499 ($658 US) at Amazon.de, ouch. I still argue that it is motivation not to buy the product, not a justification to pirate it.
Edited 2007-03-04 15:04
amazon.de has Vista OEM for roughly 185€ (OEM, 32 or 64 Bits) and the full non-OEM for about 499€. I can’t comment on the availability of cheaper regular non-OEM versions here in Austria or Germany, but most local vendors I am aware of have the full Vista Ultimate advertised with prices starting at 500€ and settling at around 549€, leading to a pretty consistent and (if you allow me this personal statement) mind boggling high price-range of roughly (converted using[1])
657 – 724 USD.
My take on this is, that there is only a very limited market here in Austria for non-OEM versions of MS operating systems. Joe/Jane Doe kind of home users usually either settle for the OEM version that comes together with their computer or have a “computer expert” among their friends/relatives anyway, who supplies them with a “pirated”[*] version of a more capable /less restricted MS operating system (an astonishing high number of individuals run Windows 2000 Professional as their operating system, without having ever paid for it). SMEs rely on their existing computer support or volume pricing schemes from larger resellers or MS direct to get (OEM) versions and – judging from my experience – usually do not care whether they have an OEM version or not, as long as they can run their tools on it.
The only people I know who have actually bought the non-OEM version of MS operating systems in the past were individual contractors/freelancers/etc. who can’t run pirated copies due to their occupation and are outside the usual corporate sales channels, and enthusiasts. This groups will pay the price of Vista ultimate without much bitching and the rest of the crowd can maybe now get their hands (at least temporarily) on a copy of Vista Ulitmate without paying a cent beyond the cost of the DVD+-R media.
While I’m not as familiar with the situation in Germany, I have a feeling, that it is not much different there.
Disclaimer: I’m against software “piracy”[*] and I have for the last three years refused to provide tech support for individuals who run “pirated”[*] copies of operating systems or applications, simply because this usually hurts the competion more than the market leader/nearly monopolist.
[1] http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi
[*]Personally, I find the usage of the word “pirate” for people who distribute non-genuine copies of operating systems pretty pathetic. Still, the mental image of buccaneers with parrots on their shoulders who are sitting on the deck of a ship with a blowing jolly rogers on top and try to crack Vista Ultimate on their shiny new notebooks is amusing at least
Edited 2007-03-04 16:12
Well, I was watching people buying Vista Ultimate Retail in a Saturn here in Germany last week and they didn’t moan about the price, so I guess there must be some people that don’t think it’s overpriced. (Or they just don’t think…)
On a side note: A lot of people run Windows 2000 because it was the last version that required no activiation and you could legally get an evaluation version from Microsoft that was limited to 120 days but never stopped working (even the Advanced Server version).
I have like 10 or 12 MS-branded Windows 2000 Evaluation discs lying around, all from my MCSE days. Fun fact: The discs were pressed before they renamed it “Professional” and actually say “Windows 2000 Workstation”, the way it should have been all along.
Well, I was watching people buying Vista Ultimate Retail in a Saturn here in Germany last week and they didn’t moan about the price, so I guess there must be some people that don’t think it’s overpriced. (Or they just don’t think…)
Correct. As I have written, there are customers for Vista Ultimate, that will pay the price without moaning, simply because there is little competition in the market (e.g. there is no second, Windows compatible vendor that competes on the price level with MS, so free-market forces can not necessarily be applied to this scenario and the prices tend to be higher than the simple law of supply and demand would suggest). However, most people I know who are interested in Vista wait for a crack/emulation, so that they can take a free-ride. Perhaps I know the wrong people, or software “piracy” is more common here in rural Austria than in Germany, but I somehow doubt this.
A lot of people run Windows 2000 because it was the last version that required no activiation and you could legally get an evaluation version from Microsoft that was limited to 120 days but never stopped working (even the Advanced Server version).
That is certainly true. But most of time, when I arrived at someones house in the past in order to fix his/hers computer and asked for the installation media, they gave me a CD-R with hand written “MS Windows 2000” label, most of the times with a (generic) key on a separate sheet of paper. Back then (e.g. before I refused to provide tech support for systems with non-genuine elements on it), I had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but I doubt that most of this disks were legit backup disks.
EDIT: Concerning Windows compatible alternatives: Yes, I’m aware of ReactOS, but that is far from being a valid alternative for someone who is ready and willing to shove out 500€ for an operating system. In related news, I guess the fact that most OEM systems come with Vista Home editions pre-installed makes retail Ultimate versions particullary more attractive than other flavors of Vista.
Still I hope, that my arguments hold: Most people running Vista Ultimate in a year or so will get it the usual way (which is the same way they got their other non-OEM OSes and programs): By relying on software “piracy”.
Edited 2007-03-04 22:36
I found it at a local “Media Markt” the biggest electronics franchise shop in germany.
I don’t use pirated software (especially not pirated OSes) so i simply won’t use Vista. So far i found quite a lot of software replacements for Linux and for the rest i will have to stick with XP or switch to Mac in a couple of years.
I just can’t believe those Vista prices…
since I got my first computer in 95, I pirated almost everything. The only software I have ever bought is Beyond Compare (some genius file/ folder comparision tool I had cracked and used alot BEFORE buying), and I’ll probably buy a WinRAR license when my account goes up again (not out of need, but using this best packtool for win32 for years I feel it earned my financial appreciation..). Oh yeah btw I boot into my licensed (uni is MSDNAA partner) Vista RC2 every here and then and
1) it’s aaaaall MS all over again meaning
2) it sucks, and is technically inferior. Screw that crap, for 500€ you get a computer with the recommended specs for Vista. Get that, throw Linux on it, have phun.
FOSS filled the gap to legality perfectly for me. And it has a great future ahead, while MS.. hehe
And, hail google for being the one capitalist global player playing fair. SoC is way cool. Pragmatic GNU style
“Maybe we germans get butfu**ed extreastrong here,”
It is the same price here in Italy, and I have read that in Ireland Ultimate costs around 600€.
With the same money you can build a new computer, put Debian (or any other distro) on it and live happy.
Or buy a Mac Mini, including OS X.
Edited 2007-03-04 15:08
Or feed a family of four for several weeks.
“Or feed a family of four for several weeks.”
If you are tight enough to not be able to comfortably feed your family you have no business even subscribing to internet service or owning a modern computer. What could a family of four eat for several weeks at this cost?
Ignoring the fact that what I really meant was that you could donate the money to the red cross or similar, I’ll bite – mine. $150 a week for groceries buys a hell of a lot of food in the US – even places like San Diego or NYC, and probably more elsewhere. If you were to pare it down to the essentials, you could easily cut that figure in half. Beans and Rice doesn’t cost much, and starving people don’t tend to get to picky about McD’s versus basic sustenance. If you don’t eat out constantly, eat vegetarian for 3 or 4 meals a week, and cook at least 75% of your own meals, it’s easy to budget for $100 a week.
