live-cd distro that writes to cd

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 12:09:25PM -0500, John Macdonald wrote:
> Since installation of an app on Windows involves such things
> as updating the registry to inform the OS about the app,
> and often also an online registration of the app with MS
> (which can include some attempt at identifying the system it
> was installed on), simply having a copy of the app on a USB
> key mounted on a system is not always going to be the same as
> having installed the app on that system.
> 
> I'd guess that some of MS's techniques for preventing the
> app from being installed multiple times on different systems
> (on traditional local disk on each of the systems) will
> interfere with a USB copy from working on multiple systems too.
> Certainly, they will make sure that future copy protection
> deals with this to some extent.  (That's just a guess; I'm
> sure that some MS apps have less stringent checking and would
> not have problems.)  Someone who has looked into this might
> be able to come up with a registry updater that copied the
> necessary bits into the registry of a new system.
> 
> What they would have more difficulty preventing is having an
> app installed along with the OS on aportable bootable device
> (either a DVD or USB key) - because that would make almost
> everything that distinguishes it is a unique installed system
> move as part of the portable media.  There would still be
> some CPU fingerprinting possible - usually when you boot on
> a convenient system you can't ensure that it has the same CPU
> characteristics as the one that the software was installed on.
> So, if they make the check that an app is validly installed
> include some measure of testing that it is still the same CPU
> on which it was originally installed, then they could prevent
> even this sort of portability.
> 
> Of course, they then run the risk of public pressure when
> someone sets up a portable app and MS copy protection makes
> such a (legally fair use) activity not be permitted.

Well the XP activation system already ties the OS copy to a specific
combination of ram amount, HD serial number, ethernet MAC, cpu type,
etc, etc.  If more than 3 or 4 of those change from the original
activation, then a reactivation is required by calling MS.  They
certainly don't want anyone doing this.  Nothing preventing a linux
system doing this of course as knoppix has shown, and of course some
systems do it with XP embedded, or other XP version meant to run from
read only filesystems on any system.  I imagine the license for those is
different and normally only available to companies that want to license
the OS for a specific utility on a CD which only runs that utility from
that CD.

Lennart Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml