It's now possible to activate Windows XP offline, algorithm gets cracked

[captaincranky]

Drive light or power light??

Well, the power light has nothing to do with Windows. The drive light, maybe.

I took it to be a legendary answer to a legendary a**hole.

 

[captaincranky]

You arrr supposed to activate windows??

Well, if you want a desktop slideshow of scantily clad women, then yes. If you're content with a black wallpaper, then not so much.

 

[kinetix]

I've always activated mine using this one key I found on Yahoo! Answers when I was 10 years old and it has never failed me lol

me too, the ONE key, lol
I still have a CD with Win XP and the key written on the surface of the disk and in a TXT file inside the disk.
My brother used it so many times that he memorized the key.

 

[torchyear]

Other than that, some pieces of old hardware can only run in a physical 2000 or XP machine whether because they can't be physically put in a newer machine due to the lack of interfaces (ISA, ATA, AGP, PCI, etc.) or because its drivers can only run in a 16 or 32-bit operating system.

Yep I have a couple of film scanners that run off Adaptec SCSI PCI interfaces that never got Vista/Win7 driver updates. Quite a few film photographers and labs using XP machines (and ancient Firewire Macs) to keep their Flextights etc alive.

 

[RudyBob]

I mean, this is where piracy is ethical; the developer no longer supports it and you want to use a product that you own.

True but to call it piracy is a misnomer

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

Ethics is relative. I'm sure it is against their ToS and part of the licensing agreement to not reverse engineer and/or bypass activation systems. If M$FT really wanted to they could go after those people, if they could find them. So while I'm sure most of the general public would say "yeah that's fine, M$FT no longer supports the OS nor makes any money off it", lawyer speak and technicalities probably says its still "unethical". But laws and ethics are not the same thing... sometimes they overlap or merge, but they are completely different. Something can be perfectly legal but unethical, and something ethical may be illegal.

Humanity... aren't variables great?