a simple script could change it after the reboot!

Actually this scheme works, that is it is possible to change MAC and reconnect to the net w/o rebooting. At that point you will be able to obtain a new trial license and as long as you don't shut your tablet deown everything will work for another seven days. As noted above however rebooting will revert to the original MAC and you'll be back to square one, no license on the device (map will delete it as it not longer matches your MAC). Attempting to obtain a new trial license will fail because the server will check your MAC which will be the old one that is matched with the already expired license. In principle as noted above one could write a startup script to change it dynamically but that would be likely illegal. Solution $130/3y.

I don't think its illegal to change a mac address of a device i own. Also you cannot steal someone else the chance of a 7 days trial when you use a mac-address which has no vendor assigned (check http://www.cavebear.com/archive/cave...et/vendor.html) or even one which is not used for other NITs. So it may be ethically incorrect to use the 7days trial more than one time but authentification based on mac-addresses is really stupid. reminds me to the times when telnet logins where authorized by only the ip-address *g*

I have huge ethical problems with what's described here, and find it troubling that so many excuse it.

But I guess it's okay until someone temporarily nabs YOUR MAC address... right?

Well no problem ... there are many unused vendor ids left and my mac is set during boot by a script so i don't rely on my original mac-address.

Sooner or later those unused MACs will be assigned.

All 281.474.976.710.656? Well this will take i while *g* There are also some spaces reserved for experimental purpose and already some are obsolete. You have your opinion and other have their own. It may be wrong to do abuse the 7days trial stuff but problems with collision of mac-addresses are really not the problem.

The chances that you will pick up an existing MAC (if selected purely randomly) is comparable to winning a jackpot in PowerBall.

BTW assuming you have root access a minor change in /etc/init.d/rcS specifically adding just two lines

just before the last line

changes your MAC dynamically each time you boot to 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

Of course you need to put something in place of those x's. Your current MAC is shown in the About product (Control Panel). I have no idea if changing device MAC number is legal or not, nor do I assume any responsibility for you bricking your device if you corrupt that rcS system startup script. Also changing your MAC may affect some s/w, for example it will invalidate all your Wayfinder licenses paid or free so you will have to ask for a new trial or pay $130 for a new one. You've been warned.

and one minor clarification, App Manager will not install macchanger. If you really want to install it and I don't know why you would want to do it (the s/w is buggy like hell) copy the macchanger deb package (easy to find) and manually install it by simply issuing

dpkg --unpack macchanger_1.5.0-1_armel.deb

which bypasses sanity checks built into App Manager.

you could also use "ifconfig wlan0 hw ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" as root but befor that the interface must be taken down (ifconfig wlan0 down) or at boot time the script must be started befor the network script.