Single Verizon IP Address Used For Hundreds of Windows 7 Activations 323
An anonymous reader writes with this story from TorrentFreak: A presumed pirate with an unusually large appetite for activating Windows 7 has incurred the wrath of Microsoft. In a lawsuit filed [in] a Washington court, Microsoft said that it logged hundreds of suspicious product activations from a single Verizon IP address and is now seeking damages. ... Who he, she or they are behind address 74.111.202.30 is unknown at this point, but according to Microsoft they're responsible for some serious Windows pirating. "As part of its cyberforensic methods, Microsoft analyzes product key activation data voluntarily provided by users when they activate Microsoft software, including the IP address from which a given product key is activated," the lawsuit reads. The company says that its forensic tools allow the company to analyze billions of activations of software and identify patterns "that make it more likely than not" that an IP address associated with activations is one through which pirated software is being activated.
From Micro-Soft (Score:5, Interesting)
This great piece of history still rings true today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists#/media/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobbyists.jpg
Many here should read, learn, and abide...
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At the same time (Score:2, Insightful)
If it wasn't for Microsoft, we would still be on mainframes and mini-computers. Paying jacked up prices. Fo
Re:At the same time (Score:5, Insightful)
If it wasn't for Microsoft, we would still be on mainframes and mini-computers. Paying jacked up prices. For crap, frankly
Why would you think that? There were lots of decent personal computers in the early '80's, most with operating systems at least as good as MS DOS, including graphical ones like GEM that were better then the early crap that was Windows. Even on the PC there were better versions of DOS then MS DOS which were killed by anti-competitive behaviour.
You are right about MS understanding the benefits of getting programmers and consumers hooked though, encouraging people to copy their software at cost (the price of a floppy usually) but they were very anti-competitive for the longest time and probably did more to hold computing back as any company.
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GEM? Our bug-fix library on top of GEM was bigger than GEM itself.
Not saying that DOS/Windows was anything other than unnecessarily crap and buggy for a long time... (And it'll still take another decade for me to fully trust Microsoft to write 'reliable' rather than meretricious code...)
Rgds
Damon
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Why would you think that?
I think the monoculture MS created in the late 80's to early 00's was a net gain for IT in general because the standardisation of Wintel as a PC platform allowed less nerdy types to get involved and help grow the pie. You can hate on all the bad things MS did, but the fact is having a standard platform during it's infancy was good for IT, just like how the Model T jump started the auto industry. We are now entering a post MS era so can lose the hate, and focus on Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla etc, but the
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"The Commodore, like the Apple ][, was a 6502 machine. Neither of these had anything to do with Microsoft, which was only working with the 8080 instruction set. "
Wrong on both counts. Commodore's BASIC interpreter was written by Microsoft. Apple's Applesoft was also written by Microsoft (albeit much slower than Integer BASIC).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Integer BASIC is the one Woz wrote (by himself)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
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This. A thousand times this!
The 1st version of Windows was a toy, (Score:4, Interesting)
GEM worked. It ran Ventura Publisher. [wikipedia.org] I had investigated previous typesetting platforms; they cost $1.4 million.
The 1st version of Windows was just a toy, a dishonest suggestion that Microsoft should get respect, in my opinion. The second version of Windows had problems with fonts.
Far later, Windows 98 had an unstable file system.
MIcrosoft makes more money if its products have flaws.
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Can confirm. Used Ventura Publisher a lot back in the day. IIRC, it took a day to pre-render a full set of outline fonts, and you had to have an empty hard drive for it... It worked great, though! I also vividly remember running Ami Pro with its bundled Windows 2, and then Win 2 Corel on Win 3.0 :)
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Without Gates, Tiny BASIC would have ruled the day on micros instead. The rest would have unfolded in a similar way except people wouldn't have mental scars from dealing with Plug-n-Pray. IF anything, MS held the industry back.
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This is one of the few Gates myths with some truth behind it. He published GW-BASIC ("GW" for "gee whizz") some time in the 1980s. It was a major breakthrough: an interpreted language that could be used to develop and run custom applications on the small-office-home-office computers of the day, but which had several features of compiled languages. It was brilliant. It is still brilliant, its just that these days Javascript, PHP, Perl, and the like do what used to be done in BASIC, and much more.
The world w
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Smells like the "great man" theory of history. Sometimes it's true, i.e. if Winston Churchill hadn't been where he was we'd probably all be speaking German now.
