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Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

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Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#371

Post by sandworm101 »

xnyan wrote: post #335
sandworm101 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Evil is gonna evil. I may be forced to use MS at work but at home I dont let their software past my router. A buddy of mine stayed for a few days while his place was being fixed. "Hey, why are my updates not happening?" "Oops, I forgot to tell you that all MS servers are inaccessible via the wifi."

I’m trying to understand your threat model. Microsoft software is allowed to access the network and communicate with peers on the internet, with the exception of its source of security updates? Struggling to see anything but more risk with no benefit with this security posture.

Much more simple. MS = evil so every domain name associated with it is blocked. I do not use MS software, have no need to update it, and certainly do not need to submit any telemetry info to them. So it is a non-issue until a guest wants to update their laptop using my wifi.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#372

Post by toriningen »

vachina wrote: post #180

Ironically my pirated copy of Office Mac will work perpetually. Arrr for the win.

If your pirated copy is using "serializer", you're actually using the official Microsoft's way of volume-activating Office, you just obtained it in a yarr-harr-harr way. So it will brick just like official copies would.

We need an actual crack that would patch out the license verification code or at least make it ignore the expiration date or at least make it think it's Jan 1st, 2026 for the whole eternity.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#373

Post by msla »

msla wrote: post #147
misswaterfairy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this won't be their first time breaking Australian Consumer Law... Twelve months ago no less! https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/microsoft-in-court-for... The ACCC is going to love this.

Every time someone imagines a country going after Microsoft in a serious way these days, I wonder how much that country's government depends on Microsoft software and cloud infrastructure, and if that country imagines Microsoft would continue to allow them to use such things if they become an enemy of Microsoft in court.

Interesting how this has generated such negative response.

I wonder why Microsoft has so many defenders here.

Also, the change in the title of the post makes what happened much less clear. Interesting how that just chanced to happen as well. Pure coincidence, I'm sure.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#374

Post by msla »

DomenicoMazza wrote: post #108

This change would go against multiple consumer guarantees in Australia where it's 1) a right to have undisturbed possession of a product 2) products must be fit for the advertised purpose https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic... Microsoft would be breaking consumer law if the change goes ahead for the perpetual licenses they sold in Australia

Original title: Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products

The change in the title of the post makes what happened much less clear. Interesting how that just chanced to happen. Pure coincidence, I'm sure.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#375

Post by toriningen »

tim333 wrote: post #305
glitchc wrote: post #165

Time to get cracking I guess... https://massgrave.dev/

Is that the right product though? I use office 2019 and that says to activate but mine's activated - I need something to stop the remotely bricking. Maybe deleting the updater will work? (as in https://osxdaily.com/2019/07/20/how-delete-microsoft-autoupd... )

It won't help, sadly.

Your Office has a license file - you could have bought it or pirated it, doesn't matter. This license file is signed by Microsoft, and Office determines if the signature is correct based on the certificate that is embedded in the Office instance. If the signature is correct, Office trusts the contents of the license file to determine what you can and cannot do.

Starting July 14th, the certificate itself that provides a public key for license signature verification will be no longer valid. So when Office will try to validate the license signature, it will no longer find any matching trusted certificate that is still valid, and conclude that it's not licensed anymore.

Indeed Microsoft can issue a newer certificate with an expiration date set in 2099s, but they wouldn't. So far pirates relied basically on an official method of activation (not a crack). Now we need an actual crack that would either make Office think its certificate didn't expire yet, or skip the signature verification altogether.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#376

Post by MatejKafka »

londons_explore wrote: post #217
userbinator wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be amusingly ironic if someone used Copilot to do it.

Pretty sure this is beyond copilots abilities... It's really bad at any kind of binary analysis.

It is absolutely great at binary analysis, as long as you give it a decompiler.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#377

Post by Joel_Mckay »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #344
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser LibreOffice Writer online was not popular, so it is understandable you assume it doesn't exist. There is also the trivial headless Linux remote desktop cloud hosting with 100% identical functionality. >"edit at the same time" Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..." Most documents that support OLE have difficulty handling concurrent writes. Office 3…

Are you talking about the LO WASM thingy? ( https://wasm-test.libreoffice.org/ ) I have recently tried to use it, but couldn't find a way to open files from local computer in it. It showed me a fake filesystem and dragging and dropping files also didn't work. I have not used another web browser LO thing, I think. If you are talking about another thing, do you have demo site/link? > Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbar…

Haven't spent much time with cloud offerings, and so ymmv with these options. =3

https://en.libre-office.fr/article.php/free-online-libreoffi...

https://www.collaboraonline.com/

https://www.offidocs.com/

Drag and drop will depend on browser specific security policy. =3

https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#378

Post by [deleted] »

arendtio wrote: post #343
zelphirkalt wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I also am a LO fan, but recently it left me hanging quite a bit. I wrote my CV in LO, to avoid my endless tinkering mode, that I had with my LaTeX CV, that still never looked exactly how I wanted it to look. Then 2 things happened: I upgraded my desktop computer from Debian 12 to 13. Now LO can no longer start. I am only getting a crash without UI error, and on command line I get a nothing saying C++ erro…

Sounds more like a problem with the Debian upgrade. Sure, better error messages could help, but when it no longer even starts...

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#379

Post by Rohansi »

shimman wrote: post #367
Rohansi wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the existence of VSCode stop the creation of other editors? The existence of other editors clearly didn't prevent VSCode from being created, so what's different?

Oh easy, you can't compete with a trillion dollar corporation that can subsidize loss leaders. We know there is a substantial market in this space if Zed is able to raised $30mil, but only letting VC or big tech dictate the direction of tooling is extremely troublesome. I, along with every other person in tech I know, would love to start a company but the biggest risk is lack of health insurance; which is why things…

Still doesn't make any sense. Visual Studio (not Code) has been available since the 90s. The free Community edition has existed since 2014. Sublime Text, Atom, etc. came during that time and did just fine.

> I mean how much would something like neovim or emacs or helix or neovide improve if they could hire a team of full time developers?

I don't think a lack of developers is holding them back. They just don't appeal to most people because they run in a terminal or are vim/emacs-focused.

> I rather have this be guided by a consortium of developers in the form of open source grants.

You'd likely end up with the same result. That grant money would come from a finite pool of money, how much money do you think would go to editors targeting niche users vs. editors with broad appeal?

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#380

Post by nine_k »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #316
fithisux wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started migrating away for VSCode, piece by piece. But if you need it: Theia/Positron/VSCodium For Python/Julia? Many alternatives. For C family? Similar Java/Go? Similar.

I keep VSCode because their seamless SSH integration (remote files editing) is so damn good.

Emacs had it first ;-D (And still does.)
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