Need advice: pirated XP Pro Corporate

My question is, is it possible for MS to find out? I'm willing to
delete this stupid POS. For one thing, the clock applet is broken, and
my older digital camera doesn't work with it. Win XP is broken, man.
I'm a reasonable person. I don't need XP for my life's work, and I sure
as fuck don't want to get in trouble.

Technically, both flatfish AND I both have pirated copies of XP Pro
Corporate Edition. Back in '93, a buddy of mine copied MS Word 2.0a
from the university's installation floppies onto 6 blank floppies, and
gave it to me. It's not cracked, but it's still illegal. And it's
still not worth it, because LaTeX is still worlds better, even for
ordinary stuff. Not only is it stealing, but it's not worth the legal
trouble. MS has done enough pirating of their own, so I feel my duty is
to break the cycle of evil.

How I did it: I went into gtk-gnutella, and searched for "xp pro corp".
I proceeded to download the ISO. Then, I searched for a license key
in GNUTella also. The file I downloaded that contained the key was
called "Windows.XP Pro Corporate CD Key.txt". I burned the ISO, set my
CDROM to bootable in my BIOS, and installed it. When it prompted me for
my Volume License ID, I entered the CD key contained in the file I just
told you about. As an aside, why does the installer wait until the
installation is more than 70% complete to ask you for a CD key?

Anyhow, I was simply curious as to whether or not this thing would
install. I wanted to just have a look around, to see what XP was like.
Curiosity got the best of me.

This really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as there are many good
operating systems that I can legally download, including but in no way
limited to FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux. The advantage of downloading the
latter OSes is that they're free, they're kept on tens if not hundreds
of mirror sites around the world. I can download an ISO of FreeBSD in
about 2-3 hours through my cable modem. It's perfectly legal. Not only
is it a big hassle to try to download the corporate edition of XP pro
via one of the peer-to-peer neworks, but it leaves me with a bad taste
in my mouth, and it's also stealing.

Keep in mind that flatfish admitted the following:

> WinXP surprised me with it's quality and obvious superiority over Linsux so I
> decided to keep it.
>
> One of my clients has a corporate license for it and gave me a copy. Completely
> legal and it just blows away Linsux....
> Not even close....By the time you read this, I will be in the process of backing up my
home directory, and putting the OS that came with it (Win ME) back onto
my HD.

So there, I wish to wipe my hands clean of this whole situation. Any
one of you who wish to advise me or comment on this, feel free. Thanks.

Donn

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Actually, there was a mistake in editing the post. Flatfish admitted
the following:

The following quote was mine, and not flatfish's:

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Why bother?

Your hard drive needs a good day-long shower.

--
Linux is Open Sourcery

Flatfish is in deep denial. He doesn't have any clients other than the
ones in his head. He obtained XP in the same manner as you.

Flatfish is lost in the lonely, angry, bitter world that flatfish has
made. If only flatfish would reach out for the help flatfish desperately
needs!

>
>Donn
>

Linonut wrote:

LOL! It's like getting sprayed by a skunk.

Well, I would get rid of Windoze totally. However, I've got an older
digital camera and scanner that are windows-only. I figure I could just
shrink the win partition down to a sufficiently small size. Win ME is
crap. Sometimes, it takes ME a couple of minutes after booting to
totally freeze up my laptop. It's truly a piece of shite. Win XP was
much better, but what if MS somehow audited me? I could spend time in
prison, and it's over Windows. Besides, MS is out. Linux and BSD are
in. They are cool and hip, and MS software is unhip and stodgy.

flatf...@mariana.trench wrote:

> Bullshit Don.
>
> You made the mistake of downloading the Devil's Own leaked corporate copy of XP
> from kazza like 99 percent of the other pirates out there.
>
> Why do you think XP sales are so slow?

Well, that was actually a pretty good post. Very insightful. I
wouldn't surprise me if this DevilsOwn guy were really an MS employee.
I thought the only consequence I had to face was 5 years in prison if I
got caught. If the only thing I'm facing is a sudden access denied due
to a disabling of the software, well, that's not nearly as bad. Fact
is, XP sales are slow because MS is uncool and unhip these days. Linux
and BSD are cool and hip. They are the in-thing. They are "all that".
MS is on its way out. That's why XP sales are slow.

flatf...@mariana.trench wrote:

> WinME is an abortion.