In this case? Nah. If Microsoft hadn't done it, somebody else would - and possibly better.
They were second choice for the IBM contract. They only got it because the guy selling CP/M goofed off & missed the meeting.
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Smells like the "great man" theory of history. Sometimes it's true, i.e. if Winston Churchill hadn't been where he was we'd probably all be speaking German now.
In this case? Nah. If Microsoft hadn't done it, somebody else would - and possibly better.
Why, because you say so? If you think IBM could've done it then you've never had anything to do with IBM ever.
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I'd look at some other sources if I were you.
Fighters with the guns pointing forward had been the norm since the middle of WW1. One example was the Hawker Hurricane, which was in service before the Spitfire was developed, and which outnumbered the Spitfire by about three to one in 1940. Both were generally considered inferior to the Me 109.
What really made the difference was radar plus Dowding's organisational system. Oh, and home advantage.
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What really made the difference was radar plus Dowding's organisational system. Oh, and home advantage.
I've read a little about the war. IMO there were 1000 different things that could've easily changed the result (Chamberlain, Churchill, El Alamein, Tobruk, Enigma, Operation Valkyrie, Manhattan Project, Battle of Britain, Stalingrad... hundreds of others) Attributing something so massive and complex to one or two things seems a little simplistic.
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One example was the Hawker Hurricane, which was in service before the Spitfire was developed, and which outnumbered the Spitfire by about three to one in 1940.
Hurricane pilots were responsible for more shoot-downs of German aircraft during the Battle of Britain than Spitfire pilots were.
This is partly due to the Hurricane being available in greater numbers, and partly because the simpler design of the Hurricane meant that the aircraft had a much shorter turn-around time (for rearming and refuelling) than the Spitfire did. The RAF also tended to field the slower Hurricane to shoot down bombers, and used the faster and more agile Spitfires to tackle the bombers' e
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... providing dev tools and beta products for free or close to it ...
This is more of a give the first sample of crack free and keep your lower level street dealers high to keep your market share methodology, not a service to mankind you make it sound.
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You have that backwards.
The OS/2 development effort funded Microsoft Windows development through contracts prior to Win3.0. If IBM corporate headquarters had pulled its head out of its ass and stopped the infighting between the PC division and the big iron divisions, Microsoft would still be a pipsqueak minor player. But Gates took advantage of IBM's management infighting, wriggled free of earlier contract clauses like a toddler escaping from the constraining hug of its nanny, tweaked what was basically an
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They were paid to by IBM. If MS didn't do it, IBM would have found someone else.
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IBM did not one but several REALLY fucking stupid things, 1.- When Intel refused to license the 386 for second sourcing IBM refused to buy it, instead sticking with the 286 (which they made) damned near until the Pentium was released.
Interesting version of history you have there... The 386 went into full production in mid-1986. IBM released their first 386-based computer in 1987 (PS/2 Model 80). The Pentium came out in 1993.
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I developed on OS/2 in the late 80s. I used various IBM PS/2 machines, including Model 80 (Intel 386DX) and Model 55 (Intel 386SX).
So it can't quite be true that IBM refused to buy the 386.
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It doesn't matter where they are now. The point is there were alternatives. Without Microsoft one or more of those alternatives would have had Microsoft's user base. Of course.. that would have probably resulted in more money going into that alternative.. which would have meant more development.. taking it to a further level than it was originally developed.
So.. no, we would not all be on mainframes without Microsoft.
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Yup, if it wasn't Microsoft, all kinds of other companies could have dominated the desktop market. IBM (OS/2), Quarterdeck (DESQview/X), Apple (Mac OS), NeXT (NeXT), any number of *nix companies (X11), and others.
Microsoft got big because they got the consumers interested, and questionable deals with vendors.
Plenty of people only know the tunnel-vision version of computer history and they believe Microsoft is it. They either don't remember (or are too young to have seen) software boxes (ahh, the good ol'
Re:From Micro-Soft (Score:5, Interesting)
Its funny when you put that letter in the context of history:
- Bill Gates used Paul Allen to steal computer time from other university staff
- They used that stolen time, paid for by tax payers and donations to the university, to make their commercial software
- Bill Gates received a personal loan from the richest person in Seattle (his father)
- Bill Gates was driving a porche when he started uni - back then Porches were rare as hen's teeth
If anything, that letter just points out how much Gates thought he was entitled to - an entitled sociopath who has made everyone think hes the Mahatma Gandhi of IT.
