Topic: Vista hacked and then hacked some more.

[Pugnate]

linky

DESPITE Microsoft's anti-piracy measures, cracked copies of its Vista operating system are already available on torrent sites, it's claimed.

One cracked version is called VistaBillGates and comes with a product key, and an "activation crack" that bypasses Vole's activation process.

Apparently Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition has also been cracked. So far Microsoft has refused to comment about hacks, but claims it is working hard to stop pirates.

Apparently the weapon it will use is software that deactivates pirated copies of Windows Vista by sending a patch through Windows Update that can invalidate certain product keys.

No doubt the pirates have already worked their way around that one and it will only be countless legitimate Vista users who will find themselves suffering in the crossfire between Vole and the pirates.

[idolminds]

In other news, the sun will rise tomorrow.

[Pugnate]

No I think someone patented that. The sun no longer has the rights to rise unless it pays a gazillion dollars to entrepreneur XYZ.

[scottws]

In other news, the sun will rise tomorrow.

Hahahaha.

[iPPi]

Not surprising in the least.

In other news, Office 2007 is AWESOME.  I'm using the Beta 2 Technical Refresh right now, and it is an impressive piece of productivity software.  The beta expires on Feb 1, 2007.

[Quemaqua]

Yawn.  Talk to me when I actually give a shit about Vista.

[PyroMenace]

Heh, wouldnt it be completely awesome if hackers found a way to emulate vista on xp, so we could play vista exclusive games.

[Quemaqua]

*That* would be awesome.

[WindAndConfusion]

In other news, Office 2007 is AWESOME.  I'm using the Beta 2 Technical Refresh right now, and it is an impressive piece of productivity software.  The beta expires on Feb 1, 2007.

OK, so I'm kind of a snob when it comes to this sort of thing, but since when does Office do anything useful that all office-type suites haven't been doing for a decade already? I was forced to get a student license of MS Office 2004 when I got a new computer a few months ago, though I haven't bothered installing it yet. Nor am I ever likely to bother, since I don't see any useful purpose for it.

[Quemaqua]

OpenOffice.org ftw.  Though I will admit that I don't like the OpenOffice writer even half as much as Word.  The functionality is roughly the same, just nothing is quite as polished, resulting in a somewhat lackluster but feature-rich word processor on the whole.

[WindAndConfusion]

Yeah... word processors as a whole seem kind of stupid to me. For basic text work, you can do fine with just TextEdit or WordPad and a spell-check. For more advanced text work, word processors are useless anyway. (Y'know it wasn't until just a few years ago that Microsoft bothered making Word documents device-independent? As in, so they render the same way consistently? Guess they were too busy programming animated buddies.)

[scottws]

OpenOffice.org ftw.  Though I will admit that I don't like the OpenOffice writer even half as much as Word.  The functionality is roughly the same, just nothing is quite as polished, resulting in a somewhat lackluster but feature-rich word processor on the whole.

Yeah, I'm using OpenOffice.org 2.0.3.  It's exactly as you describe.  For being free, it's great, but it is not very polished.

One thing though... the ODT format seems way more efficient than the DOC format (at least the 2000/2002/XP version of the DOC format).  I'll have an ODT file and need to save it as DOC to turn in for homework online.  It will be like 14 kB.  I'll save it as DOC and suddenly it's 174 kB.  Pretty crazy.

[Antares]

Yeah... word processors as a whole seem kind of stupid to me. For basic text work, you can do fine with just TextEdit or WordPad and a spell-check. For more advanced text work, word processors are useless anyway. (Y'know it wasn't until just a few years ago that Microsoft bothered making Word documents device-independent? As in, so they render the same way consistently? Guess they were too busy programming animated buddies.)

I have no idea what you're getting at there.  Word pad?  I use OOo here, and Word in the office.  OOo does just fine, but it isn't nearly as polished as Word.

[iPPi]

I find OpenOffice a little slow, but I haven't really used it extensively.

[Antares]

I find OpenOffice a little slow, but I haven't really used it extensively.

Agreed, at least when it comes to load times, but it is hard to argue with the price.

[idolminds]

I like OOo, but its slow to start. since I dont do a lot of text editing, I want something quicker. So I like AbiWord.

[scottws]

If you use Firefox, there is ajaxWrite as well.

Or there is Google's Docs & Spreadsheets.

[WindAndConfusion]

I have no idea what you're getting at there.  Word pad?  I use OOo here, and Word in the office.  OOo does just fine, but it isn't nearly as polished as Word.

You don't know what WordPad is? (How about its little brother NotePad? Ever heard of that?)

While it's true that OOo isn't very polished, I think I actually prefer it to Office 2004 (which I've tried once). Unfortunately, both programs are utterly brain-damaged. (Office, however, is much more aggressively brain-damaged, which is why I like OOo more. Alas, the difference is quickly disappearing.)

[Quemaqua]

AbiWord looks pretty nice.  I may have to give that a shot...

[Xessive]

There's only one thing I can't stand about the MS Office suite: it keeps trying to dominate my system and file extensions! Since I play around with .CFG's a lot I assigned them to notepad, but MS Office keeps reassigning them as "Microsoft Office Configuration Files" with that little dinky MSO logo, and they're not actually assigned to any application.

Other than that, the slow start up for the any of MSO's apps is not impressive. I generally use WordPad just because it loads up a hell of a a lot faster than Word. But I keep the suit around because I sometimes need to use Powerpoint, Excel, and Access. Also occasionally some of the documents I have to review are in Word format.

[Quemaqua]

But WordPad generally opens Word docs, as does OOo, eliminating the need for Word entirely unless you actually like the program.

[Xessive]

But WordPad generally opens Word docs, as does OOo, eliminating the need for Word entirely unless you actually like the program.

WordPad can read most documents in .doc and .rtf format. Occasionally someone wills end me a document with some Word specific stuff embedded (or a doc that was saved as not being backwards compatible). I don't know exactly what the case is, but WordPad will just give me an error like "unable to open document."