I’m going to imagine that you’re a kid who has never done much in the way of budgeting, so I’ll give you a hint here – because you *can* spend more on a certain thing doesn’t mean you should. Considering many dial up services offer $8/mo dial up service, I’d say that it easily falls into the realm of reasonable if your monthly budget for food is $300 to $600 (which, again, is actually pretty damn extravagant). Your argument that you shouldn’t have internet service because you choose to be thrifty with your food budget is a complete logical fallicy.
What could a family of four eat for several weeks at this cost?
For 4 people for 4 weeks, it works out to $10.45 per person per day. I’m not sure how expensive food is in Britain, but that’s more than enough here in KC as long as you don’t eat out.
That’s about £5 per day in England.
I could eat until I were stuffed every day of the week on that as long as I didn’t eat out.
>What could a family of four eat for several weeks at this cost?
The grandparent post mentioned Vista’s cost as 600EURO which converts to 790USD
That’s more that 2 USD per meal for a whole month.
If you’re doing your own cooking that’s plenty of cash to afford good food.
If you’re not doing your own cooking just grab two items off the local fast-food joint’s dollar menu and have a glass of water for each meal.
I disagree with you on 2 accounts:
1)A family of four could be fed very well in this country for at least 6 weeks with 600€. This is an expensive country, thus I suppose elsewhere one could buy plenty more food with the same money.
2) I disagree that poorer people shouldn’t be able to own a computer and access the internet. Ever heard of the OLPC project?
http://laptop.org/vision/index.shtml
YOur comment, altought true, has got nothing to do with the topic at hand; even less in a technology website.
You deserve to be modded down. Let’s just don’t get poetic and stuff like that.
Please.
Where are you shopping? I saw it on sale for $250 here.
Probably an OEM version.
I totally agree, and the same can be said of cracking expensive Windows applications. If everyone always had to pay for every proprietary program, free software would be much more applealing. Proprietary software vendors know it, and they let some piracy happen, because big enterprise, universities and OEMs do have to pay them.
> Stoping people from feeling the cost-pain of Windows Vista is just
> hurting the alternatives. Ultimate costs 699 US $ in europe (529€). That
> made the decision for me to switch to Linux for work. Cracking Vista is
> advertising Microsoft.
You could also say: People use cracks for Vista, which is cumbersome at least and involves unknown legal dangers, *despite* the fact that they could instead use an alternative. Interesting…
You could also say: People use cracks for Vista, which is cumbersome at least and involves unknown legal dangers, *despite* the fact that they could instead use an alternative. Interesting…
Indeed you could, for the plain fact that most people are sheep, and most sheeple think they need Microsoft products.
Most sheeple think Windows is the computer.
Also, most sheeple think the newer the version, the better the product.
Same sort of sheeple got hit bad by the “Megapixel Myth” with digital cameras.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm
> Indeed you could, for the plain fact that most people are sheep, and
> most sheeple think they need Microsoft products.
It’s quite simple to call people “sheep”, isn’t it? At least a lot more simple than actually understanding their reasons to stay with Windows. If you understand al those Windows users so well, why don’t you just make them use alternatives?
Let me give you an example:
My sister currently takes the ECDL Advanced (European Computer Driving License) courses. One of the modules, called “Webstarter” is intended to provide the participants with an introduction to web development, so that they
– understand the prinicple idea of markup languages like HTML (sadly stopping at the HTML 4.0 subset without CSS, but that’s better than nothing)
– have enough knowledge to cobble together a personal home page
Note, that while the exams at the end are (software-)platform neutral, the courses aren’t. The teacher of her course told them, that they would need Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop 7.0 (!) to pass, since this were the products she (the teacher) was familiar with.
The limited time of the course and the way they teach (along the lines of painting-by-numbers, to which I absolutly can’t agree) makes it necessary to more or less use the same versions of this software titles if one wants to follow the course. Needless to say, that most students in this course managed to get their hands on a “pirated” copy of this programs by the next time.
I installed the 30-day trial version of Dreamweaver for her on her laptop and suggested GIMPShop (she is already familiar with GIMP from her Linux Desktop) which was perfectly capable of handling the little resize, rescale and convert operations they needed. Because of my constant nagging, my sister is quite sensible to the topic of software “piracy” (Sorry, the image of a computer-using Jack Sparrow alike priate is always flashing up in my head when I use the term “pirates” in the context of software) and tried to persuade her teacher to advertise (or even use) this legal and perfectly capable alternatives. But since most students had no problems to adapt to the preferences of the teacher this was a no-go, inertia is a funny thing.
Note, that this is not a professional web development class, and everything they did would have been possible using nvu, seamonkey composer, gimp(shop) or other free alternatives. Moreover, note how the choice of a certain software renders a plattform independent program like ECDL in a very subtle way into a MS Windows or Mac OSX based course, leaving alternatives like Linux completley out.
So, as long as students in computer classes are taught to use their computers like monkeys can be taught to play the piano and as long as there is simply no awareness of the mechanisms behind software “piracy” and little to no problems to get virtually all software one wants over friends/relatives channels, alternatives – even if they are absolutly adequate – have a difficult standing.
My sister passed the exam with nearly 100% using only legal tools. Beacuse she cared. Because I cared.
How many people care?
Would you call people sheep because they don’t care? Then I’d have to call you a sheep because there’s a lot in this word that you don’t care about. Yet be both know the answer is no – you already showed that it *is* possible to deal with the specific problems with changing (in the concrete case of your sister), proving that she is more than a sheep running blindly with the herd.
What I’m trying to say here is something you already know – that people stay with windows for concrete reasons (if nothing else, then the reluctance to invest time in the change). Instead of calling them “sheep” or “dumb” for it, you can solve the problems and help them switch. I hope some others here are going to understand this too.
I certainly have behaved many times in my life like a sheep, as I have moved along the easy path together with the herd, against better knowledge and because of reasons like convenience, cowardness or simply because I didn’t cared enough to make a difference by acting instead of, well sheeping.
And I know, that there are areas, where I still behave like a stubborn and undecided/ignorant part of a mindless herd, and many of these areas are almost certainly more important than the question of free software and the “piracy” of MS Windows products (like for example standing up and taking an active position against discrimination and racism instead of going the save route while keeping my mouth shut, but that is another topic and belongs into another forum), no question about that.
So I wouldn’t have an issue being called a sheep in that context, since I firmly believe that this is unfortunately a part of my nature, and probably even apart of our whole human nature. It was however not my intention to use this description as an insult towards you or anybody else, and I agree with your conclusion, that inertia ridden situations like the (apparently existing) lock-in to a certain dominant operating system can’t be overcome without effort and – yes, a change in certain behavioural patterns.
It just makes me really sick sometimes, when I realize how apathic we (including myself) are in one or the other question.