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i'm secretly hoping they'll discover it was a kid learning how to mass-provision desktops in virtualbox. ooooh the embarrassment.
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- Bill Gates was driving a porche when he started uni - back then Porches were rare as hen's teeth
Nope, not rare. Not expensive either. About 2x what an American car would run. I've got the receipt for the '65 356C coupe my dad bought new in July '65, and his out the door price with an aftermarket AC unit was $3700. A '65 Mustang would've cost him about $2000.
In the later '60s and early 70s there were the "budget" Porsches - the 912 and 914....
Now if he was driving a Carrera2 or one of the 30 901 badged
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Fuck off. You should know how reputable Dice reporting is, and if not wait four hours for the dupe when ignorant shits crap out the same crap only stupider.
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For those who've read the link, note that Bill complained that they'd only made the equivalent of $2/hr. Just for reference purposes, minimum wage back then was $2.00 an hour in 1974, $2.10 in 1975, and $2.30 in 1976. Should they have made more?...debatable. This was essentially a start up operation (many never become profitable), and initial product development costs are often written off. In that brave new world, before EULAs, nobody bought untried stuff like this.
Proxy? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, my work has 30,000+ computers that communicate through no more than ten public IP addresses, so if we weren't using a corporate solution for Windows activations then we might pop up in much the same way.
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That's my thinking...
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I'd laugh if it turned out to be Dell's test boot proxy and a glitch in the windows activation has it send the request despite having a cached activation.
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Ditto your thoughts here. Wonder if MS even checked for such a possibility. I use a couple different VPN addresses routinely, and some others less routinely. I have no idea how many people use the same VPN's. Hundreds of thousands, maybe?
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Re: Proxy? (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer up until sixteen months ago did exactly that. Volume licensing would have saved them some money - not a whole lot of money, but some. But, the IT department was totally incompetent. Now that we've been bought out by a larger company, the IT department is far less incompetent, and we actually have machines that work, OS's that do what they are supposed to do, and something that passes for security. And, volume licensing.
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Now that we've been bought out by a larger company, the IT department is far less incompetent, and we actually have machines that work, OS's that do what they are supposed to do, and something that passes for security.
OMG, you mean there's a counter example? Every time I've seen a company get bought up the new IT department is less useful than the previous one.
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What really makes me pause is that nearly every computer in the organization comes from a large OEM, the computers through the years that came from small OEMs still had licensed Windows with them, and those very few internally-built computers had OEM license packs purchased for them, yet we still end up paying and paying for something that we theoretically bought.
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Having the corporate image pre-installed on the PCs was great, and on
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Re:Proxy? (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2003, a NOAA weather satellite being manufactured fell off of its assembly tilting table because no one followed the directions to verify that the table's bolts were installed. The damage cost $135 million to correct.
Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere because no one bothered to rectify that one team used fractional units and another team used SI units, so raw data in one unit was assumed to be in another unit, causing the problem that led to being steered incorrectly and hitting the planet.
I never underestimate the ability for people to overlook the most basic things. If massive high-profile projects can be screwed up this easily, then a few people working a relatively unimportant thing like this could easily overlook things.
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Re:Proxy? (Score:5, Funny)
I hate it when people show off their mad math skills.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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yeah it seems more indicative of a small computer shop or a vpn of a business.
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That reminds me...
Where is Hairyfeet?
Re:Confused (Score:5, Informative)
It means whomever is there has a legit key generator for windows. Or a computer store who buys stolen keys to keep costs down.
Regardless, I am sure google knows exactly who they are. You aren't really anonymous on the internet. All it would take would be a few curious admins at google or facebook to check their logs for the ip.Hell i bet reddit or someone has already figured out who it is.
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Maybe MS has decided to crack down on computer repair stores. I used to work at one many years ago, and an MS rep told us that we mustn't activate Windows ourselves. We had to let the end user do it so that they would be forced to agree to the EULA.
We pointed out that our customers expected a fully working computer that was ready to use when they got it back, but they were not interested. Maybe they want to enforce that rule suddenly.
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There is no key generator. It's Microsoft own fault if they keys were stolen.
Which does not make using a stolen key legal, any more than a broken window lock in our house makes that fair game for burglars. Nor is using a stolen key ethical (at least in most situations); the principled response to not approving of proprietary software is to use open source software with a license you can live with.
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small business? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could it be a small computer business shop that did windows activation on the behalf of their customers?
