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Fuzzy Logic WGA: Won’t Go Away anytime soon
Fuzzy Logic WGA: Won’t Go Away anytime soon | WGA: Won’t Go Away anytime soon |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Thursday, 06 December 2007 | |
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Page 3 of 4 The same thing occurs with Vista, although hackers had discovered two ways to get around the activation process for the existing pre-SP1 version of Vista, one involving a OEM Bios hack, the other involving modification of the Vista ‘grace timer’, potentially delaying the need for activation until 2099. Featured Whitepaper
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Office 2003 also had a volume license key loophole, but OGA now detects this and likewise places Office into a ‘reduced functionality mode’, able to open documents but not save changes, amongst other limitations. Office 2007’s OGA software will also be adjusted to detect hacked copies if it hasn’t already. WGA and OGA must be downloaded and installed if a user wants to download just about any free Microsoft software or add-ons, such as the Windows Defender anti-spyware software, or a new template or some clipart for Office, catching pirate users trying to get support or new features for software they haven’t paid for. WGA and OGA has helped to dramatically slow down the casual copying that allowed consumers a few years ago to share their Windows and Office discs with friends so they could get a copy free, depriving Microsoft of legitimate income. Despite Microsoft’s battles against piracy, even Bill Gates acknowledging the assistance piracy had delivered Microsoft over the years, helping it have a userbase that is still the world’s largest by a wide margin, with even the Romanian president earlier this year thanking Bill Gates on a visit to Romania with words to the effect that Romania thanked him for having produced such great software that Romanians had heavily pirated, transforming the country into one that was increasingly very IT literate. This was certainly the case for Windows and Office, two programs which, in the past, were easy to copy and install on more than one computer, but no longer with a WGA and OGA that are, over time, evolving. Of course hackers will try to break through any of Microsoft’s new defences, and the cat and mouse game will continue. Microsoft have surely softened Vista SP1’s WGA to allow users to continue using Windows, albeit with limitations, reminders, pop-ups and for some, a massive guilt trip and worry that ‘Microsoft knows’, in the hope and expectation that many users will just go legal so they can get on with their work. Under the current pre-SP1 WGA program, newly detected Vista pirates (whether actual pirates or those suffering a WGA glitch to their legal version that suddenly found themselves branded as pirates) would find themselves only able to boot into an Internet Explorer session for an hour at a time, able to surf around but really there to be able to buy a discounted Windows license. Continued on page 4. |
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