While webdeveloping I heard I had a weird javascript quirck in on of my backends of burningCat in Internet Explorer. Although I am working on Ubuntu I installed IE6 (via ies4linux). After a short while debugging and restarting IE6, Internet Explorer gave me the option to upgrade to IE7. I know that you have to have a genuine copy of windows, however I gave it a try, because linux might just be better than a genuine copy of windows ;). The results was rather surprising……
First of all I had to select my Windows version. Well I had to lie a little since I don’t have a Windows version, however not being a spoilsport I selected the XP variant. MS accepted my little lie and proceeded to the next page prompting “Validation required”. I gave it a try and received a message that “due to security settings activeX controls were prohibited to be executed“. Not a bad thing, since activeX is one of the major disadvantages in IE.
However MS offers also a different validation type via an executable. MS trusted my linux completely and gave me a code to enter for validation. I entered the code and proceeded to the next page. MS did think I own a Genuine copy of windows and offers me the however there is a possibility to do so under linux.
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