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Over on the wxperience site there's a thread describing a method that M$ is rumored to be releasing with SP1. That is, after a combination of a specific date AND a specific number of cold starts AND one other variable are met, any unauthorized version will be stopped cold. In other words, installing SP1 on a test system, then setting the clock ahead a year or two as the test will be meaningless as XP will perform as normal - even though it's "booby trapped". They didn't say what the 3rd variable was but probably a check to see if the Blue List generator produced the key. Evidently the Blue List generator results in a key sequence that M$ claims now to be able to detect, or at least narrow down the field considerably.
Sounds like the smartest move will be to try to get only those pieces of SP1 that have any real value to you - which isn't much. However, for those people that use all the M$ internals (I.E., Outlook Xpress, etc) will wind up just plain screwed sooner or later - translated that means they'll probably wind up paying for a legit copy and getting their very own Authorization code. Surely a very special, heart warming feeling.
The "call home" rumors are sort of meaningless (unless you rely on XP's firewall solely). The concern here is that from the inside of your machine, after market firewalls are easy to disable. I had this happen on my daughters machine when she downloaded some software that after installation would disabled Norton, ZoneAlarm, etc then hid itself. Found it and killed it, but what a hassle. And, of course, once you download SP1 it's on the inside looking out!!
Lastly, there seems to be a lot of M$'s friends recently (or people that seem to be) on a lot of Forum's trying to gather as much info as they can regarding current SP1 hacking plans. At least there's a lot of probing to try and find out who's doing what to neuter SP1. Maybe they get a special Christmas present from Gates or Monkey Boy (Balmer) for faithfully reporting what's happening, who knows. Who cares. They're just plain jerks anyway.
Regardless, M$ has obviously put a lot of effort into trying to reduce the number of illegitimate Corp XP Pro's that have made a big dent in their profits - and reputation.
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