You know it’s only a matter of time… just another proof any sort of piracy protection ultimately, will fail.

Brute force keygen cracks open Vista

It’s certainly not an easy hack, but at the end of the day is that it *will* work. Microsoft will probably also attempt to figure which keys are hacked and which ones aren’t, and disable those which are. The problem is, if hacked keys become widespread and varied enough, it will become harder and harder to track & keep everything “clean”. If two people calls up the Windows Activation hotline, who do you trust?

This post goes beyond even my usual amount of geekiness.

“Show Us The Code” is pushing for Steve Ballmer to show the open source world exactly what part of Microsoft’s source code is being used in Linux:

Your repeated claims that Linux violates Microsoft’s intellectual property has come to the attention of the Linux community. Not only that, but it’s been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can’t provide.

Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.

So far, the support seems to be gathering steam. Let’s hope this one doesn’t fizzle out like previous movements.

A bit after my last massive, wall-of-text post about Vista content protection, Wired’s Monkey Bites blog had a few things to say about it as well:

Vista Month: Welcome To The DRM?

It’s a good, short & concise post that pretty much summarizes all the ideas behind Vista’s new content protection scheme without going into too much details. Although the post itself is relative old news by now (not to say that my post isn’t), the comments following the post is most entertaining.

There are quite a few people who swear they’ll never use Vista. Which will most likely be challenged when they purchase their next machine which will inevitably ship with Vista preinstalled. A few said they would rather switch to Linux, and even fewer said they will switch to MacOS. Completely understandable, since you can get Linux distributions for free, and you would have to pay for a new machine to get MacOS.

The number of people who are willing to defend Microsoft on this point is also surprising. While a few valid counter arguments has been made, including that most of these security features are turned on/off depending on the policy of the content provider; the fact remains that the studio has absolute, revocable control over what we paid for.

As history has shown us, it’s really hard to disable or extend pre-existing devices of any sort. For example, add-on drives to enable extra functions in consoles has never really panned out (even XBox 360’s HD-DVD drive is nothing more…

A few weeks ago, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection was published by a software researcher from New Zealand. The paper went into deep discussion on what was, up to that point, completely uncovered topic related to the underlying Windows Vista code to comply with protected content playbacks for next-gen formats (Blu-ray and HD-DVD). Subsequent conversations about this topic flared up across the web, on Security Now! podcast as well as other various TWIT network related podcasts.

Part of me didn’t believe that even Microsoft would go as far as implementing a content protection system that would come at a such detriment to the consumer. So I waited for weeks to see if Microsoft had any sort of public statement and rebuttal against it. Microsoft did eventually comment on the content protection behind Vista, and really couldn’t say much more other than admitting, and putting a good spin on what has been done.

Short blurb about AACS
To understand Windows Vista content protection, we have to first understand the difference between DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Our good ol’ DVD format was made during the adolescence of the digital content era. At the time the movie studios were promised that this complex encryption algorithm would never be cracked. As it turns out, CSS (the method of encryption used on DVD) wasn’t as impervious as we thought. If I recall correctly, the key to decrypting CSS was discovered in one of the software that plays back DVD…

This is just too funny to ignore:
Piracy worked for us, Romania president tells Gates

Although this response could be universally applied to all software, it is hilariously funny that the president of Romania would say this right in front of Bill Gates… and basically thank him for the one issue he hates the most.

From a person who complains about the nuisances… well, just about anything, would you expect anything less? Every product, may it be a car, my choice of toothpaste and shaving cream, and as incredulous as it may sound, even my computers (that includes both my of choices in Mac & PC) are far from the utopian world where flawless products prosper.

So here are a few annoyance that I’ve found with my Mac:

• The Finder -
  The Finder is an adequate file management system. Part of my unhappiness with it is due to my experience with Windows Explorer for the past several years. Although Windows Explorer has its share of flaws, both file management system can take a few tips from the other. Although the more time I’ve spent with Finder, the more familiar and comfortable I became. It is also quite apparent that since moving to the Mac, I tend to interact with files a lot less with Finders than individual applications. For example, organizing my photos is done through iPhoto, music through iTunes. However, this also brings me to the next caveat…

…

Alright.. this is just ridiculous….

I just spent half a day of work fixing Windows on my work computer, which Windows Update broke. Apparently, somewhere along the line, the automatic update got some corrupted install files. Every time I started up my computer, it attempts to run itself, then crashes svchost.exe with some memory error.

If you looked into your task manager, you’ll probably see several entries by svchost.exe. This is a process that Windows uses to execute DLL’s, thus an integral process of the system that just can’t be allowed to fail by any extent. After my svchost.exe took a dump (and not all of them, just one of the many processes), my XP-styled UI disappeared, reverting back to “classic style”. I couldn’t run certain applications, Internet Explorer hung & crashed, and I could not access any networked drives.

The solution was, to turn off automatic Windows Update completely. Reboot the computer so it no longer tries to run the Windows Update process. Then manually go to the Windows Update site to get my updates. After wasting a few hours figuring out what’s going on, and fixing it… now my computer is up and running again. Still, isn’t this the type of thing that should *never* happen with an automatic update process? Now I’m leaving my automatic update off permanently to prevent any future occurrences of this issue.

Now that Windows Vista is shipping to enterprises along with a planned consumer release in January of 2007, you would think that all the major magazines are conjuring up their mega-features and 80 page reports on a much-delayed and somewhat trimmed-down Windows release. So on the lookout for the mega-issues of PCWorld, PCMag, and whatever else tickles your tech-geek fancy coming just around the corner. Meanwhile, the SuperSite for Windows has a very through and detailed review of Windows Vista which will quench your thirst for the meanwhile (and likely much more complete than what you’ll get out of those 80/50/30/15-page features).

As much as I adore Paul Thurrot (and that’s no sarcasm, I really do admire how much time & effort he put into giving us accurate & detailed information), I can’t help but note the enthusiasm and appreciation he has towards one of the “most important Windows release in years.” I mean, if you only release one major OS revision ever fives years, are there anything less important? However the review eschews every possible comparison to other existing operating system and turns a blind eye towards the alternatives. There’s much to be said about judging an OS release on its own merit, but the whole mega-multi-part review just reminds me of how much Windows Vista is just playing catch-up.

The most apparent example of this, is the 3d-accelerated UI of Vista. The Aero/Glass (I’m still not sure exactly how it’s branded, Aero Glass, Glass Aero? Aero,…

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what Microsoft had in mind when they incorporated the ability to customize IE7 distributions. There’s Dell putting their little flashing logo’s in the toolbar instead of Microsoft’s… then there’s complete circumvention of Microsoft’s search engine & default homepage. Look here:

IE 7 optimized for Google

I’m conflicted, cheer or jeer?

There was one very, very annoying issue that I’ve found with MacOS X. When you tab through fields, it will by default, always skip over drop-down selection menus. Since so many websites uses this as say, the credit card expiration date field, it is extremely annoying as we get close to the Christmas season.

Just doing a bit of digging though, I came across the solution. Turns out this is a behavior that wasn’t just browser specific, but applied across the entire OS. All you have to do is change the option of how your keyboard behaves. Tony Spencer has a blog post on how it’s done:

“Un-skip” those dropdown boxes now!