Probably but the one time I did pay for an OS, I had problems reusing it after reformatting and shit like that, and I just don't want to go through that hassle again. I don't really pirate games these days, but other stuff just has too much overhead to get legitimately. Films have 10 billion adverts before them and I can't just have them as files on my PC without a fuck tonne of DRM, music is full of prohibitive DRM, applications can only be bought with temporary (1 year etc) licenses, I just can't be bothered with it all. Games I don't mind because Steam handles everything and the prices are reasonable during the sales, but I just don't want the hassle with all the other stuff.
Yep, MD5 only makes sense if you want to check if download source that you trust has sent you data incorrectly. You can replace almost anything you want inside a file and get matching MD5. SHA1 is needed at least. Combo of SHA1, MD5, CRC32 and size is hard to beat but then you could have just used SHA1 to begin with.
MD5 was a generalisation, you can compare SHA1 and other such CRCs. Not that I do, I actually use a multi-version that someone put together. I'm trusting like that. And besides, online banking is fine, they can't put my card into the reader and then put my PIN into that, because that's done off-PC, so there's no problem.
besides your more likely to have your online banking compromised by someone impersonating your router.
Talking about sll strip and session jacking? Online bankong is pretty secure, most need multifactor authentication for every transaction as well as logging in, its pretty difficult to subvert though not impossible.
I hosed my windows 8 recently, disk cleanup wanted to compress my files, after doing so the machine wont boot into windows. so just keep in mind that compressing the disk with your OS will require your windows cd soon afterwards.
MS is giving out Win8 Pro for free atm: http://www.techspot.com/news/50875-loophole-enables-anyone-to-get-a-windows-8-license-for-free.html
