I tend to believe security is so tight because: 1. There are still lots of work to be done with OS and a early leak could negatively impact sales of finished product. We must remember that this time we'll be able to give direct feedback to Microsoft and they'll probably use it to understand what features to include and how finished product should look like. Let’s say OS leaks now, everybody start to think this is how the finished OS will look like. If they don’t like it, they don’t buy it. Microsoft wants to prevent that and make preview as close to final product as possible. 2. This time, Microsoft really really want to develop a strong activation system. If OS leaks now, activation system will be cracked till official release. Cracked activation system = slower adaptation of new OS = smaller profit. Remember those gigantic touch screens MS is trying to push for enterprises? Exactly!
" There are still lots of work to be done with OS and a early leak could negatively impact sales of finished product. We must remember that this time we'll be able to give direct feedback to Microsoft and they'll probably use it to understand what features to include and how finished product should look like. " You could well be right, but as always, the OS is being tested "on the run", by selected individuals and organisations around the globe. But, not to be too quick to blame MS, particularly remembering the pre release of Windows 8 and its feedback, with the enormous amount of different systems and third party applications, MS cannot cover all bases. The pre release, hopefully, is intended to snare some of those outside problems. Serious problems, if found, I would hope will be dealt with, but, essentially, whether it is regarded as a smug attitude or not, I don't believe that MS will, at this stage, be making any minor, or cosmetic changes, based on complaints they may read in the media (or forums)
Think of the OS as a woman, nobody wants to see her with her hair in curlers and no makeup, right now this the stage the OS is in. Pretty soon the curlers will come out, the make up will go on, and we'll have one hot looking OS to play with. Yep, that's the way I see it...
Have you seen the little piggies Crawling in the dirt And for all the little piggies Life is getting better Always having another OS to play around in.
Your post is funny. Nobody ever has got a permission to leak. You should not forget that to leak the OS is a criminal offence and can be punished and had been already!!! There had been always a few who took the risk to leak info or even the entire ISO. It has also nothing to do with Ballmer or M$. Winfuture has now different sources, but at windows8 it was mainly 'a French blogger'.... winfuture had copied and pasted his screen shots. So you prefer appearance, no inner values? I wonder if women need back a start menu or even a modern user interface (woman=OS). j/k
1- I like big bouncing boobies, there I said it, it felt good... 2- To start a woman all you need is $$s or a credit card...
Were comparing technology to women now? i bet you guys cant wait till MS builds you a female robot.... with a startmenu
That is it! Do they use them as personal computers? I think most of those huge touchscreens come with their preinstalled graphic user interfaces not regular operating systems.
With due all respect Yen, sometimes leaks occurs because companies need it. I'm not saying that behind every leak stands MS or any other company. Of course, sometimes leaks find their way on the internet without any approval, but other times same these companies are the ones who leak things because they need to build up the hype. Apple does it, Microsoft does it too. In this case, they just don't want leak now, but then OS will be good enough for the enthusiats like we are, it will leak.
It depends how much effort they put into identifying the potential leaker. In win8.0 I think they just used a simple identifier. That's newbie stuff. All you do is remove that and re-iso it. If they compile specific executables with obfuscated and encrypted identifiers, well... then it becomes a lot more complicated. Then it's about how much effort you want to spend to get it ready to leak. Sure, you could potentially patch them to change the identification with enough work. But, if they put that much work into identifying the product, who's to say they hadn't put more than one identifying tag in there somewhere? You gotta remember that there's real world consequences for leaking this stuff, and if someone isn't absolutely sure they won't be identified, they're most likely not going to leak. A lot of people thought that the WZT group is a bunch of leakers, but they're not. They're not the ones who would get in trouble if the thing leaked. The people who would get in trouble are their source. The notion that MS simply allows leaks is up to interpretation. Obviously if they are giving copies to people to test, they know that it can be leaked. If they are simply working on something internally and maybe sharing builds with OEMs, well then it's kinda iffy. At that point, they wouldn't exactly be shocked, but it helps neither party to leak them since they are typically unfinished builds that are just hardware/software tests for the most part. Now, something like the Activation SDK that Kibkalo leaked from his corpnet access was obviously not shared with outside sources and was not expected to leak. The notion that MS somehow endorses the leaks is ridiculous. They don't gain anything by these shoddy builds being shared. If they had a product worthy of scrutiny, they'd release it as a Evaluation or something along those lines. I wouldn't consider this Technical Preview anywhere near being along those same lines because it's just not much more than win8.1 with a start menu and a notification area. You could effectively do the same thing with a couple simple mods. Of course we can only judge what we know from the screen shots. It doesn't seem that the people with the preview are brave enough to share about any test results or anything else under the hood. So, we can only judge by superficial things like screens.
MS simply beefed up security, that's all, not in one single step, but gradually, in win7 times I could check into corpnet with my friend's login in any machine, and I remember MS guys brought in their friends/families into MS office(don't know if it's the same elsewhere) and talked over corpnet or new builds, and they simply plug in a FD to get whatever they likes, naturally the MS guy would still say "Don't spread it around", but I guess he simply couldn't care less.
I think this time round they really need to get the OS right and don't want bad first impressions even if they are from a leak. They know Windows 8 was a bad direction to have gone in and want to make up for it. I also think with all the cuts to staff, builds not getting passed out as much, new structure and management have contributed to less leakyness?
windows 8 is a great direction n i hope they continue or i have the option for start screen in windows 9 n if not then i stay with 8.1
I didn't want to appear to be disrespectful to your post. I found it funny especially the expression 'permission to leak'. Almost nobody here knows internals of M$ or Apple. They would never admit a leak done with intent. But I had contact to people who had access to the stuff at the late w7 until w8 RTM period (from M$ / Intel). Members PM'ed info additionally to support MDL to give something in return for what they've got from all the helpful people here. They are single people who have direct access to the 'stuff'. They are active at forums somewhere and usually pass the stuff to those who leak then. If the stuff is too hot they keep it for themselves or pass it to single people who are skilled enough to use the secret. M$ had not leaked their OS officially that time! It were people who broke NDA and I am not sure if they leak without to ask the legit user....it were people who copied what they could, sometimes without even to know what it exactly is. "Have a look here this is what I could get this time....after checking the package it unveiled its purpose." I stop here talking..as admin I have to stay loyal I still know anything what happened beyond the scenes. It started with Chinese docs of OA2.0.... ATM it is quiet. What M$ 'leaks' are features and plans. They officially announce and release previews, betas, RCs, they are the only official 'leaks'. Anything that has the NDA reminder has been leaked without permission.
Supposedly, from the court docs, he leaked it to the 'French blogger'. I, myself, was more interested in win8 back when that was still news. If Mr. blogger ever posted it on his website, I never saw it. Even back then, sometimes companies would contact the authorities and try to get things taken down from the web. It's possible it was posted and then removed after the fact. I think the best people would be able to make of it is a phone method activator. The thing with something like that is, even if you got it to work; it reports daily about your activation info. I'm pretty sure MS would notice a ton of people activating with bogus/same keys and issue an update and/or some WAT stuff. One of the major benefits of the KMS activation is that it's been randomized and the key is always the same. It's a LOT harder for MS to weed out the fakes even though they have many less clients. Heck, if you wanted to troll MS, you could even change the PID to their internal one. They still have a pic of their KMS PID on their technet page IIRC. Ahh... I could ramble about this crap for days. I don't know what changes they'll make to win9's activation, but I'm sure we'll all be nerding out for a while.