Universe’s Tech Blog

Almost as soon as Vista RTM was released, and well before it was available for download by MSDN subscribers, pirates had it up and available for download.

The pirated copy, released by a group called BillGates, wasn’t a true cracked version. Instead, it used activation files from the pre-RTM releases, enabling pirates to use older product keys to activate the OS.

The main anti-piracy feature, mandatory activation, was actually still intact.

Two weeks have passed since then, and although every single official version of Vista (and Office 2007) has made it onto the pirate boards, no group has stepped forward to claim success with a crack to bypass activation.

This is actually a pretty impressive feat by Microsoft. Normally, a release of this size and importance is cracked wide open within 48 hours of the release of the final code (and most lesser applications in 24).

For Vista to have held off pirates for a full three weeks (and counting) is no small achievement.

It’s probably too early to speculate about the long-term impact of Vista’s activation model.

Pirate groups have circumvented every method of copy protection available, and with that sort of history it would be silly to claim that Microsoft has come up with an uncrackable system.

But – Microsoft have an enormous vested interest in protecting Vista after hundreds of thousands of volume licenced copies of XP were pirated, and I’ve never seen a product which has product security built in to such a fundamental extent. They’ve clearly taken the fight to pirate groups, and so far seem to be holding steady.

Microsoft’s main weapon is actually the constant stream of patches that Windows requires to maintain its security. Microsoft has shown with WGA that it has no ethical concerns with slipping in layer upon layer of additional copy protection into Windows under the guise of “critical security patch”. Security for Microsoft’s revenue streams, that is, not security for your PC.

Still, you can’t blame Redmond. After the five year gap between XP and Vista there’s a hell of a lot of sales to make up.

Team Xecuter Move into PS3 hacking Scene - Hyperdrive, Booting Games from HDD Possible?

World famous Xbox hacking development company ‘Team Xecuter’ has rolled out the details on their first commercial product for PS3 - the ‘Hyperdrive’. This device will allow you to connect any 3.5″ SATA hard drive to the PS3, supporting upto 750GB and switching between the external HYPERDRIVE and internal 2.5″ HDD. There will also be USB 2.0 support to dump DATA to and from the HDD. They also state that a few friends in the Playstation scene have relayed that booting games from the PS3 HDD is not far off at all!

Vodafone has agreed to change its wireless broadband speed claims after Telstra threatened to take it to Federal Court.

It had been claiming in advertising that its new HSDPA upgrade to its 3G network was capable of speeds up to 3.6Mbit/s.

However, Telstra pointed out that its network couldn’t actually go faster than 1.8Mbit/s, despite its modems being capable of a 3.6Mbit/s receive speed.

Telstra has taken a more cautious approach with the advertising for its wireless broadband service, claiming a range of speed from 550Kbit/s to 1.1Mbit/s and clearly stating that speeds will vary.

Telstra said it had secured a commitment from Vodafone that all advertising would be amended by Wednesday. However, “they will continue to refer to 3.6Mbps as the speed the modem is capable of,” warned Telstra BigPond spokesman Craig Middleton.

Ironically, the ACCC warned all telecoms providers in September to be cautious when making speed claims in relation to wireless broadband services.

It said: “the ACCC is reminding all 3G service providers of their obligations whenever making representations of download/upload speeds - particularly when representing that new HSDPA technology will provide speeds in excess of 2Mbps.”