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How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

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101–110 of 152 posts

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#101
post #15
post #6

Include a remotely-activated kill switch; and kill with plenty of warning. What do I mean? I no longer use iPhone because I installed a beta iOS. When the official build came out, I kept "checking for updates" but I never got an update. One day, Apple remotely killed my phone. Manually updating to the production iOS would be fine; but remotely disabling my phone without warning was not acceptable. This is why I refus…

Couldn't you just put it in restore mode and install the latest version from iTunes, or manually download the IPSW from the internet and install it?

Yes, but my phone was remotely disabled and I don't live in front of my computer.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#102
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to see how the hell they justified that, much less if they won There are general principles of responsibility of property owners for dangerous conditions on the property that apply even when the harm done by them is done to trespassers (and regardless of the purpose of the trespass.) IIRC, these are largely common law principles, and older than the US. Of course, they don't relieve any criminal liability f…

So - if an intruder breaks in to your house, you can shoot him without repercussions; but if an intruder breaks into your house and trips on your loose stair carpet, he can sue for his resulting injuries? Bizarre!

Why bizarre? The carpet doesn't discriminate between between a burglar and a paramedic coming to resuscitate you.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#104
post #8

I'm so glad that Raymond Chen is writing all of these stories down.

Apparently there's a book of his anecdotes available for those who'd like to read more... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321440307

>Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 6, 2007)

Although most of the anecdotes are historical, I hope he releases an updated version one day. There's so much computing history contained in his blog.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#105

>And there are some legal issues that are tied to the date a feature first becomes available to the public. Seeing a feature go public prematurely throws a bunch of scheduling into disarray because you now have to finish those legal documents in less time than you planned. As someone who's never worked for a company that produces commercial software, I'm curious about what he's referring to.

Patents. If you have features you need to file patents on, that needs to be done before the feature is publicly disclosed/exposed.

I was going to say that you had a year after disclosure to file a patent.

But then I remembered that there are other countries in the world other than the USA. Those other countries have different rules! It's sometimes difficult for Americans to remember that, since we're so insular here. E.g. I haven't been out of the USA in probably about 25 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_disclosure

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#106

I don't understand the logic here. 1. Download a preview build because you want "the latest and greatest". 2. Build is full of horrible bugs. 3. Microsoft needs to employ psychological tricks to get you to download the next preview build, as you cling to the previous one with both hands.

Bandwidth was a LOT harder to come by back then. You'd download a preview build if it had a feature if you were interested in. "Associated bugfixes" was typically not exciting enough to download an ISO file over a phone line.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#107
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So - if an intruder breaks in to your house, you can shoot him without repercussions; but if an intruder breaks into your house and trips on your loose stair carpet, he can sue for his resulting injuries? Bizarre!

> So - if an intruder breaks in to your house, you can shoot him without repercussions In many US jurisdictions, not generally the case. The ones with a strong "castle doctrine" are notable because this is not the norm. But, even so... > So - if an intruder breaks in to your house, you can shoot him without repercussions Your loose stair carpet was not created as a specific and immediate response to a particular unla…

> In many US jurisdictions, not generally the case. The ones with a strong "castle doctrine" are notable because this is not the norm.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your statement, it's actually the other way around. Most US states have a castle doctrine law of varying strength. Even the "gun-unfriendly" states like NJ, NY, and CA.

If you weren't the initial aggressor, and you are in your home with a licensed/legal firearm, you may shoot an intruder. Duty to retreat doesn't apply to your house...which makes perfect sense.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#108
post #69

Heh, sounds much better than my previous employer's way of occasionally sending company-wide emails along the line of "The employee who was responsible for the XXX leak was found and terminated. We remind you that leaks damage our culture and make it difficult to share ideas inside the company." For some reason such emails made me feel like I was inside a tech cult. Guess my culture fit wasn't good enough... Well, to…

Sounds like standard business practice to me.

If you can't understand basic instructions such as not leaking internal, confidential info, you deserve to be fired.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#109
post #93
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snark is easy but a lot of these stories are from long before the whole Win 10 upgrade and is explicitly from before Windows Insider which puts it at least before 2014.

But Windows Update is from way before all those stories... and if they needed help figuring out how to upgrade an OS, they could have looked at Linux (which I'm sure they did)...

Automatic updates started in about 2000ish and hard forced updates are even newer iirc. Before that the best they could do is a notification which people running a leaked build would probably ignore or not get at all, who knows what the Windows Update infrastructure is like for internal builds that get leaked.

Re: How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?

#110
post #55

Since those things are already so riddled with DRM, why not simply make the internal builds phone home to an activation server that only allows IPs assigned to Microsoft?

The story, like a lot of stories on the Old New Thing, appears to be from a now faraway time (in Information Technology terms). Think Windows 95 timeframe. They are practically always worth a read, by the way. I'm a huge fan of the blog.

So, default wallpapers in early Windows 95 builds.

The first Preliminary Development Kit had an "Under Construction" wallpaper. The second one had the same wallpaper but tiled. Beta 1 had a different "Under Construction" wallpaper.

Of course, after PDK1 leaked far and wide, MS implemented some serial protection in PDK2 up to beta 2 (different from the one in the RTM; however the RTM's setup has remnants of it). Given that the leakers were involved with the warez scene, however, the skilled reversers that the builds were passed to easily found the backdoor that had been put in so that those on MS' internal network didn't have to enter the serial, and just patched a few bytes in the setup to abuse that.

The interesting part of this serial was that it was in two parts. One part was the "beta site ID" and half of the "password"; if this was valid, but the second half of the password wasn't, setup would appear to continue... until the point it would copy files, upon which it errored out with a message "General error 57, please contact your beta administrator".

This misdirection was discussed at the time, with some people believing the error at face value. This continued with the foundation of communities to preserve and discuss such builds several years onwards. The last half of the password was the hex form of the first 16 bits of an MD4 hash (this code was written in around autumn 1993!) of the beta site ID, the first half of the password, and... a string inside the setup that was used as the titlebar text for the error message, which would be something like "Microsoft Chicago Preliminary Development Kit 2, November 1993".

This part of the serial algorithm was finally reverse engineered, and a key generator made....in 2014.

Afterwards, some early Internet Explorer 4.0 builds were discovered. They used the exact same serial algorithm as the early Windows 95 builds. And had the exact same "MS internal" backdoor.

(Um, I think I may have just ruined one of Raymond Chen's future blog posts.)

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