IT@TT - Online

Get ready for a good.Start

Over the last couple of weeks I've been talking about my experiences at a Microsoft-sponsored event held in New York to talk about the impending Windows XP release.

The final two breakout sessions dealt with the revised user interface and Product Activation. Most of the interface changes I'd already become familiar with -- for one, there's been a big push to have as much stuff as possible consolidated from the desktop to the Start Button. But it appears that since Beta 2, there's been even more of a push to do so.

The Start button in XP comes in two columns, rather than the top/bottom split layout that we've become used to. The left side features the most commonly used programs, which is dictated by the user's preferences. What you launch most often ends up in there. There's a divider in that list, too, with the default programs above that divider being IE and Outlook Express (both of which can be edited, replaced with other programs or removed completely).

The right-hand column of the Start button contains the icons we're used to seeing on the desktop -- My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, Control Panel, and so on. You can still have these icons featured on the desktop if you want, but I found myself liking the new, clean desktop layout better. The only icon that appears by default now is the Recycle Bin. The Start button can now also include things like the IE Favorites list, hierarchically presented like the Programs menu.

Some of the work that Microsoft did with co-branding on PCs is also liable to affect how the Start menu looks. One of the rules that MS laid down for XP is that there are strict provisions on pre-installs on what the OEM can put where. Most of us have probably had experiences with a PC, where we uncrate the thing, turn it on, and see a desktop full of stuff that we know isn't part of Windows per se, but which the OEM has installed for us. (And we often wind up getting rid of most of it, too.) Theoretically, this is good news for us end users, since it means we get a much more consistent starting look-and-feel no matter where we get our XP-equipped PC. The only place that an OEM is allowed to put icons is in the bottom half of the left-hand column, and those icons can be squeezed out or replaced through usage. Also, the number of programs you can fit in that space is user-editable; it's set to six by default.

The user interface session was pretty placid, but the Product Activation (PA)/backwards-compatibility session was where a lot of people really got vocal. For those who aren't familiar with PA or what it does, I'll recap quickly. PA is Microsoft's anti-piracy mechanism. When you first install Windows XP, it creates a checksum string of fifty digits, part of which is derived from the code you punch in from the sticker on your disk jacket and part of which is hashed from a quick tabulation of your hardware. I don't know if they use truly unique identifiers such as the MAC address of one's network adapter (provided you have one), or the processor serial number -- but it would be hard to use the latter since most systems these days don't even have it turned on. The MAC address question is still open, but given that not every computer has one, I suspect they resorted to more conventional hardware.

Once XP derives this string, it encrypts it and sends it to Microsoft, and gets back a response code. Once the response code is in place, the machine is activated. End of story. If you don't activate at first, you get 30 days to do as you will (in the betas, it's 15). In theory, you could install XP, leave your machine on continuously, and never activate -- and given how stable the system is, I suspect there are people who would do exactly that.

Several other things were pointed out. One, activation can be done by phone as well as over the Internet in the event you don't have a working connection. The process takes about 5-10 minutes tops (someone I knew online went through the process and reported that this is about right; it took him about 5 minutes to get going). Also, there is no limit to the number of times a given copy can be activated on one machine. If you're tearing down and rebuilding a given machine over and over again, you don't get penalized for re-reactivating it.

Then came the criticisms. Someone brought up the possibility of a malicious hack that reverses activation, but MS denied that such a thing could be done. I'd take a wait-and-see stance on that one, personally.

The question of how much hardware has to change before you're forced to activate again garnered a slightly vague answer. They did confirm that changing something like a video card or a hard drive was not likely to trigger a re-activation. But they also made it clear that if you change your motherboard or something like that, you would need to re-activate -- although there are no limits to the number of times you can re-activate a given copy of the product.

