It appears that the Windows Vista has spontaneously activated its Problem Reports and Solution engine, which is itself a broken implementation of the now-familiar Windows XP error reporting dialog box (sadly, Microsoft decided to pull their Vista implementation of the Microsoft WSYP program in lieu of consumer demand for Vista DRM). Today I got a dialog box that asked me if I wanted to check on the status of the sixty-two errors that have been reported to Microsoft since I installed Vista on my laptop over the New Years holiday weekend. |
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So I submitted the reports from my laptop which resulted in this amazingly informational status update page. {sigh}
Then I got a call from a friend of mine, whose Vista Ultimate installation had come back with this error message:
"Windows has detected that an unauthorized change was made to your Windows license. This alert appears when a copy of Windows is unlicensed or if Windows activation has been bypassed."
--oops!
Looks like Microsoft finally "fixed" the hack that was used to bypass the Vista Activation, which was reported to be the TimerStop fix.
But have no worries, my friend, the hackers of the world have been busy! Just like the AACS protection scheme that is used to protect the Blu-Ray HD-DVD content, it appears that the Vista Activation system has been completely, permanantly and irreversably circumvented as well, this time by means of sheer brute force.
So, if you're keeping score: Hackers +2, Microsoft +0.
-Joel Helgeson
Microsoft: Bringing *.* to /dev/null since 1975
