Pirates crack Vista at last

It's official: Pirates crack Vista at last

* 4th March 2007
* James Bannan
* Vista

A genuine crack for Windows Vista has just been released by pirate group Pantheon, which allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational.


Unlike cracks which have been floating around since Vista RTM was released in late November, this crack doesn’t simply get around product activation with beta activation files or timestop cracks - it actually makes use of the activation process. It seems that M'zoft has allowed large OEMs like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of Vista that doesn’t require product activation – apparently because end users would find it too inconvenient.

OEM EmulationOEM Emulation
This version of Vista uses System-Locked Pre-Installation 2.0 (SLP 2.0). It allows the “Royalty OEMs” to embed specific licensing information into the operating system which Vista can activate without having to go back to M'zoft for verification. The licensing components include the OEM’s hardware-embedded BIOS ACPI_SLIC (which has been signed by M'zoft), an XML certificate file which corresponds to this ACPI_SLIC and a specific OEM product key.

Pantheon released a bundle which includes the certificate files from ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo along with OEM product keys for Vista Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate, and an emulator which allows the BIOS ACPI_SLIC driver for any manufacturer to be installed without requiring the system to be physically running that hardware. For example, you can install the ASUS certificate information on any machine, not just an ASUS.

And yes, the crack most certainly works. You end up with an activated, legitimate copy of Vista which passes all the Windows Genuine Advantage checks.

The release of this crack does make a bit of a mockery of the whole volume activation process. I was beginning to think the new activation process introduced with Vista might spell the end of easy and large-scale Windows piracy, and if the only way to activate Vista was to have it communicate directly with M'zoft, then that just might have been a possibility. But allowing such a workaround to OEMs just because their users might not like it has introduced a weakness into the system. Pirate groups are well known for exploiting any weakness no matter how small (as evidenced by the cracking of KMS), so once this activation process became known it was only a matter of time.

As the crack is tied to specific product keys, it remains to be seen whether M'zoft will be able to do anything about shutting out machines activated using this method. But their work will be made much more difficult now that such machines have completely bypassed the online activation process, and are connecting as legitimate copies of Windows.

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Xbox 360 memory grows

Xbox 360 memory grows
Microsoft to offer a 512MB memory unit for the video game and entertainment system, simultaneously drop price of original 64MB unit.


Microsoft on Monday announced plans to offer a 512-megabyte memory unit for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system. It also plans to increase the official size limit of Xbox Live Arcade games from 50MB to 150MB. Microsoft plans to sell the 512MB Memory Unit, available worldwide beginning April 3, for $49.99 in North America.
The unit will come preloaded with the Xbox Live Arcade game "Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved," from developer Bizarre Creations, for a limited time, Microsoft said. The original 64MB Memory Unit will simultaneously drop in price from $39.99 to $29.99.

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Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.
According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.
"We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem," Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.
Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.
Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. "It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something," he said.
Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn't have an army
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Taiwanese set off 8.1-mile firecracker

Taiwanese set off 8.1-mile firecracker


TAIPEI, Taiwan - Organizers lit up a 8.1-mile string of explosives in a southern Taiwanese county Sunday, hoping to create the world's longest firecracker in a record-setting attempt expected to last two hours.
TV footage of the Chinese New Year celebration in Tainan County, dubbed "Legend of the Fire Dragon," showed rapid flashes of bright red explosions that created huge wafts of white smoke.
Throngs that had gathered to witness the spectacle wore masks, goggles, and even motorcycle helmets to protect themselves from the pollution.
The firecracker was expected to take two hours to finish burning.
The record-breaking attempt needs to be verified by Guinness World Records.
Taiwanese newspaper United Daily News reported that Spain holds the current world record for the longest continuously burning firecracker at 7 miles.
The record wasn't listed on the Guinness World Records official Web site, which only contains partial listings.
The festivities in Taiwan Sunday marked the last day of the 15-day Chinese New Year celebration. Other locals set aloft lanterns in the sky.

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Cell-Phone Boosters

Cell phone users are all too accustomed to dropped calls and dead zones. One way to alleviate those problems is to boost the phone's signal with an external antenna. One such device is the Spotwave Z1900, which is geared for homes and small offices of up to 2,500 square feet. The indoor, wireless system works with cell phones, PDAs and 3G laptop cards.



The Wi-Ex zBoost works in the 800MHz and 1900MHz bands, both at home and in the car. According to a New York Times story, it's legal for consumers to purchase and own the cellular boosters, but Federal Communications Commission regulations are unclear about whether they're legal to use. Wireless companies, the Times reports, say the use of unauthorized repeaters can cause interference.

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Egypt's bloggers test state media control

Egypt's bloggers test state media control
Egyptian bloggers come into the spotlight as an important forum for political debate and as the target of government attempts to limit their freedom of expression.