You ain't kiddin'. Hell, sometimes it takes mere minutes or even
seconds for Win ME to freeze up after I boot into it. Is it common for
ME to lock solid at various random times? It freezes my screen, but the
task manager still manages to pop up if I give it the 3-finger. But I
can't navigate around the task manager. I give it the 3-finger to
reboot, and the damn laptop just shuts off. Damn, but Win ME is a piece
of shite. I hope this is just ME being a piece of crap instead of a HW
problem.

The reason I re-installed ME is that I have a valid license for it. I
don't want to get into legal trouble with the Devilsown pirated version
of Win XP. Hell, if I wanted XP, I'd rather just spend the $99 than
have to sweat it out, worrying about facing prison time or sudden
license bombs disabling the software. Besides, MS isn't cool or hip
anymore.

> One reason is there are 10's if not 100's of thousands of copies of this
> software floating around.
>

Just because you're paid by the hour, doesn't mean that you're an
employee .. and since you've used the description of the relationship as
'my client' instead of 'my boss', you've already established that ..

You and your client are very much in violation of software licensing - in
other words you *are* a pirate .. and I will be reporting you to the BSA
.. On Monday ..

Better bathe it in tomato juice then ..

What's the camera? Have you tried gphoto?

--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, for when you need to get work done, Or you could just play UT...

It's one of those stupid kids' cameras, a Polaroid FunFlash! or whatever. I
tried a similar Polaroid model in gphoto, and it didn't work. I got this
thing a long time ago.

Ah, those are usually raw serial data, with a very simple header. If you
are interested. There was a project a while ago with Circuit Cellar Ink
or maybe Midnight engineering, to use one of those plus a PIC based
webserver to make a $50 webcam. They wrote a simple driver to pull the
serial data apart for the raw JPG info.

A while ago, I used PortMon on Windows to examine what syscalls were
being made, and the data flow. seems as if there's a few ioctl's that
need to made, along with the data stream. The data seemed to be pretty
consistent in certain sized packets. I'll have to try this when I get a
chance.

Screw Winblows and all peecee operating systems for that matter. They
are more trouble than they are worth. I used to be a peecee user until
i moved into a macintosh environment. Macs are 100% virus free. In
addition i have had very few problems with my iBook. If your still
hooked on windows or use windows for accesories than just get a copy of
virtual pc and a windows or linux disc. You will be far better off on a
mac. :D

Since when has your insane asylums been called a "macintosh environment"?

--
"[SCOX] did not experience a profitable quarter until after it abandoned
its Linux business and undertook its present scheme to extract windfall
profits from Unix technology that SCO played no role in developing."
-- IBM's Counterclaim against The SCO Group [SCOX].

kj -
I accept that you like Mac, and its OS.
In my book, that's fine, not so much because it's "not Microsoft", but
rather that it is a viable alternative to a virtual monopoly.

A question for you, though:-
I read a lot in this group about what Linux does NOT support, and what
MS Windows DOES support. You are clearly an experienced Mac user.
Please tell me:-

1. Does Linux support the Mac?
i.e. if you wished, could you run Linux on your Mac?
If so, would this be "directly", or using some emulator?

2. Does MS Windows support the Mac?
i.e. can you buy Windows XP for your Mac?
Again, if you CAN run XP on a Mac, is it "directly" or emulated?

Just curious

Bill

Yes, you can. Yellow Dog Linux for PPC.

No, natively.

VPC 7.0 will run on a PPC. This allows you to run windwoes
apps.

No, just the apps. But then, the apps aren't worth the
extra $700 or so just to run XP Apps.

Sorry the long quote, but thank you greycloud.

Are you (paraphrasing to see if I understand) telling me that:-

1. For a Mac, I can get a "proper" Linux distro?
Linux supports Mac?

2. Microsoft do an emulator for the Mac.

So, apart from the Mac and "Intel", do either Linux or Windows run on
anything else?

Forgive the ignorance, but if I don't ask, I won't get!

Bill

Yes. Not only that, but if you want there is "Mac on Linux" for PPC based
systems. This lets you run Linux as the primary OS, but OSX under a
virtual machine in parallel. Best of both worlds.

Windows doesn't really run on Mac, as said, some Windows applications can
be run with special software, but not Windows itself. And Windows doesn't
really run on all that many platforms. You've really hit it's limit here.
there's PC, IA-64 (which nobody uses and is obsolete), and Windows CE for
embedded systems like PDAs...which you have to be an idiot to run.