Sorry
Best Regards
Martin
I certainly have behaved many times in my life like a sheep, as I have moved along the easy path together with the herd, against better knowledge and because of reasons like convenience, cowardness or simply because I didn’t cared enough to make a difference by acting instead of, well sheeping.
I think that in the OS space, idealism and convenience go hand-in-hand. The anti-MS evangilists you read about on this site and others, who switched from Windows to something else, did so because it was convenient for them to do so. You hardly ever hear of any of these people talking about how big of a pain in the ass it was; it’s always about how great and wonderful life is not being on the dark side anymore.
Of course, when your needs are basic and you don’t have to do very many things that specifically tie you to a certain platform, it’s easy to switch and label others who don’t as ‘sheep’, when you know damn well that if it wasn’t convenient for you to do so (eg – tools you use to get work done not available on the new platform, or you need to use a certain OS to keep your job), you probably wouldn’t have switched either.
I think that in the OS space, idealism and convenience go hand-in-hand. The anti-MS evangilists you read about on this site and others, who switched from Windows to something else, did so because it was convenient for them to do so. You hardly ever hear of any of these people talking about how big of a pain in the ass it was; it’s always about how great and wonderful life is not being on the dark side anymore.
While there is certainly some truth in what you say, I feel the urge to add at least a little perspective here: I started using GNU/Linux in 1998 because I wanted to have a legal way to fulfill my computing needs for a reasonable price. I was on a 56k dial-up with a hefty per-minute price attached, so downloading whole distributions was a no-go, but typical distribtuion packages costed only around 50 – 100€ (well, more like 700 – 1300 ATS back then) and provided me with a quite complete set of tools to do my work. Migrating away from the Windows plattform was definitly no piece of cake, but after two years or so I was able to delete my Windows partition and use Linux exclusively.
The thing I really started to like about using FOSS tools was, that a multi-platform strategy was pretty much encoded into the development model. If an application is popular enough and was written with at least a slight emphasis on portability in mind, it gets ported. In my example further up this thread, GIMP, Seamonkey, nvu and others have been mentioned as examples for FOSS tools, that are available (at least) on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and the BSDs. You can now (start to) use Firefox or Thunderbird on fringe OSes like BeOS/Haiku or even (thunderbird?) QNX. When the QT4/KDE4 tollchain will be finally available, a whole bunch of additional apps (like Quanta / Krita for my previous example) will all in a sudden become available for MS Windows and Mac OSX users.
So I hope you agree, that once one actually switches to a FOSS based solution, the ties to the platform usually become very weak, which is in my book a good thing ™.
Note that I don’t want everybody to use GNU/Linux, even though it works perfectly for my “basic” needs (developing scientific C++ code, 3D visualisation using OpenGL, writing papers and reports in LaTeX, etc. ) and that such a scenario would hardly be a typical mono culture given the diversity among typical distributions. I would favour a system where it actually has little practical consequences what operating system one uses, because the apps on top of that can get ported and use open standards to interact. I further hope, that you can see, that the FOSS model of developing things is very strong oriented into this direction, which is one of the reasons (beside my resonance to the philosphy of the FSF, which I developed later) why I favor this ecosytem.
Coming back to the topic of MS Windows Vista, the reason why they can charge a mind boggling amount of money for their flag ship enterprise product (and why “piracy” is perhaps seen by some as justified) is, that there are still large user segments, where there exist only very little competition for them like Games, CAD applications, certain types of multimedia production etc. The Mom-And-Pop wordprocessing-browsing-email-music-playing crowd could very likely switch over to another platform any time soon, given they
– know about that
– feel the need or curiousity to do this
– have some form of local tech support available that is fluent in GNU/Linux or the BSD’s
but they are hardly the intended audience for Windows Vista Ultimate unless they get access to a “pirated” copy.
While the first of the points in the Linux-ready list becomes increasingly (but slowly) less of a problem, any “I once booted into a Live disk and guess what: It looked different *shudder* and no one helped me” kind of user without the latter is probably one user lost for the next couple of years.
I prefer to not evangelise people about a certain operating system but try to educate them about software “piracy”, vendor lock, choice, open standards, the philosophies behind the FOSS model and point them towards alternatives. This approach has worked for me and will perhaps work for others too.
Man, are we getting off-topic 🙂
Regards
Edited 2007-03-05 07:10
When the QT4/KDE4 tollchain will be finally available, a whole bunch of additional apps (like Quanta / Krita for my previous example) will all in a sudden become available for MS Windows and Mac OSX users.
And hopefully we can get a version of K3B that works well natively on Win32
So I hope you agree, that once one actually switches to a FOSS based solution, the ties to the platform usually become very weak, which is in my book a good thing ™.
Yes, though that is assuming there are FOSS equivalents to whatever they’re using that offer the same level of functionality they’re accustomed to.
The Mom-And-Pop wordprocessing-browsing-email-music-playing crowd could very likely switch over to another platform any time soon
Possibly they could switch to the Mac, but to Linux? Most of these people don’t know anybody personally who is a Linux guru, and that includes me. Without some guru by their side, there’s no way in hell these people are going to get by. And that is true for Windows too, as I act as Windows guru for many people who are close to me. And though I could probably switch to Linux and bring a lot of them with me, I don’t have any practical reasons for doing so, other than political. But I’m just getting too old to care about politics
By the time the doomsday senario arrives that many OSS advocates preach about, I’ll be 6-feet under. I’m sorry if my “don’t give a shit” attitude turns anybody off, but that’s just the way it is.
No offense taken
I have no issue being called a sheep either, as I know I behave like one sometimes, I just think it’s correct only in certain aspects, and so it won’t help a lot in understanding why people stay with Windows. It simplifies too much. But this is getting seriously offtopic.
Back to the original topic, the fact that a crack for Vista was developed in such a short time shows that people want to use Vista, not any alternative. There may be many reasons for this, but just blocking the crack in the first place won’t make those reasons disappear, except for pure laziness – but I haven’t found a single case yet where it was just laziness.
My serious guess is that blocking the crack would make people pay for Vista. MS is too entrenched already – the time when they grew with “piracy” is over.
I think a whole lot of people use Windows because they don’t care – because someone they know will come over and keep fixing their system for free.
It would be interesting to see how many people still didn’t care when they had to handle all of their own problems, which would in many cases require paying Best Buy’s tech support prices to fix their systems.
It would be interesting to see how people who don’t care about their OS suddenly understood that their Dell system didn’t even come with proper install discs but some kind of half-assed “recovery disk” and that they’d have to pony up the full price for Vista if they needed a re-install.
Oh, I think people would start caring.
What I’d like to see Microsoft do is:
(a) Provide legitimate install discs with pre-installed computers in the case the computer gets hosed and needs a re-install or the hard drive dies.
(b) Provide some sort of sane home-licensing scenario, whereby you can buy one license per household. Even among those who buy legitimate copies of Vista, I wonder how many people buy three copies for the three people in the house.
