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INFOWORLD GRIPE LINE BY ED FOSTER

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A Vista of Licensed Censorship | 98 comments (98 topical) | Post A Comment

Virtual hardware is standardized...[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#40)
by Anonymous User on Thu Oct 26, 2006 at 03:13:37 PM PDT

Regardless, how will they find out and prove you ran Vista on a virtual PC?
Simple... Virtual hardware intentionally emulates outdated video, networking, mice, etc. in order to support the most operating systems "out of the box". VMWare emulates a 1995(?)-era "AMD PCnet-PCI II" Ethernet card and a 1997-era "Sound Blaster AudioPCI" card, hardware that's so outdated it's not in many physical machines anymore. To add, IIRC, all VMWare virtual hard drives have a manufacturer name of "VMWare" in it. The hardware info gets transmitted back to M$ under the guise of WGA, so Microsoft knows which installations are virtual and which are "real".
The problem, for Microsoft, is that once someone virtualizes a registration number, that hardware will not change (excluding the CPU) not matter how often they move the image to a new machine...

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It's coming[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#49)
by Anonymous User on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 09:34:07 AM PDT

That's short-term thinking. The natural next move in this arms race is virtualization software that has a variety of hardware emulation options, including some specifically designed to stealth the virtualization from whatever runs inside it. The simplest is simply to provide a thunking layer to talk almost directly to the actual peripheral hardware, allowing you to also virtualize the hardware you actually use, and virtual drives that claim to be of arbitrary manufacture.
Corporate collusion may prevent current, commercial virtualization software from developing these features despite their obvious desirability; open source will just step in and pick up the slack. Virtualization is the next thing and nothing can stop it; it's an answer to too many security problems not to win out fairly soon.
The current copyright-enforcement regime is dead and starting to realize it. That's why this licensing stuff is reaching such a shrill pitch, smacking of desperation. The Internet started chipping away at it. P2P struck a body blow. The coming booms in virtualization, on the one hand, and the distributed hashtable web, on the other, will sound the death knell.
Read the www.freedomtotinker.com article on botnets. End user machine insecurity is starting to cost the economy millions and fuels spam and identity theft. Web site operators are deluged with bogus traffic they have to pay for. Virtualization to support legacy apps without keeping legacy security holes on the one hand, and DHT-Web for distributing the Web on a p2p model on the other, can greatly improve the situation.
Of course, the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA will fight tooth and claw to stop it. Of course, they will all be bankrupted after the revolution. :)

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o °/°°ï,¢[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#145)
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A Vista of Licensed Censorship | 98 comments (98 topical) | Post A Comment

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Copyright © 2006, Reprints, Permissions, Licensing, IDG Network, Privacy Policy. All Rights reserved. InfoWorld is a leading publisher of technology information and product reviews on topics including viruses, phishing, worms, firewalls, security, servers, storage, networking, wireless, databases, and web services. ComputerWorld :: LinuxWorld :: Network World :: CIO :: PC World :: Darwin :: CMO :: CSO IT Careers :: JavaWorld :: Macworld :: Mac Central :: Playlist :: GamePro :: GameStar :: Gamerhelp ITWorld Canada :: Computerwoche :: Techworld UK :: tecChannel :: IDG.se :: IDG.no :: IDG.pl