New subject: How to undelete files! Please help!

28 May 2001


      Where do I get my "I was running Linux BEFORE Windoze XP!" Bumper stickers 
and t-shirts?

Ambrosius
...
From: Steven Hatfield 
Reply-To: ashari@knightswood.net
To: wilson@claborn.net (Jonathan Wilson), suse-linux-e@ns2.suse.com
Subject: Re: [SLE] [OT] More info about Windows XP's new Activation scheme
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 15:45:42 -0400
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Yes! This has been what I've been waiting for... a foolproof
copyright/activation system. The crackers will have a VERY hard time 
breaking
this.. it's not simply a "here's the key" deal!
Now, when people realize that they actually have to PAY for their OS, 
they'll
start looking for "free" alternatives... I bet you that we will see a HUGE
insurgance of newbies maybe 1 year after WinXP comes out.
Why one year? Because it'll be at that point that people start feeling 
really
"left behind" by windows.. .Microsoft isn't going to release a lot of the 
new
software that will work on anything other than WinXP.. so they'll feel very
left behind and they will be forced to either pay up or look somewhere 
else.
Mark my words -- look for a TON of new users between Oct 25, 2001 and Dec 
31,
2002... a TON.
Laters all,
Steven
...
Sorry I don't have the URL this came from.
...
Windows Product Activation: More Details
In last month's Windows 2000 Magazine UPDATE Special Edition, I
explained what I knew about the new Windows Product Activation feature
built into Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, and the
various flavors of Windows 2002 Server. (In case you missed the
fanfare--Microsoft has revealed the product name of what we've been
calling "Whistler Server"--Windows 2002 Server.) Many of you--hundreds
of you--responded with interesting and helpful insights. A particularly
interesting response came from one of the Microsoft folks working on
product activation, Allen Nieman. Nieman is a product manager in the
Licensing Technologies group. He was kind enough to spend about an hour
and a half with me on the phone to fill in more details about how
product activation works, and I can't thank him enough for his help.
Because I didn't have all of the information about the Windows
activation process last month, I had to speculate a bit, so this month
I'll pass along what he told me.
I'll begin with more specifics about what product activation does. When
you install a product that requires activation, it asks that you
activate it within 30 days (or that's what the final product will do;
it's 14 days in the beta). During the activation process, the OS
inventories your hardware and summarizes it as a single 50-digit 
string.
The hash is, I'm told, a one-way function, meaning that although a
particular set of hardware will generate a particular set of digits,
reversing it isn't easy, so merely knowing the 50 digits about your
system wouldn't tell me what size and type of hard disk you owned. But
do you believe that's all that Microsoft is gathering? A capture of the
transaction shows that a very small amount of data going over the wire
to Microsoft, so it doesn't look as if Bill is uploading your
portfolio.
Additionally, you can choose to activate your OS by calling Microsoft
and reading the 50-digit number to a carbon-based life form (rather
...
...
sending it to a silicon-based server). The recipient will then read a
42-digit number to you, which you key in to complete your activation.
Unfortunately, that's a one-time-only 42-digit value; should you need 
to
reinstall the OS on that system, you must call Microsoft to get another
code.
As I explained last month, a Microsoft server then stores your 50-digit
code and your product key in a database. If someone tries to activate a
different machine using your product key, the database will see that
someone's tried to install the same copy of the OS on two different
machines and will refuse to authorize the activation. Additionally,
every time you boot that system, the system recomputes the 50-digit
value and, if it's too different from the one used to activate the
system in the first place, the OS will demand that you once more 
connect
to the Internet to reactivate your copy. Small hardware changes won't
require reactivation. If, however, you lend your neighbor your Windows
XP CD-ROM and product key and he installs it on his system and tries to
activate it, the Microsoft server will see a radically different set of
hardware trying to activate an already activated copy of Windows XP, 
and
will tell your neighbor's system not to activate itself.
But how much hardware difference is "too much"? Nieman wouldn't say
because (1) Microsoft hasn't finished Windows XP yet, so anything he'd
say might change, and (2) he didn't want to make life easier for
pirates. A reasonable answer, but I argued that a determined bunch of
people with a closet full of hardware and a day or two to play around
could (and would) soon figure that out, so why not just release the
information anyway? He demurred, but told me to stay tuned, because
Microsoft might publish that information come shipping time anyway.
But what about when I buy a new machine, FDISK the old one, and put my
copy of Windows XP on it--won't Microsoft refuse to activate Windows XP
on that new system, thinking that I'm already running it on my old