Then there was the whole "why must you do this to us" line from many of the people there, which seems largely to be rooted in protests from people who have four or five machines and don't want to buy copies for every single one. Up until now, the unspoken rule has been that you could get away with that sort of thing as long as no one knew about it. Now this is no longer possible, and many people are grousing about being required to spend the extra money. The one thing that MS made clear was that they were trying to see if it is possible to make a kind of home-user or mini-volume discount, or some kind of in-home licensing arrangement that would offset this.

Also, some people pointed out, if MS is trying to use this to fight casual copying, they are going to quickly realize that the "average" user has far easier access to cracked or pirated software than ever before. One of the earlier lines about PA was, "We're not really using this to try and stop people who swap ISOs on news groups." Unfortunately, that may very well be where people turn to get their copy of Windows. More so than before, because as we found out, there will be editions of XP (intended for volume licensing) that aren't activated AT ALL. "Well," someone noted, "all someone needs to do is copy one of those discs, and the game is up, isn't it?"

Discussing this whole thing can get very ugly quickly, as I found out. Sooner or later, someone has to come out and say that a great many people get pirated software very casually, and that this is quite simply wrong. No one wants to come out and say that a great many people are thieves, even if we don't regard it as theft per se. Anyone with high-speed access and a newsgroup server on their ISP can find any manner of pirated material.

On the other hand, few people seem willing to come out and say they're in favour of piracy, and I doubt you could find anyone who would seriously endorse such a position to Microsoft's face without seeming foolish. It reminded me, unfortunately, of the debate I had with others over programs like Napster. A friend of mine groused that he couldn't get on Napster to some song or other, and I quipped, "That's like a shoplifter complaining he can't rip off his favorite store because it closed down due to losses." He got angry and that was more or less the end of it.

After the meetings broke up, I talked to a few of the product managers. My associate Scot Finnie, who was also there, pointed out that a lot of this hoopla over PA is about expectations -- that if people are suddenly told, "No, you can't do that," the resulting backlash may be far worse than the losses attributed to piracy. Sometimes it is not possible to do the "right" thing without infuriating a lot of people, and that sometimes the "right" thing is not the right thing, so to speak. I also pointed out that the cost involved in implementing XP -- the cost to build, equip, train, staff, and maintain the activation offices in many countries alone -- might not be offset by the gains from staunching piracy.

I honestly don't feel the hashing and sending of the data is a big deal. Since the string is only fifty digits and it's encrypted with a one-way hash, it's hardly possible or practical to get any useful information from this string. If someone DID get some kind of unique, identifying information from it after it's been encrypted, I'd be surprised. And given that there's only fifty digits in the whole thing, you would not be able to get a lot of unique, explicit information that's human-readable into it anyway. Put it this way: If we go to a restaurant and charge the meal to our credit card, we're trusting a total stranger with a lot more sensitive information -- and in plain sight!

What I find difficult to swallow is the mixed messages. What kind of piracy are they trying to prevent, and how successful will they be with it? If there are unlocked versions of XP anywhere, or if someone comes up with a totally transparent PA defeat (and I'm betting on that happening), then the game IS up. And stamping out every copy of an XP crack is nearly impossible, as the MPAA found out in the DeCSS case.

I left the event in a mixed mood. I remain impressed with Microsoft's work on XP, and my feelings on PA are separate from anything else in the product. But PA itself poses a big problem -- not one of privacy or even trustworthiness, but of cost/benefit. Will more people quit using Windows or find ways around PA than before, because of PA? I don't know about the first one -- Linux simply doesn't have the breadth and ease of use of Windows, and if you want to go Apple, you have to buy an Apple machine -- but the second one turns my stomach. In short -- by trying to thwart piracy, Microsoft may be sponsoring more of it than ever before. What irony.

Excerpted with permission from Windows 2000 Power Users Newsletter (http://www.win2kpowerusers.com/). it@tt wishes to thank Serdar Yegulalp, Editor, for allowing us to reproduce this original article. (c) 2001 Serdar Yegulalp.

Top

Other Articles