Voluntary IP address submission? (Score:5, Insightful)
IP address is part of the
product key activation data voluntarily provided by users
Ahhh. This must be some strange new usage of voluntarily, of which I was previously unaware.
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Kinda like the definition of voluntary that the IRS uses.. where you "voluntarily" file your yearly "confession" or we ruin your life... There for a while the IRS was using the term "voluntary compliance" everytime they opened their mouths.. Two words that don't go together very well...
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Technically the user voluntarily uses Windows. So any data send by Windows is send voluntarily. Please note that informed consent is not used.
subject (Score:3)
Haha, IP Addresses are people now too
The main branch of the Seatle public library? (Score:2)
Does the Seatle public library offer free WiFi without a login?
If so then I would bet a lot of people go there to activate Windows illegally, to avoid getting caught.
If not then a Starbucks in the urban center.
In any case I am curious exactly what it is.
Issues (Score:2)
I don't know about that account, but I do know that at my workplace tons of legit copies of windows 7 have started complaining that they are invalid copies. Clearly Microsoft has issues with their authentication procedures.
revenge of the syph (Score:2)
Forensic (Score:3)
I'm not sure noticing massive re-occurrences of the same IP address really counts as using 'forensic tools'.
Microsoft has lowered the expectations of the whole of human civilization.
Why wait for hundreds? (Score:3)
You'd think it would make more sense to simply shut off the "suspicious" activations for a given IP before they got to hundreds. That would seem to be a whole lot faster, easier, and cheaper than filing a lawsuit. (Let's do the math: 200 copies times maybe $100 each = $10,000.)
For comparison, I recently installed a new website using Wordpress, which I'm relatively new to. I got the excellent "Wordfence" security plugin running early-on, which uses a default limit of 20 failed logins within 5 minutes before it bans an IP. My new site evidently got attacked by a botnet (I assume) a few days later because there was a burst of 14 failed logins within the span of a few minutes, each one from a different country. The logins were pretty-much a tour of the ragged edges of the Internet: they came from Russia, India, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Belarus, Vietnam, etc. When all that failed because I had used an obscure admin account name and a strong password - and because Wordfence shut all those IPs down - the botnet evidently gave up.
Though a limit of 20 worked fine, even that seems like more than is necessary to allow normal/legitimate login failures, so I might lower it. I certainly wouldn't raise it to 200. Or file a lawsuit about it.
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Correction: $20,000...looks like I can't do math any better than Microsoft...it's late...
Defendants (Score:2)
Why wasn't Verizon subpenaed for the identity of the lessees of the IP and named in addition to the Doe's? Additionally, how does John Doe (1-10) defend against process that hasn't been served, how can a court try a civil case in absentia?
How else do you get Windows to boot? (Score:3)
If you can't reinstall it 100's of times until it starts working, what else are you supposed to do? Pay Microsoft for support, that smells like anti-trust to me.
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hahaha, this made me laugh.
i remember ghosting hundreds of machines a day for deployment and at least a dozen a week just supporting
What about a small shop ? (Score:3)
heh, pirate's only wrongdoing in MSFT eyes was... (Score:2)
using Windows 7 instead of Windows 8.
Quick... (Score:2)
Someone at Verizon give the White House this IP!
So Microsoft doesn't get NAT? (Score:2)
Re:Single shop most likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Single shop most likely (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if the installer somehow determined a preset key based on a unique identifier associated with the computer itself
It did, for large volume OEM's Microsoft has them burn the key into the BIOS which is why most don't come with the hologram sticker anymore, there's no need for it on Vista+ systems. The only problem it can sometimes cause is if you're doing a cross version and cross type install without an existing OS on the box (ie it came with 7 home and you're doing an upgrade install of 8.1 Enterprise)
Re:Single shop most likely (Score:4, Insightful)
It's either a small shop or an amateur wannabe pirate. Either way, if your computers are hitting Microsoft's activation servers, you're a clueless dope who's doing it wrong. People figured out how to avoid that crap years ago.
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Daz loader. All anyone ever needs. I've slic modded my share of BIOSes too, but ever since EFI it's just less hassle to use the loader, and it works 100% of the time.
Daz Loader is good, but it does not support UEFI installations, because of the GPT partition format.
What comes to OEM installations, with some trickery there is also a possibility to feed the BIOS SLIC key to Windows Software Licensing Management Tool [wordpress.com]. This allows to install without an OEM-specific installation media, and it's also legal as you're using the legitimate key from the sticker.