CAIRO--Egyptian bloggers have come into the spotlight, on the one hand as an important forum for political debate, on the other as the target of government attempts to limit their freedom of expression.
Earlier this month, Abdel-Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student at al-Azhar Islamic university, became the first Egyptian jailed for his blogging when he was handed a four-year prison sentence.
"Despite their small number, the bloggers have established themselves as an alternative media outlet," said Ehab el-Zalaky, a senior editor at the independent weekly newspaper al-Dustor, who has written extensively on bloggers.
Blogs also provide a platform for religious and social minorities whose issues rarely find space in traditional media.
Anti-Christian discrimination in Egypt is documented in one. Blogs by lesbians discussing their desires and feelings are new outlets for self-expression.

"In a society too conservative to accept these relationships, it was the first time for such explicit bold talk to appear in an Egyptian media outlet," Zalaky said.
The case against Suleiman, a Muslim and a liberal who uses the name Kareem Amer on his blog, was based on a complaint by al-Azhar University about eight articles written since 2004.
Suleiman accused the conservative Sunni institution of promoting extremist thought and described some companions of the Prophet Mohammad as "terrorists." He also compared President Hosni Mubarak to the dictatorial Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
Bloggers and human rights organizations have condemned the conviction of Suleiman. They fear it sets a dangerous precedent for Internet censorship in Egypt, home to some 5,000 blogs across a population of more than 70 million people.

The Foreign Ministry has criticized the reactions to the verdict and said it was an internal matter and up to the judiciary to decide on.
Writing on his blog shortly before his detention in November, Suleiman was defiant.
"I am not scared at all...I will not back away one inch from what I wrote and handcuffs will not prevent me from dreaming of my freedom," he blogged.
Since Suleiman's arrest, said fellow blogger Wael Abbas, 32, Egypt's blogosphere has changed. "I cannot say I am not afraid," he told Reuters. "With this government one has to expect the worst."
Bloggers broke a major story in November when a number of them posted video footage and pictures of an Egyptian minibus driver screaming as he was sodomized, purportedly at a police station. The images led to the arrest of two police officers who now stand trial on charges of torture.

More torture footage has since appeared on the Internet, with the latest clip posted by Abbas showing a man in a police uniform beating and insulting two civilians. Viewed nearly 26,000 times on Abbas's blog, the video's authenticity could not be verified.
The Interior Ministry said allegations of systematic torture were exaggerated and part of a campaign to tarnish the image of the police.
Late last year, Abbas and another blogger reported what they said was mass sexual harassment of women in downtown Cairo by scores of young men. The government denied the incident but the bloggers' detailed description sparked an outcry in the independent Egyptian media.
"The time when they (authorities) thought they had control over everything has come to an end," Abbas wrote on his blog.
Hala Botros, a blogger who writes on what she calls anti-Christian discrimination in Egypt, says that while she and many others in the religiously conservative country may not agree with Suleiman, he is entitled to express his views. Botros, 42, says she was also persecuted by security authorities for reporting on a number of sectarian clashes between Muslims and the Christian minority in southern Egypt.

"They beat up my father at night on the street and told him: 'This is a gift from your daughter,'" she said. "I was summoned to the police during the night and they treated me roughly. I was kept in solitary confinement for hours."
Prosecutors later charged Botros with harming national security and publishing false news. She was released on bail and forced to shut down her blog, Copts Without Borders.
The international group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has added Egypt to its list of Internet Black Holes. RSF said one spur for this was a court ruling authorizing the Egyptian government to block or suspend any Web site likely to pose a threat to national security.
"This could open the way to extensive online censorship," said RSF in a statement.

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Microsoft prize of $10,000 to promote Xbox games

Microsoft prize of $10,000 to promote Xbox games
Microsoft plans to announce a contest to develop the next great digital diversion for the company's Xbox 360.
The New York Times
By Seth Schiesel

Reaching out to millions of aspiring game developers around the world, Microsoft plans Monday to announce a contest that will award $10,000 and the opportunity to entice millions of eyeballs to the next great digital diversion for the company's Xbox 360.



In addition to the game console's snazzy graphics, the Xbox Live online service has been the most important component of the Xbox 360's success since its debut in 2005. And perhaps the most popular aspect of Xbox Live has been the service's arcade component, which allows users to download and play smaller, relatively simpler games like Uno and Geometry Wars that usually cost less than $10. (By contrast, top-end games can sell in stores for around $60.)
The popularity of Xbox Live Arcade has in turn attracted the attention of game developers looking to create the next Tetris or Minesweeper. Late last year, Microsoft introduced a suite of software tools for making so-called casual games called XNA.

And so at a game makers' convention in San Francisco, Microsoft plans to announce a contest akin to the television show Project Greenlight that will award a cash prize and a potential slot on Xbox Live Arcade to the best new game created with XNA tools. The company intends to announce the winner of the contest, called "Dream-Build-Play," in August.
"This competition highlights the power of XNA and the popularity of the Xbox Live Arcade service with its millions of users," Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's group product manager for the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, said in a telephone interview.
To help increase the popularity of casual games, Microsoft will also announce the introduction of a new 512-megabyte portable storage device for the Xbox 360. The previous portable storage unit contained only 64 megabytes of data, and so Xbox Live Arcade games had been limited to an official size of 50 megabytes. With the new unit, Microsoft will also raise the official size limit on Xbox Live Arcade games to 150 megabytes, allowing enhanced graphics, sound and artificial intelligence.

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