(c) Stop whining. For a company that destroyed Netscape by the so-called “dumping” of IE for free, they need to quit with the “communist” stuff, and Ballmer needs to quit being a horrible little bitch about Linux infringing Microsoft’s IP, unless he has something specific to show. If Windows is better than Linux, then let it compete on its merits, not this BS.
While I know none of these things will happen, it would be interesting to see what would happen if people stopped cracking Windows and all of the people who offer free technical support for Windows stopped doing so.
Yeah, because there are people who:
– Want to play games, which sucks on any other OS
– Are afraid of beeing incapable to use an other OS
– Falsly assume they need Windows for what they are doing
– Correctly assume they need Windows for what they are doing because no Software exists for what they are doing on Linux (not so rare) and even on Mac OS (very rare)
That does not say much about the qualities of Windows and in my own personal opinion the price of a full computer isn’t a sane price for a little GUI overhaul and a little security overhaul (which i didn’t have much trouble with in XP either).
Where do people get copies of vista to crack in the first place? Does Microsoft offer trial copies? Or is it p2p? If it is p2p, why doesn’t Microsoft just track the distributers?
Because MS has lived on piracy from its very birth?
Where do people get copies of vista to crack in the first place?
Maybe they get it from their neighbor’s house… considering Microsoft Techs assume everyone has a neighbor with a Windows Vista disc (see previous OSNews article: “Vista Download Disaster”)
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=17391
I would think you could just walk next door to the Jones’ house and borrow their copy to rip.
Edited 2007-03-04 16:10
apcmag got their facts wrong. PANTHEON just bundled vista x86 with OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit_For_Microsoft_Windows_Vista_X86.v1.0-PARADO X
so, it was PARADOX who developed this tool. the tool comes as paradox.rar on the iso, there’s an .nfo in it and you can even see the pdx icon on the screenshot in the article.
nevertheless, nice way to trick the activation.
and i predicted it here:
http://vaspers.blogspot.com/2007/02/vista-prediction.html
🙂
Microsoft is just trying to avoid loosing to Open Source…
This week
1. LinuxBios runs on a desktop motherboard
2. Etoile livecd is out
3. Opensolaris starter kits are being given for free.
Suddenly a crack for Vista is released. Do you see something here? I believe the main Pantheon developer is Bill Gates. He cannot persuade the stockholders of Microsoft to give Vista for free (their only option) and he releases cracks.
Mr Pantheon you waste your time and money. Please port TeXnicCenter/Visual Hash, Pain Dot Net, VirtualDub and other OSS designed for windows to Linux/BSD and you can earn money by donations.Vista cannot be saved even if you brought it to my door plus a pizza plus two chicks all for free.
Edited 2007-03-04 15:18
Vista cannot be saved even if you brought it to my door plus a pizza plus two chicks all for free.
I could probably accept at least a dual-boot environment under those conditions.
pizza and two chicks hmm
Here in PT, Ultimate’s being sold for 670€, which is around 880 USD. From what I was told (haven’t seen it yet), Office is even more expensive. How can anyone consider those prices to be reasonable?
Cracking Vista is useless because these copies will have a short life: in a few days or the next month Microsoft will deactivate these cracked copies and they will become not genuine again.
Searching for a crack is also dangerous, because it could contain a trojan or a backdoor, searching for a crack is also annoying because every month you have to search for a new one…
Buy Windows Vista Home Premium once, and you’ll be happy and live in peace for 5 years or more.
Windows Vista is the first version of Windows I bought and I’m very happy to be genuine, I love Windows Vista
Edited 2007-03-04 15:50
“Buy Windows Vista Home Premium once time, and you’ll be happy and live in peace for 5 years or more.”
Oh, really?
Thank you Mr. Ballmer…er…Gates…er…
In Europe I bought Windows Vista Home Premium Full for 323 Eur.
Yes, the price is high, but I’ll be happy with my Vista for 5 years or more.
There is an old saying here in Belfast…..
“Fools and their money are easily parted”
Well, a reasonable price to pay for 5 years of happiness and peace…
ROTFLMAO, it reminds me of the MasterCard ad…
“Windows Vista is the first version of Windows I bought and I’m very happy to be genuine, I love Windows Vista”
That reads like I’m looking at an advertising billboard…
Edited 2007-03-04 18:08
“Windows Vista is the first version of Windows I bought and I’m very happy to be genuine, I love Windows Vista”
That reads like I’m looking at an advertising billboard…
And how is that different from:
Redhat Linux EL4 was the first version of Linux I bought and I love Redhat Linux.
I don’t think anyone has said it was, though the difference is that this particular poster says that what they are really happy with is the fact they paid for Windows Vista and will *definitely* be getting 5 years of harmonious computer bliss because of it. People regularly post “I switched to XYZ OS and am loving it” though, you’re correct.
hey are really happy with is the fact they paid for Windows Vista and will *definitely* be getting 5 years of harmonious computer bliss because of it
How can you say that ?
Are you totally sure the guy will *definitely* be getting all that you claim ?
How are you so sure Vista will not be as dire as XP or Windows ME ?
I think you missunderstood my point. I wasn’t arguing that the OP *would* be getting those things, I was simply pointing out that they had said that. I do think that you should pay for Vista if you use it, though – I can certainly agree with the OP there. I can’t agree that having purchased it guarantees anything except the fact that you have a legal license, though.
Windows Vista is the first version of Windows I bought and I’m very happy to be genuine, I love Windows Vista
Cool! Are you for real?
1. Microsoft does not de-activate windows, cracked or not.
2. There is no need to search for new cracks monthly. Even if you have to the first time, use linux so you don’t have to worry about the virusses.
3. You won’t be happy for five years. A new release is supposed to be out in 2009. Also, you will have to spend your two years suffering with blue screens because there hasn’t been enough time to fix the bugs.
No, I do not use a pirated version of windows, I have a mac
3. You won’t be happy for five years. A new release is supposed to be out in 2009. Also, you will have to spend your two years suffering with blue screens because there hasn’t been enough time to fix the bugs.
In the interests of fairness, I have yet to see a blue screen from Vista, in spite of a number of severe video driver crashes (McAfee’s fault, not Vista’s)– the system actually restarted the video driver, and threw up a message stating that the driver had been restarted.
I have managed to get the computer into a spiral of death where everytime I tried to open a window, the parent process would grind to a halt. I had to power-cycle (Note: Don’t try to recover previous versions of your desktop).
DRM is a plague, the start menu is hideous, the sidebar is *almost* usable, but I can’t complain too much about stability at the moment.
Yor’re lucky. Vista blue-screened almost daily on my friend’s new computer. How did you get it to last?
The sad thing is 99% of the world thinks like MR Casuto
(quote)
Searching for a crack is also dangerous, because it could contain a trojan or a backdoor, searching for a crack is also annoying because every month you have to search for a new one…
(quote)
Backdoor? The Windows Vista by itself is a gigantic backdoor with all that DRM merged and mixed with the O.S.
