Windows Product Activation compromised

Conclusion

With its technology of Activation Microsoft wants to thwart the user who occasionally copies software. Up to a certain degree this may still work. But by means of the above described steps nearly everybody can activate his own XP merely by getting a corresponding wpa.dbl file. There certainly will exist some web sites in the near future where the user can comfortably download "his" wpa.dbl.

Should the current procedure of Activation remain, then Microsoft will spend a lot of money like water for technology, web servers and call centers without any considerable success. It would be much more lucrative to drop the Activation and to lower the price for XP.

Microsoft did not comment on the weak points of the Activation until now. But probably their statement goes as follows: "In its finaI version WPA will look completely different. We did not implement these steps in the RC1 for only one reason, that is not to annoy the testers."

But it definitely is a fact that inbetween the Release Candidates and the real Release normally only bugs are rectified. May sharp tongues call the WPA itself a bug, in our opinion it is nothing more but an example of bad programming. (mha)/(bmu)