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Vista 7 Trojans Forecast and Microsoft Hardware Licences

Summary: More concrete problems, some of which artificially introduced, in Windows Vista and possibly its successors

LAST WEEK we saw Vista 7 getting cracked and the ramifications are highlighted as follows:

Trojans likely to follow Win 7 activation hack



[...]

Trojan attacks are likely in the wake of the Windows 7 product activation system cracks developed last week, less than a month after the release of Microsoft's latest operating system.


The reality behind Vista 7 is not a convenient one and as it turns out, based on one of our readers, a "Microsoft hardware licence" is now required in Vista -- an antifeature which was probably inherited by Vista 7.

That 32-bit editions of Windows Vista are limited to 4GB is not because of any physical or technical constraint on 32-bit operating systems. The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code.

[...]

For the question of whether 32-bit Windows Vista will use all your physical memory, the hard-coded limit of 4GB is dominant as the maximum address for the ordinary kernel, which truly cannot form addresses for physical memory above 4GB, but the license limit is dominant for the PAE kernel. If you have physical memory above 4GB and wonder how it can be that the PAE kernel does not use that memory, the answer is licensing. The 32-bit code for using memory beyond 4GB is present in Windows Vista as Microsoft supplies it, but Microsoft prepares license values in the registry so that this code never gets to work with any physical addresses above 4GB.


This is ridiculous. There will probably be more coverage of this in days to come, so a followup is likely. Artificial limitations are a mockery as code is infinitely abundant.

Vista 7 prompt



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