Yeah, it’s true. They’ll have a fix soon, I’m sure.
But that doesn’t matter; another method will appear before long, I’m sure.
How many time they said to have wasted on the ‘anti piracy’ technologies ?
I remember them saying that the Vista anti piracy system was unbreakable because they spent so much time to design and develop it.
Well, they should have spent more time on the kernel, optimizations, etc …
It has nothing to do with development, but with decision to release spec. version of VISTA to „Royalty OEMs“.
Cracked or not I still don’t want Vista. To me it’s simply not worth it.
If you can’t afford Windows Vista then install something else. Linux for example doesn’t need LGA… So install that (openSuse is the choice if you are afraid of Microsoft’s FUD and it it an excellent OS). No need to crack something that does half the things that were promised at an outrageous price…
I’ll make my own decision thank you.
Yes that sounds like the right solution but the argument has always been that MS has established enough lock in types of situations that many are forced to use Windows whether they want or not.
How many web sites force IE for example?
How many web sites force IE for example?
All sites what i frequently visiting are working in linux (64bit)+firefox, except for some sites relying on latest flash player (because i don’t have it)
To be fair, there was a couple of problems with cyrillic locale in some improperly used forum engines.
Anyway, in an ideal world, sites should force the STANDARD, not the freaking IE.
Anyway, in an ideal world, sites should force the STANDARD, not the freaking IE.
The problem with standards is that anyone can create them. Standards are easier to create than software. You have to look at what people are actually using and doing, rather than some arbitrarially-chosen standard that all people ideally should be using.
I could sit down for 24 hours, come up with an elegant file system, and call it ‘the Almafeta File System standard.’ In terms of legitimacy, as long as I wrote out a clear definition, there would be no difference in legitimacy between my file system and all other file systems out there.
True, but MS continually deviate from accepted, established standards. Whether that’s because what they offer is in fact better than the industry norm, or whether it’s a technique to strengthen their stranglehold on the industry is open to debate.
I believe your assertion is incorrect. Anybody can create a computer language, file system, etc., but that doesn’t make it a standard. Simply calling something a standard doesn’t make it a standard either.
The one thing we must remember is that the W3C, for example, doesn’t actually create standards. They actually just create recommendations. How they are implemented or not determines if they become standard.
I don’t agree that standards should be forced, but for things like web sites they should be used. The problem, which I’m sure everybody is aware of, is that following Microsoft’s “version” of the W3C recommendation and their own proprietary coding has already lead to poorly designed sites. Standards should not be controlled by a single entity, but by a group.
As of now I believe that, as far as web standards go, the W3C recommendation are considered the standard for the web markup language. I don’t believe any browser implements all of them yet.
Well, the main problem is some corporations that use web browsers for secure transactions. The more complicated the work they do – such as federally regulated banks, don’t want to hassle with supporting various browsers especially when, //how odd\, the majority of companies and individuals have IE already installed.
I think the biggest reason I do not use Linux or other OSes is because I am a gamer. There is simply more offered game wise with Windows than any other platform. Otherwise, aside from work, I would run OSX and/or Linux.
So install that (openSuse is the choice if you are afraid of Microsoft’s FUD and it it an excellent OS). No need to crack something that does half the things that were promised at an outrageous price…
You mean Microsoft Suse right?
Didn’t your hear? Microsoft recently bought Novell.
By using Suse, you’re using and supporting Microsoft.
“You mean Microsoft Suse right?
Didn’t your hear? Microsoft recently bought Novell.
By using Suse, you’re using and supporting Microsoft.”
Huh?? Please stop making inaccurate comments. Making a business agreement between 2 companies does not constitute Microsoft buying Novell.
In this case it does.
And same thing happened to Corel.
Where is Corel Linux? Where is Word Perfect for Linux?
Corel took money from Microsoft and sold their soul.
Novell did the same thing.
Some people just refuse to see it because they love the idea of a fair sized company like Novell being one of the pillars of Linux.
But like SCO before, Novell is now a Trojan Horse commandeered by Microsoft to subvert Linux.
wow, faster than what I expected
I thought it was rather slow personally; Windows XP was cracked and out the door 64 days before launch.
But you guys have NO problems dropping $200 on Ipods or $200 on a day Skiing, or paying for hotel room or airline ticket or anything else. But god forbid if you ahve to pay for software.
Why is it that all other professions can command their price and we as consumers pay that price but when it comes to software we are all talking about not spending on Vista and running Linux or BSD?. Why should software be free?
If Linux would cost $200 and Vista cost $200 and the only advantage of Linux is that you got source code, I would bet you that all you so called Open SOurce advocates would be running Vista. How many of you have even looked at the source code for Linux or the source code for Mozilla or the source code for Helix Player?
If Linus told everybody tomorrow that he is going to charge for his kernel and it will be open source, I bet ya, IBM would go back to flogging AIX and Novell would go back to flogging Netware and Redhat would just wither and die.
Edited 2007-03-04 17:35
“If Linux would cost $200 and Vista cost $200 and the only advantage of Linux is that you got source code, I would bet you that all you so called Open SOurce advocates would be running Vista.”
You would lose that bet. I use freely licensed software to avoid vendor lock-in. Being at the mercy of sole-source suppliers is too expensive. Dealing with the whims of single suppliers is affordable only if your time is free.
You’ve also trotted out the canard that open source is only useful if I read the code. That’s nonsense. I benefit when anyone else reads the code. It’s no different than the fact that if someone were to try to steal my car, one of my neighbors would call the police. We look out for each other. Shared efforts in a community work well, and have since before recorded history.
> You would lose that bet.
Wanna bet your salary for 1 year? As soon as something that was free started to cost $$$, people will move on. We’ve seen that a million times in the dot-com era.
> We look out for each other. Shared efforts in a community work well, and have since before recorded history.
But if everybody had to PAY MONEY for each other’s efforts – a guy making a modification on some open source program was going to charge you money anyway, exactly how does having the source benefit you?
Edited 2007-03-04 19:53
This is a ridiculously confused argument in the first place, and frankly even weak as a strawman.
1) This cannot happen so making up hypothetical arguments for or against how many people would stay with linux if it started costing money is absurd.
2) Many people enjoy products that *do* have yearly costs, such as RHEL, Mandriva Club, SLED, etc, and haven’t “gone running to Vista” because of it.
3) Many people (though admittedly far fewer than should) contribute $$$ to F/OSS projects regularly.
4) Icebox.com cannot be compared to an OS. Flash animation that is at best worth a chuckle and at worst is vulgar or just plain stupid is not as important to, well anyone, as their OS of choice. Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln versus Ubuntu — Hmmm…
Oh, dog farts. I use linux because I prefer it. If I suddenly *had* to pay for it, I’d still run it. If I suddenly *couldn’t* run it (or any of the BSDs) I’d run OS X. If I couldn’t run OS X, I’d probably check my email with Windows and find a new career.
