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Poll: Do you think WinXP's copy protection scheme will be cracked?

W

whizler

Member
Given the history of many other copy protection schemes, I'd have to think WinXP's won't last long before it's cracked. The hardware parts it derives it's unique "code" are already known. Don't think it would be beyond the realm of possibility for someone to create crack fairly soon after release.


 

Beta2 is cracked, yes - but I assume (along most IT online newspapers) that M$ is going to add some more "protection" into XP.

However, there's 2 problems.

1: Corporate XP is NOT going to include hardware activation, so therefor I expect that we'll see those leaked on Warez sites eventually.
2: Pretty much anything can be hacked that requires a 2-way algorithm. Someone will eventually figure out the algorithm out that M$ uses (or it will get leaked from there), and voila. They can't hash the calculations into just one direction (such as "Linux" passwords to keep things easy) which then would be impossible to reverse engineer.

So - one way or the other - it will be cracked eventually, as far as I am concerned. It might just take a bit of time & effort, that's all.
 


<< I bet the full retail cracks will be out before the full retail versions are. >>

True true... Just wondering, if I paid for my copy, yet I still use the crack, is this technically illegal?
 


<< if MS tries to play games on you, play games on them, that's only a fair reaction >>

Sounds fine to me!🙂 If anything, if this protection scheme cuts down on the 90+% rate of pirating in other nations, they should at least make it a little bit cheaper than $200 for the profesional version insteading of pocketing all the extra revenues.

MS and other software companies always said that pirating costs the consumers. Yet now that they are working to prevent pirating, the software is still the regular price as it always was.😕
 
Shmorq, it might not be &quot;illegal,&quot; but I'm sure M$ has something against it in the EULA. Doesn't the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) also protect against cracking the actual algorhytm?
 
Why do you people think it's a BAD thing that MS is implementing this? They are simply trying to prevent piracy when it comes to their products. Whether they overcharge for their products is a different question, but they have the right to prevent people from buying one CD and installing it on 50 different machines.

If MS is smart enough, they will implement a crack-detection mechanism that will allow cracking but will report the offender's IP address to the authorities 😉
 
You can't tell me that MS is losing that much money on pirates. They make ASSLOADS of money on the corporate scene. You have companies with thousands of computers and they DO buy licenses for them all.

I just think the XP activation is going to be a PITA with all the tweaking &amp; reinstalling I do on my computer.

amish
 
They lose millions of dollars to piracy, and the entire software industry is losing billions of dollars in the US and many other countries. &quot;What have you done to contribute?&quot; is a question I saw on the web 🙂

Tweaking does not trigger the protection, only replacing several key components of your system will. Just call MS and they will issue a new number for you.
 


<< If MS is smart enough, they will implement a crack-detection mechanism that will allow cracking but will report the offender's IP address to the authorities >>

Kind of what happened with the game Black &amp; White. Except that it'll take MS years to go through the IP's all over the world to catch the offenders.


<< Doesn't the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) also protect against cracking the actual algorhytm? >>

I believe that's true. Well, looks like I'll be losing some sleep over committing such a heinous crime along with driving over 55 and jaywalking.

But in reality, this protection scheme is the only choice that MS has left. In an off topic thread, someone said that 97% of Vietnam's businesses use pirated software. That's billions lost in revenues. I just think that extra cash should be passed on to lower software costs like MS constantly says which isn't the case right now. If pirating costs the consumers, then a reduction of it should help us as well.
 
It's their own fault for telling us we need software we don't need.

Now if they took the thyme to make superior products and then priced it so that people don't have to buy (or &quot;buy&quot😉 it when they can't afford to.

I think it was stopped, but M$ charged OEMs to ship computers without Windows! They're allowed us to pay for nothing but we can't pay nothing?
 
<< Kind of what happened with the game Black &amp; White. Except that it'll take MS years to go through the IP's all over the world to catch the offenders. >>

MS could of course implement an automatic lookup of the user's physical address as registered with the ISP (even for dynamic IP's with modem and similar connections). A letter would be sent to that address via regular mail, warning that using pirated software is bad. E-mail address can also be automatically looked up in many cases, so a message would be sent there as well.

Don't forget that XP is the one OS that is worth paying for 🙂 It's very stable and.. good 🙂 I think MS finallly deserves to get some money for their products.
 


<< If MS is smart enough, they will implement a crack-detection mechanism that will allow cracking but will report the offender's IP address to the authorities >>


I can see this easily being a &quot;Stealth&quot; addition in windows update. Unfortunatly, a lot of the ISPs in other countries, when contacted about customers pirating software, they'll be less then helpful. Why do you think piracy, spam, and porn dialers all exist overseas. Because the admins there don't care! They're getting paid, and thats all that matters.
 
Don't forget that XP is the one OS that is worth paying for It's very stable and.. good I think MS finallly deserves to get some money for their products.

XP might be pretty, but it's bloated and slow. Check out Anandtech's tests. Coupled with Office XP you can expect a 30-37% performance hit compared to win2k and office2k.
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1501&amp;p=4
 
<< XP might be pretty, but it's bloated and slow. Check out Anandtech's tests. Coupled with Office XP you can expect a 30-37% performance hit compared to win2k and office2k >>

So? Are you going to keep running NT or the semi-stable 9x? There is nothing you can do about the size of the OS or its performance. Win 9x was MUCH slower and MUCH bigger than 3.11 but offered real multitasking, stability, and beauty 🙂

One of the reasons Win XP is so huge is that it comes with thousands of drivers, and they take up a lot of space. I was able to install all of my hardware without having to manually install a single driver, which is awesome. Also, bitmaps for all those pretty interfaces (which I turned off) take up some space. Are you looking at the size of the directory where Windows is installed, remember that all the Cab files got copied there too.

Besides, Anandtech tested the Beta 2 and not the final version (not even the RC1!)
 
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