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The only problem it can sometimes cause is if you're doing a cross version and cross type install without an existing OS on the box (ie it came with 7 home and you're doing an upgrade install of 8.1 Enterprise)
And let me tell you, trying to install 8.1 Pro on a Lenovo that shipped with regular edition 8 is a test of patience. The installer *really* wants to read that key and is not easily convinced to ignore it and let you enter the key that you actually want.
Re:Single shop most likely (Score:4, Informative)
It's very very easy to do. Just use the "evaluation" serial (actually provided by Microsoft), which for Pro is XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB
Then using PKeyui, extract the correct serial from the BIOS/UEFI and activate with that.
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Overall I think Windows 7 is a great OS, but I had install problems with it too. My motherboard has SATA and IDE for disks (on the board, not separate cards), and I use both. For some reason, Windows 7 will refuse to instal
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He's probably talking about a fresh install, not an upgrade. During the first stage GUI installer it won't even ask you if it detects a SLIC key, there are ways around it but it's basically doing the hokey pokey blindfolded for all the advanced user friendliness it provides (ie we know better than you mere mortal)
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probably they're not doing even oem installs.
the funny thing is.. MS should know if the activations are legit or not. also, if they are unsure, why the fuck are they touting the ip address publicly?
-lassi
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probably they're not doing even oem installs.
the funny thing is.. MS should know if the activations are legit or not. also, if they are unsure, why the fuck are they touting the ip address publicly?
-lassi
It's likely a dynamic IP, and by now has been shuffled onto another customer anyway. Their legal team is only interested in who was using the IP during the time of the alleged pirating activations.
Re:Single shop most likely (Score:5, Informative)
It's likely a dynamic IP
% nslookup -type=PTR 20.202.111.74.in-addr.arpa. :: :: ::#53
Server:
Address:
Non-authoritative answer:
20.202.111.74.in-addr.arpa name = static-74-111-202-20.lsanca.fios.verizon.net.
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Non-authoritative answer:
20.202.111.74.in-addr.arpa name = static-74-111-202-20.lsanca.fios.verizon.net.
Since "static" probably means that their ip is static. So here is what Verizon Wireless says about its static ip addresses.
What is Static IP?
With Static IP, your device uses the same IP address every time. For companies with secured networks, a device with a static IP address helps the network administrator open their network to the specific address, which gives you access to the company intranet. Medium and large-sized accounts, primarily business accounts, often need static IP addresses. This feature is not for everyone. Individuals and most small-businesses will not require a static IP address.
Do I need Static IP?
Static IP is for those who are using an application that requires Static IP addressing. These applications include:
Telemetry
SCADA
Public Safety
Wireless ATM
Wireless Point of Sale
Machine to machine addressable units
How much does Static IP cost?
A one-time setup fee of $500 will be charged at an "account level" for each Static IP account that is set up.
This is definitely not a run-of-the-mill customer.
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Ah yes, installing a legitimately purchased OS without jumping through a bunch of DRM bs, freaking magic. Of the sort every version of Windows before 95 was perfectly capable of, as well as pretty much every other desktop OS released between then and now.
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Microsoft analyzes product key activation data voluntarily provided by users when they activate Microsoft software
Now, if its something that was done by a pro pirate, they would not have "voluntarily" handed over that info and would have used a tool to block it.
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Maybe it's just a TOR exit node.
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Or a VPN provider of some sort.
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Ooh, or even better, an IPv6 to IPv4 tunnel broker used by some major brand of Wi-Fi router....
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If you read the court filing, you'll discover that MS has identified the keys as being stolen from their supply chain and of being the wrong type of OEM key that a computer shop should be using.
And as for the publication of the IP address, that was declared in the court documents as required.
The very interesting factoid from this is how did people steal keys from MS's supply chain, especially non-issued license keys. Sounds like an inside job.
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Wrong, its really verizon.
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Not so mention that hackers cracked the key generating code for Windows 7. Same with MS office. They generate codes and try them until one works, and bingo you've got a legit code.
They've never cracked the key generating code for Windows 7. They just found ways to work around it.
In late 2001/early 2002 somebody figured out the algorithm to generated Volume License keys for Windows XP, and those don't need activation (so that companies with lots of computers don't have to activate 30,000 units). Starting With Windows XP Service Pack 2 Microsoft changed some things so that those generated Volume License keys wouldn't work any more. So you have to find a legit Volume License key some