Agreed.
If I could not run Linux, I would go BSD, and if not that then Solaris. Next choice would be OS X. Then Zeta or Beos, lastly I would be on QNX.
If all these were unavailable, I would sit down with a pen and paper before I would be forced to use Vista.
If I could not run Linux, I would go BSD, and if not that then Solaris. Next choice would be OS X. Then Zeta or Beos, lastly I would be on QNX.
If all these were unavailable, I would sit down with a pen and paper before I would be forced to use Vista.
little egocentricity? Hey man, the world is not spinning around you! XP is my system of choice just because I work on it (Adobe InDesign, if you asked), and so it will be Vista as long as I earn some $$ with it. Sorry, but I suppose you have never had to get some work done to get your sweeties. As soon as you get to the world of a job to be made and time lines to be met, you will use any OS (even Vista) jut to work with, not to pray to…
Sorry for heavy words, but I am sick when I see fanatism, any king of…
A.
Lots of people use Windows (one of those duh points). Like you I use Windows daily because the application I want to use are only available on the Windows platform.
A lot of people are sick of Microsoft. Not everybody of course. Many could care less about what OS they use as long as they can get their jobs done. Nothing wrong with that.
I’m one of those people who has become very tired of Microsoft’s business practices. Like many others there’s really not a lot I can do if I want to use the software I like, but use Windows (and complain about it). Yet for my troubles of buying Windows I get treated like a pirate (referring to the WGA). That is why I would like to use Linux. They’ve never treated me like a pirate.
In my case, at least part of my job is being a linux admin so that’s what I meant by find a new career. I actually use XP as my desktop at work, but none of my job requires windows at all. In fact many times I’m better off running Linux (it’s a lot nicer to use a native X client than an X emulator, for instance). There are a few apps that my company uses, most notably ones that use activex web frontends or are windows-only apps, that require me to use windows. In all honesty, I don’t mind using windows at work since I barely notice it (except when I have to deal with bluescreens or corrupted pst files), but if I were asked my preference, I’d choose linux or OS X instead.
Clearly you have not reqad any of my posts before.
From them you would have seen I work in a computer consultancy company. We use ALL operating systems.
I was giving a PERSONAL OPIOINION.
Go back and read my post again, I said “I” would not use Windows.
My clients might, so what ? It is their choice. I just need to know Windows, not to use it.
BUT…. since you decided to make a personal attack, I will reciprocate….. Why is your company running Indesign on XP instead of OS X. If your work was so important, your bosses would want the safeguard of a system less prone to attack than XP.
Clearly you have not reqad any of my posts before.
No, I have not, I am sorry.
BUT…. since you decided to make a personal attack, I will reciprocate….. Why is your company running Indesign on XP instead of OS X. If your work was so important, your bosses would want the safeguard of a system less prone to attack than XP.
Xp was there before Indesign, and we were lucky enough to find out there is Windows version of the product: no hardware/software costs (PowerMacs…), no problems with environment change, no “how to do this simple OS task here, it was so easy in XP” problems etc.
“Important — safeguard”: Well, I’ll use a faith argument from my previous post: all I belive
is backups: you may get your Linux/XP/OS X/whatever machine burned down by a lighting, hacked, troianed and therefore formatted, reinstalled etc. You do not care as long as your pdf reaches print service when it is supposed to. And when it does, you are already in the middle of a new project. And so it goes…
If MS was the only software provider I’d leave computing and do something else.
Having to deal with MS crap all day would just be no fun and would eventually just get me depressed.
You don’t get it. I would spend 200$ for Vista Ultimate because that is what i think it is worth at most. I won’t spend 699$ on Vista Ultimate because i think that is a bad joke that even a drunk schizophrenic monkey on acid during a full moon night couldn’t come up with.
I would not spend 699$ on an iPod either.
I would not spend 699$ on a day skiing either.
I would not spend 699$ on a visit to the movies either.
I would not spend 699$ on a can of soda either (except maybe if i was about to die from dehydration).
There are reasonable priced alternatives, so why would i use Vista instead.
“If Linux would cost $200 and Vista cost $200 and the only advantage of Linux is that you got source code, I would bet you that all you so called Open SOurce advocates would be running Vista.”
Wrong.
Your $200 Vista will only allow you to run it on TWO types of architecture (x86/x64).
My $200 Linux will allow me to run it on 10+ different types of architectures.
Guess who’s getting there money’s worth?
“Wrong.
Your $200 Vista will only allow you to run it on TWO types of architecture (x86/x64).
My $200 Linux will allow me to run it on 10+ different types of architectures. ”
Find a linux vendor would would be willing to say that their non-x86 platform is equal in quality and features to their x86 platform.
“Find a linux vendor would would be willing to say that their non-x86 platform is equal in quality and features to their x86 platform.”
Did I mention any linux vendor in my reply. No, I didn’t, and neither did the OP.
I mearly pointed out that for $200, my choice(s) with Linux outweighs what I’m offered from Windows.
Debian and Ubuntu leap to mind.
“My $200 Linux will allow me to run it on 10+ different types of architectures.
Guess who’s getting there money’s worth?”
The people you bought all that hardware from so you can build 10+ different types of systems?
Don’t get your panties in such a knot.
I mearly pointed out, that with Linux, you DO have a choice.
Can you say the same with Windows?
BTW, my OP has now seem to have gone WAY off topic!!!
Not getting anything in a knot, however the whole “choice” thing is merely a byproduct of the nature of Linux, i.e. that it’s open source. The other byproduct is fragmentation, along with the more popular platforms being more supported than the obscure ones by application developers, driver writers, etc. Which is why…
In reality, Linux only runs well on maybe 3-4 platforms, i.e. fooling around with it for 2 hours tops before you can walk away from the machine without having to worry about stability, and the ability to buy any kind of mainstream hardware without sweating if it will plug and play into your Linux box.
Don’t get me wrong, choice is great…however the chant of “a dozen or so different platforms” simply isn’t true, and in almost all cases, generic x86/x64 hardware is plenty good enough these days without developers having to stretch themselves paper thin supporting edge case hardware.
You are missing the fact that i can install my Boxed $120 Linux on as many of my computers as i want, so i have an upgrade for my desktop, my server and my Laptop… That would equate to three Windows Licenses which under the current unfair prices would lead me to poverty.
“If Linus told everybody tomorrow that he is going to charge for his kernel and it will be open source, I bet ya, IBM would go back to flogging AIX and Novell would go back to flogging Netware and Redhat would just wither and die. ”
1) This scenario is simply absurd. If it’s open source, there’s no way you can charge a non-trivial amount of money for it. If it’s open source, by definition, anyone can modify and/or redistribute the code. You may be mistaking “open source” by “shared source”, which is a different beast.
