Windows 8 To Fight Piracy With the Cloud

[wraggster]

With the latest Windows 8 build (8064) that has been delivered to Intel, it's clear that the company is taking strides to make sure that its upcoming OS isn't quite so easy to pirate (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/93110-microsoft-heads-to-the-cloud-to-improve-windows-8-anti-piracy-defenses). For starters, the generic volume license keys that were so easily exploited during the early days of Windows 7 leaks will no longer be an option for pirates. Product keys also won't be shipped in the prodkey.txt file included in the build packages. Instead, installers will need to retrieve a unique key from a Microsoft web page. There's also a good possibility that the recently-surfaced fast booting patent (http://www.conceivablytech.com/8886/business/beyond-windows-8-patent-hints-to-a-future-streaming-os) could come into play as well. If Microsoft does indeed have designs on using a remote server to push OS code to systems at boot time, that code would be a very clever place to embed activation-related programming. Even if a crack was discovered, it would be neatly undone during a subsequent start-up sequence — similar to the way Microsoft's now-idle Windows Steady State could turn back the clock on an entire Windows installation after rebooting."Microsoft has also indirectly confirmed in a recent blog post (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/17/introducing-the-team.aspx) that Windows 8 will make use of an app store (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219296/Microsoft_confirms_app_store_in_Windows_8).

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/08/19/172222/Windows-8-To-Fight-Piracy-With-the-Cloud