Confessions of a Windows 7 pirate

I’ve been hanging out with a bad crowd lately.

In the interest of research, I’ve been digging into message boards and forums run by unabashed Windows enthusiasts who are intent on breaking Microsoft’s activation technology. I’ve had these forums bookmarked for years and stop in every once in a while just to see what’s new. This time I decided to drop by and actually try some of tools and utilities to see if I could become a pirate, too.

Unfortunately, I succeeded. In this post, I’ll share my experiences, including close encounters with some very nasty malware and some analysis on how the latest showdown between Microsoft and the pirates is likely to play out.