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From: WindowManager@bdcimail.com
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 12:23 PM
To: wwimberly@iadt.edu
Subject: BRIAN LIVINGSTON: “Window Manager” from InfoWorld.com, Monday,
October 15, 2001
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BRIAN LIVINGSTON: “Window Manager” InfoWorld.com
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Monday, October 15, 2001
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ACTIVATION, ANYONE?
Posted October 12, 2001 01:01 PM Pacific Time
I WROTE LAST week that Microsoft’s new Windows XP
operating system, scheduled for wide distribution on
Oct. 25, has so few real benefits and so many
irritations — especially Passport, an insecure and
relentless scheme to vacuum up users’ e-mail addresses
— that I instead recommend buying new PC systems with
Windows 2000 installed.
But you’re likely to face XP sooner or later, whether
you like it or not. That’s because PC manufacturers
almost universally plan to install the new operating
system unless buyers specifically request Windows 2000
or Windows Me.
As a result, you’d better know a thing or two about
XP’s most irritating feature of all: Windows Product
Activation, or WPA.
WPA is a peculiar method of generating a numeric key
that users must report to Microsoft via an Internet
connection or a telephone call to continue to use XP
after the first 30 days. The user receives a new code
number that “activates” XP.
Fortunately, purchasers of volume licenses from
Microsoft won’t have to activate XP systems. And PC
makers can preactivate the PCs they sell to buyers.
Ideally, a PC maker will choose to “tie” an XP
installation to its BIOS. This permits end-users to
make any number of hardware changes (except a
different BIOS) with no complaints from XP.
But problems arise if a user installs XP and then
changes several hardware components of his or her
system. In that case, XP use is restrained until
Microsoft is contacted again for a fresh number.
I’ve found that this method of generating the original
code is so lame that it will have no effect, as
Microsoft claims, on stopping true software pirates.
I’ll explain why in next week’s column.
This week, however, I want to address a different
concern people have about WPA — that it’s a profiling
system designed to reveal all your software and
hardware details to Microsoft. This fear is unfounded.
Although Microsoft itself hasn’t been completely
forthcoming about how WPA works, third parties have
examined the communication between Windows XP and
Microsoft on a bit-by-bit level. This shows that
nothing more is transmitted than a few bytes that XP
generates using a rough formula. No useful list of
hardware or software can be deduced from the resulting
string, which isn’t unique to a single machine.
The best paper I’ve seen on the actual process of
generating and interpreting the codes used by WPA is
from a software-licensing company called Fully
Licensed. See
www.licenturion.com/xp/fully-licensed-wpa.txt. To
analyze your own byte stream, a free tool called XPDec
is provided in a Zip file at www.licenturion.com/xp/xpdec-exe.zip.
A broader study of
WPA is at www.windows-help.net/windowsxp/activation.html.
Will all this impede serious pirates, though? Not a
bit. Tune in next week to see why.
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Copyright 2001 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
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