Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Ed Bott wrote a rather interesting pair of papers that I think are interesting if not useful reading by any IT Professional involved with the Windows operating system & its Enterprise deployment.

• “Confessions of a Reluctant Windows 7 Pirate”
• “Windows Activation Technologies:  An Unauthorized Inside Look”

A sample from “Confessions…”:

“I’ve been hanging out with a bad crowd lately.

In the interest of research, I’ve been digging into message boards and forums run by unabashed Windows enthusiasts who are intent on breaking Microsoft’s activation technology. I’ve had these forums bookmarked for years and stop in every once in a while just to see what’s new. This time I decided to drop by and actually try some of tools and utilities to see if I could become a pirate, too.

Unfortunately, I succeeded.

In this post, I’ll share my experiences, including close encounters with some very nasty malware and some analysis on how the latest showdown between Microsoft and the pirates is likely to play out.”

[Read the rest in the download…]

• DOWNLOAD: “Confessions of a Reluctant Windows 7 Pirate”
  http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=1661939

A sample from “Windows Activation…”:

“Trust, but verify. That was good advice for dealing with the Soviet Union in its heyday, and it’s equally sound policy today when dealing with that other Evil Empire. You know, the one in Redmond?

Last month, Microsoft rolled out an update to its Windows Activation Technologies (WAT) platform in Windows 7. Everything you’ve read about KB971033 so far, including my report last week, has been based on what Microsoft said it was going to do; in my earlier coverage, I gathered information from blog posts, published privacy policies, a Knowledge Base article, and some one-on-one interviews. But can you really believe everything Microsoft tells you about its new Windows Activation Technologies update?

Now that the update has been publicly available for a few weeks, I’ve been able to dig into it and determine exactly what it does. You don’t have to take my word for it, either. You can download the same tools I used and check for yourself. (And don’t miss my post from yesterday, Confessions of a Windows 7 pirate, which takes a similarly detailed look at the pirates’ toolkit for cracking Windows activation.)”

[Read the rest in the download…]

• DOWNLOAD: “Windows Activation Technologies:  An Unauthorized Inside Look”
  http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=1661937