system? No, Nieman said--Microsoft will trust you and approve 
activating
Windows XP on the new system, deactivating it on the old.
Rampant piracy among American small businesses and home users motivates
the whole approach, according to Nieman. Microsoft believes that on the
average, those folks use four copies of a given piece of software but
pay for only one. (The company reckons the ratio outside of the United
States to be even higher.) Microsoft acquired those numbers from the
Business Software Alliance (BSA--see the URL listed at the end of the
column), an organization that finds and fines software pirates. I've
never seen the methodology that led the BSA to those numbers (which 
have
been floating around for some time), and I personally don't believe
them. That 75 percent of the small office/home office (SOHO) software 
is
pirated seems a bit farfetched and, I think, insulting. And if 
Microsoft
truly believes that its home users--you know, the evening and weekend
versions of the people who use its commercial products by day--are
stealing 75 percent of the Microsoft products they use, that degree of
piracy would be pretty important news to Microsoft's stockholders,
wouldn't you think? "Here at Microsoft, we have great products, but
before you invest, you really ought to know that three out of four
people who use our products don't actually pay for them." Shouldn't
...
...
information be in the company's annual report or Securities and 
Exchange
Commission (SEC) filings?
Actually, beyond what you or I think, it's a matter of law: If 
Microsoft
believes in those piracy figures, the company must disclose that
information in its SEC filings. But other than one vague reference to
piracy in its 10-K filing for 2000, Microsoft is silent about
...
...
numbers, percentages, or damages to the bottom line are cited.
No, I'm not suggesting that Microsoft's in violation of investment
regulations for not writing "The Prospectus of Penzance"--because I
believe that the four-to-one ratio is no more than an exaggeration that
provides a convenient bit of self-justification for some industry
pundits. But we are talking legal issues here. After all, I pay for all
of my software because the law tells me to, not necessarily because I
want to. And if the irritation of activation will become part of my
...
...
because of a wave of piracy of that supposed magnitude, surely 
Microsoft
should alert its investors to that piracy, by law.
And thinking about finances led to another question: What happens if
Microsoft goes out of business? No one could activate copies of Windows
XP. If Microsoft disappeared, so would your ability to use its software
during the inevitable reinstalls. And no, I don't think Microsoft is
going belly-up any time soon (unless it keeps up this product 
activation
stuff), but Nieman said that he hoped that this product-activation
approach would turn out to be an effective way to protect software
companies of all kinds, including many not as sturdy as Microsoft. I'd
hate to think that if Intuit disappeared, all of a sudden I wouldn't be
able to get to my checkbook or portfolio information!
Despite the many other things to consider, I'm about out of space. I
don't want to sign off, however, without answering a frequent reader
question generated by last month's column. I explained last month that
product activation wouldn't apply to those using Open, Select, or
Enterprise copies, but many of you disagreed, telling me that your 
Open,
Select, or Enterprise Beta 2 copies require it. According to Microsoft,
that's an issue with the beta only. Nieman said that the final copies 
of
Windows XP and Windows Server 2002 won't require activation--so
On Friday 25 May 2001 03:48 pm, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
than
that
piracy--no
life
scripts,
...
...
Ghost, Remote Installation Services (RIS), and the other rollout tools
that we know and love will work without a hitch in Windows NT's latest
incarnation. And when asked whether Windows XP would target SOHOs as a
preparatory step to visiting the activation process on bigger customers
next time, Nieman STRONGLY maintained that Microsoft had no intention 
of
doing that. The company feels that it has the piracy issues pretty much
under control in large organizations.
I repeat in closing that I fully agree that Microsoft has a right to
defend its copyrighted works; and I hope that the company will continue
to do so. But placing a burden of annoyance on its existing customers
seems unreasonable, particularly when the only reason that Microsoft 
can
impose product activation is its pre-eminence in the market. As I said
last month, could Microsoft have made such a move when Windows 3.1 came
out? Sure. But we'd have all bought OS/2 instead. And that's the point:
when you've got competition, then you can do a lot of things that you
CAN'T--or at least shouldn't--do once you're a monopoly.
http://www.bsa.org
Mark Minasi
Senior Contributing Editor, Windows 2000 Magazine
help@minasi.com
----------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Wilson
System Administrator
Cedar Creek Software     http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com
Central Texas IT     http://www.centraltexasit.com
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Re: [SLE] [OT] More info about Windows XP's new Activation scheme

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