Posted on September 25, 2006
Filed Under Linux, Software | 2 Comments
A week ago, I had an interesting chat with one of my good old friend. He had established an internet café a couple months ago and just like what Chris would do, he bought Windows XP licenses for his computers.
That day he wanted to talk to me about Vista, considering that my magazine bundles up Vista Beta 2 on our July issues. He asked sort of stuffs about what he can do with Vista. So I told him what I knew about it. The conversation went well until he mentions about Vista’s activation method.
He told me that from what he knew and experience, the logic behind Vista Activation Method was so simple. It’s just a bunch of If – Then – Else (I forgot the details, no, no..I don’t care about the details actually). So you can bypass it with ease. He asked me if that’s the way it can be done, then what’s the difference between the genuine activation method and the illegal one. What advantage would he received by buying a (soon) Vista license.
I told him about the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) feature by Windows were he could use certain features when he validates his copy of Vista. Then comes his big statement: “WGA my as*!!”. He thinks that the WGA is just penetrable like the other Windows protection technologies. He still can bypass that in a matter of seconds. He even told me that, I only had to copy one file to the windows system to bypass the activation method. Really? Okay, That thing aside, I’m questioning the true purpose of his intentions on using Vista.
Posted on September 5, 2006
Filed Under Linux, Daily Notes | Leave a Comment
Some days ago, my best friend Chris called and he wants to discuss about how he wants to start an internet café. You know, here in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta an internet café business is somewhat famous. In a couple of blocks, you could find people who build computer/internet rental services. So back to my friend Chris, he just finished his college duties and wants to step up to the real world. Well, I have tried to persuade him to join me here in CHIP, but his entrepreneur spirit seem got the best of him.
He told me the details of expenses that he had to spend and how much budget that he had to own. One interesting thing here is when he told me that one of the expenses was for buying Windows license. As an internet café entrepreneur the one thing that they avoid is the sweeping by authority. The high rate of software piracy in Indonesia makes the authority took a step and went to café to café and sweep them who had a piracy copy of Windows in their computers. Therefore, my friend Chris doesn’t want to have any problems and decide that he has to buy a Windows licenses (as suggested by my other friend who had an Internet café too).
I know that this is somewhat a good thing; he had the consciousness to reduce piracy. However, the price that he had to spend is rather expensive in my opinion. With 10 computers that he initially buys, he had to prepare 10 Windows XP license for every computer.
Well there’s where I slip in. I ask him, “Why don’t you use Linux?” I told him that one of the internet café in the Blok-M Plaza (one of the elite mall here in Jakarta) is using Ubuntu. They used it as their “operating system of choice”. From what I saw, the café went just fine. With people come and go and the place was crowded occasionally. In my opinion, that shows that people are getting used to alternatives other than Windows. I’ve seen the growth of internet café that uses Linux to be a positive one, here in Indonesia. We’ll see in a couple of year if this trend goes on.
Read more