2) If somehow the Linux kernel dissapeared, there are other kernels for a GNU system which work right now and are getting better. For instance, openSolaris (Nexenta), FreeBSD (Debian GNU/kFreeBSD) or (not as usable but already functional) the HURD. You see, there IS GNU without Linux, while, AFAIK, there is no Linux OS without GNU.
3) Linus by himself cannot change the license of the whole Linux kernel. He has to convince all the thousands of developers involved.
4) Even if he did, others can always fork the kernel. That’s the beauty of free software/open source.
Hehehe, that did’nt take too long. /hat’s off to teh pirates.
I wonder why there is so much prize difference even here in Europe.Than again a Vista Ultimate system builders DVD (aka OEM) costs here in NL €199.Nobody sane pays more than €500 for The same OS if it’s €300 cheaper and comes with a audio cable for €0,50.
For those “testing” out Vista before buying it, you can get the torrent of this from demonoid:
http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1049700/775222/
You know love or hate MS promoting illegal activities is just wrong.
I am a Linux guy. Ontop of that, I actually bought a Genuine copy of Vista.
Why? Because I want to play Halo 3 when it comes out for my PC. I also want to play with Vista running (virtualized) on my Fedora Core 7 laptop. If Microsoft seriously expects me to pay for Vista twice when I’ll only be using it once at a time, they are crazy.
That is all I use the activiation crack for and no, I do not condone illegal activities. You have to have a copy of vista (purchased or downloaded) in the first place. It isn’t exactly trivial to get.
>> That is all I use the activiation crack for and
>> no, I do not condone illegal activities. You have
>> to have a copy of vista (purchased or downloaded)
>> in the first place. It isn’t exactly trivial to get.
Which is where the grey area lies – if you legally own the software, modifying it so you can use in it a VM under linux or just using a crack to make it work RIGHT (let’s face it, in a LOT of cases WGA is so broken for LEGAL owners – mass license for example – that there’s no other choice if you WANT windows) that the whole thing SHOULD fall under the ‘Fair use’ in the US… BUT, of course, you have precidents both for and against ‘fair use’ (one of the big four – “Effect upon work’s value” for example) meaning it comes down to (as most thing do) who can afford the bigger lawyers and how far up the courts you are willing to buck it (which sight few people have).
Edited 2007-03-05 02:17
Try to act surprised.
ok…..
WOW®
I would not use Vista if they gave it away for free.
Did anybody not see this coming?
What blockheads, so crappy Vista will spread at last.
We probably need to replace this old label of “pirate” and everything that goes with it. Why? Because if you happen to live in the Russian Federation, much of former Eastern Europe, China, many parts of Africa and Latin America – then you are highly likely to be running a “pirate” copy of Windows, albeit not Vista at present. Nor are you in much if any danger of a knock on the door from Mr Ballmer. Microsoft and their enforcers seem too frightened to go anywhere near these places.
I mean, if so much of a product’s potential market are “pirates” – we seem to be talking about most of the world here – the term no longer has much worthwhile meaning. Perhaps we should be asking why we have come to call almost everyone except ourselves ruthless criminals, and why in our own societies we seem so very keen on the kind of surveillance and preemptive information-giving which suggests that we are ourselves all criminals just waiting to happen.
I’m just wondering whether the only way vast and greedy outfits like Microsoft can actually work these days is through a climate of fear and coercion – a climate which extends to trying to co-opt the legal system into declaring no-cost alternatives criminal too.
And I wonder whether any of it is worth it. After all, both we and Microsoft have known full well for a very long time that Vista would be comprehensively “cracked” the moment it appeared. What we actually mean by cracked is “most of the world will run it for a dollar a copy.” It is actually quite hard to argue convincingly against “So why shouldn’t we?”. After all, tens of millions of folks – all but a tiny few decent law-abiding citizens – don’t seem to have a problem with the idea.
Note: No animals were harmed, no software immolated and no fat FUDster relieved of his integrity during the making of this comment which was entirely created on open source software.
Technically it’s not a crack but emulation. Similar to how it’s possible to run starforce games with daemon tools.
Microsoft can’t plug this one because they issued signed certificates that will activate those machines. They could detect invalid keys on windows update/WGA, but this is not different from what currently happens with Windows XP (there WGA program is cracked to report that key is valid). They might require vendors to have TPM chip on board for SP1 or later SP to get this certificate, though.
..this was going to happen? All software can be cracked, so this is not a surprise. To me it is the same as all safes can be cracked (broken into), with the same effect of someone stealing something they do not own. If you want to use MS products, then abide by the license and purchase a copy. If you don’t, then don’t. It really is that simple. There are alternatives. If Windows Vista is as bad as some people are saying, what is the sense in cracking it to use it anyway? The challenge maybe of being the one to do it, but besides that nothing at all is gained for anyone but Microsoft. Another thought, if Microsoft Windows is so lousy, then why is it always imperative to crack it so people can use it for free?
For the same reason people climb mountains…
Stop trying to conflate the issue with stealing. If we’re going to use a safe as an analogy, the goal is not to get at what’s inside the safe but merely to crack it. In otherwords, the software is not the contents of the safe; it _is_ the safe.
Most peole that enjoy the art of safe cracking don’t do it for profit, they do it soley for the satisifaction of the act itself. It is no different from solving any other puzzle.
At worst, cracking software is copyright infringment; it is not theft.
At worst, cracking software is copyright infringment; it is not theft.
Unless you live in the United States.
Copyright law is a complex issue that you shouldn’t make generalizations about, especially if it might mean someone opening themselves up to criminal prosecution based on misinformation.
“At worst, cracking software is copyright infringment; it is not theft.”
Actually copyright infringement is considered the theft of someone elses work. It can lead to being sued and imprisoned as such. There is legal precedent for that here in the US, I don’t know about anywhere else to be honest.
Only if you tried to sell it.
Actually copyright infringement is considered the theft of someone elses work.
No, it isn’t – at least not from a legal point of view. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
Cracking software in itself is neither copyright infringement (as long as you don’t redistribute copies) nor theft. It is, however, considered illegal under the DMCA, if I recall correctly.
“No, it isn’t – at least not from a legal point of view. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
Cracking software in itself is neither copyright infringement (as long as you don’t redistribute copies) nor theft. It is, however, considered illegal under the DMCA, if I recall correctly.”
I’ll be happy to double check on copyright infringement to be sure. It could be I am getting confused, as to me as long as I can go to jail for something, it makes it a crime. For software cracking, I do not know of any cases where people went to jail for it, so that I’ll give you. I do know of cases where people went to jail for publishing another persons work as their own, which is copyright infringement. To me that is stealing someone else’s work, and I will grant I could be looking at it from my point of view only. You took from what someone else did. I’ll let the courts decide if it ever gets there, though to be honest I don’t know whether to trust them or not either.
To me that is stealing someone else’s work, and I will grant I could be looking at it from my point of view only.