Linux on the other hand, runs on virtually anything, such as Alpha, Sun
Sparc, Ultra Sparc, Motorola 68000, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, IBM Zseries and
S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64 (Microsoft is
still in development here), and CRIS. And yeah, Macs. ;-)

That's a hell of a lot of hardware right there.

Gee, it takes me a long time to get there sometimes with you guys!
It would be easier if I knew more myself, of course - but thanks
Liam:-)

SO - we are getting there.
Elsewhere (another thread) I've been trying to correct the common
misconception of "Windows supports more than Linux does", in that
what is usually meant is that manufacturers of hardware components
more frequently provide drivers for Windows than they do for Linux.

We may re-write that:-

"Windows is more frequently supported than is Linux"

(Let's be clear who is supporting whom!)

When it comes to the OPERATING SYSTEM doing the supporting, we have:-

1. Windows supports:-
Intel and AMD (but NOT 64-bit yet).

2. Linux supports:-
Intel and AMD (INCLUDING 64-bit)
Alpha,
Sun Sparc
Ultra Sparc
Motorola 68000
ARM
Hitachi SuperH
IBM Zseries and S/390
MIPS
HP PA-RISC
Intel IA-64
DEC VAX
CRIS
Macs

Is that about right?
Am I moving in the right direction for the answer to the FAQ, "Why
does Linux offer less support than Windows"?:-)

Bill

You can also get MDK, Gentoo, Debian and a version of Knoppix (there
are others, but I forget what they are right now) besides YDL.

Sorta.

You mean, like Alpha?

http://www.linuxiso.org/finddistro.php

Or Sparc?

http://www.linuxiso.org/finddistro.php

Want it in 64-bit?

http://www.linuxiso.org/finddistro.php

Ah. Here's some for PPC:

http://www.linuxiso.org/finddistro.php

Hell, here's a list of a bunch that linux works with:

http://ngc891.blogdns.net/kernel/docs/arch.txt

As for Mac OS, here's the list of architectures it runs on without
using an emulator or something to make it work:

Macintosh

Here's the list that Winders actually runs on, not via an emulator like
VMWare or Win4Lin:

x86

There's a rumor that Windwoes will someday run on 64-bit. I wouldn't
count on it until it's actually released, though. MICROS~1 has a long
history of having their fingers crossed when they promise to make
things happen.

A good example is WinFS. It was going to be released with LongSchlong
(which has since been delayed a few times). Now it's been removed and
is promised as a download later. That's the usual sign that they're
going to drop the idea completely.

You'll /never/ be as good as Conman or DooFuS with that attitude.
You're supposed to become an expert at things you don't know anything
about by not running it at all. Or you can follow in the footsteps of
DooFuS by running something for a week before you know all there is to
know.

--
CodeRed: An original Microsoft web crawler.

>
> Yes. But while you're at it, don't forget a section in the FAQ on
> "Why does Linux offer less support than BSD?". ;-)

Fair comment:-)
Those lists do put Windows in the shade a tad though, don't they?:-)

Bill

> You'll never be as good as Conman or DooFuS with that attitude.

I know, I know:-(
Must try harder, uh?
- or should that be "must be more trying"?:-)

Thanks for your help - it's all been quite an eye-opener for me.

Bill

It's even worse than it sounds too. OSX won't run on *all* PPC hardware.
You can get an IBM PPC, a G4 or G5, same type motherboard, same Apple
style hardware, etc... and it will *not* run OSX. OSX will simply refuse
to install on any non-Apple PPC system. Linux however, works like a dream
on any PPC hardware.

--
Conor

An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan.
-- George Patton

Yes.

Yes, they do, but it is expensive. The reports says the
emulator runs a tad slow and for $700 it would be better to
get a cheapie PC.

Linux will run on a great number of platforms... Sparc,
Alphas, Mips, Intel, Motorolas, etc.
Windows only runs on Intel/x86.

[ ... ]

An interesting area where M$ NT was supposed to compete was
on the 64-bit alphas.
NT ran in 32-bit mode whereas Tru64 UNIX was pure 64-bit.
Then there was the option of running OpenVMS on the Alphas.
M$ NT could not compete against these heavyweights since
there was this laughter going on until M$ dropped the
product.

But NT couldn't compete against OpenVMS or Tru64-UNIX.
Mostly just laughter from the professional community that
drove out NT.