One could consider this from a moral point of view, yes, but as far as the law is concerned, “stealing” happens when you *take away* something from someone, depriving them of it. If someone steals my bike, I can’t ride it anymore. If someone copies my program, I can still distribute and sell it. Depriving someone of potential sales in itself is not equal to stealing.
You are correct in stating that this is a crime, however it is *not* theft any more than it is embezzlement or fraud. It’s its own specific crime, called copyright infringement.
I’ll let the courts decide if it ever gets there,
I’m sure there’s ample jurisprudence on this.
though to be honest I don’t know whether to trust them or not either.
Well, you don’t have a choice, really. We live under the rule of Law, which means that you *have* to trust the judicial system.
“At worst, cracking software is copyright infringment; it is not theft.”
I’ve seen a dictionary definition of “steal” as, “To take or misappropriate without right or leave, with intent to keep or make use of wrongly”, which arguably covers copyright infringement (making use of an item without right or leave), but for the sake of argument, let’s accept your claim that copyright infringment is not theft.
Reading your entire statement (quoted above), you seem to suggest that not only is copyright infringment not theft, it’s not as bad as theft. The latter does not necessarily follow from the former. Generally, all “wrongs” fall into one or more of 5 categories: lie, cheat, steal, harm, kill. If copyright infringement doesn’t fall into the “steal” category, it certainly falls into the “cheat” category, and who’s to say that “cheat” is not as bad as “steal”?
For one thing, the amounts/value of the object that is infringed/stolen matters. In the US, copyright infringment that involves more than $1000 worth of works in any 180-day period is a *criminal* offense (not merely civil), and carries penalties far greater than many acts of “theft” (such as stealing a loaf of bread, for instance). And this was *before* DCMA laws.
Mr Gates if you hire me as your company’s head of Windows developers, I would give a satisfy solution for both consumers and your company. I want to be a billionair just like you.
Please!
It’s a sad shame that MS spent billions on Vista and also years of testing WGA on XP to have their baby cracked like this by some guys chillin at home playing PS3 all day.
I am not putting down the crackers but I am SURE they didn’t invest a lot of time or lots of money into making this crack. Just PURE BRAINS!
Funny!
Also: “If Linux would cost $200 and Vista cost $200 and the only advantage of Linux is that you got source code, I would bet you that all you so called Open SOurce advocates would be running Vista.”
Actually I will get anything I want cause most versions of Linux are modular. I don’t have to ACTIVATE it. I don’t have Linux companies spying on my useage like MS does on XP and Vista. I don’t have DRM issues that can come at any time. And I will have the source code so NO company can make me stop using the OS. (Cause I can recompile the code if I need to) Though MS can if you do something as simple as using your copy on more then one machine.
> Actually I will get anything I want cause most versions of Linux are modular.
> I don’t have to ACTIVATE it.
> I don’t have Linux companies spying on my useage like MS does on XP and Vista.
Oh, you’re loosing a lot from you computer.
Go get this http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/
😉
There are now TWO different implementations of this… the original ‘softmod.iso’ which uses GRUB to load the BIOS emulation at boot time, and the ‘paradox’ method that loads the BIOS emulation as a device driver.
Naturally both are available via bittorrent at the ‘usual suspects’ (demonoid, pirate bay, torrentreactor.net) just for those of you asking where people get these things
Aren’t we all glad Opera has a bittorrent client built in?
Of course, the REAL rub of this whole subject is that the method used to ‘break’ validation uses a mechanism MS added JUST because hardware vendors don’t want to deal with this validation bull either… and even Microsoft knows better than to piss off the hardware vendors.
Edited 2007-03-04 22:36
Good news to me. Now I can finally consider picking up a copy of Vista.
The unwashed hordes running an OS downloaded from God knows where (rootkits preinstalled for your convenience) running little GUI tools from questionable origins. It’ll take about 5 minutes for virus infected copies of this thing to show up on every p2p network on the net.
The only time I will ever use or operate Vista is at work when I get a new laptop and it will be wiped out and Fedora Core (release #) installed.
Microsoft is going backwards on permissions (a classic no-no approach) that causes the mess they have with Vista. Prompt boxes popping up all over the place to ask you if you want to proceed how confusing that will be for someone not computer illiterate. With just about any Linux distro the end user is prompted for the root password for system config’s or if you are using (apt-get or yum) for installing updates or new software.
One final note I wish Novell would really push SLED, since Red Hat pretty much abandoned this market (desktop). I would use SuSE SLED over (k)Ubuntu just my opinion Novell is sitting on a gold mine but will not put forth the marketing to reap the benefits…
Personally I am fed up paying 30% extra for every windows license just because I live in europe instead of US.
Who cares if it is expensive AS LONG AS IT COSTS THE SAME IN EVERY DEVELOPED COUNTRY! Since MS is mooning to their customers outside of US it is not a wonder that cracker groups are showing them finger and crack that activation in record time.
I can say I set this up with the crack on a virtual machine and it truly does work. As far as Microsoft being able to disable this one is going to be quite hard unless they destroy half of the installed base or unless they release a patch that will not allow this driver and only this driver from being installed.
I must say whomever thought up this little baby sure did their homework and I must say nice job. This is by far the easiest and less intrusive way of cracking or enabling Vista to date. I could not believe how simple it was and I might add even Windows Update works as well.
Since this specific crack makes your system look legit as thousands of the truly legit copies purchased through OEM out there it will be almost impossible to weed out the true cracked versions other than disabling the driver which you need to install…
So actually it would be easy for Microsoft to defeat and it will be a matter of disabling the driver from working. I’m not sure if the driver is removed if the system still reports as being activated but all I can say is this is no HOAX and it does make a 30 evaluation copy fully Activated.
Someone else also mentioned about how do you get a copy that is evaluation. To answer this all copies are evaluation. You can simply download an All in One ISO online that has every single version of Vista on one DVD. Then you can pick and choose what version you want and all you do is DO NOT put a key in hit NEXT and pick NO. You then have a 30 day evaluation, this works for every single copy out there… This is actually where this crack and many of the others have come into play due to this little feature and this is also how you can buy and upgrade and do a clean install by installing the 30 day evaluation and then re-installing again over top and putting in your legit key so you don’t lose your XP license… Microsoft forgot to tell folks about that little tidbit, buy upgrade and lose your XP license, nice try Microsoft…
when will companies realize don’t egg on these guys they always win… Microsoft calling on all hackers, crackers and saying there was no way to crack or hack Vista was just asking for this day to come and I can’t believe it’s happened so soon… LOL.
Edited 2007-03-05 19:58
Even if people crack Vista, it will only help perpetuate Microsoft’s OS market share. It just makes Windows that much more pervasive.
This has (as expected by most) turned out to be a hoax:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/03/windows-vista-brute-force-keygen…
He got his 15 seconds.
This is a different “hack”…the brute force keygen referenced is indeed a hoax. The OEM SLP “hack” (referenced in this thread) does not appear to be a hoax at all.