Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Why don't you spend a little more money to buy Marauder, and make your own
unprotected copy of DPaintII?  Don't be extorted by EA to pay them extra
money for the right to a safe, reliable, convenient to use form of their
products.  If you have two EA products, Marauder is cheaper than getting
unprotected versions of them from EA.

Because of their disregard for the customer I would prefer never to buy another
EA product.  Unfortunately they seem to hold rights to a lot of good software,
so avoiding them isn't practical.

	Paul

    
>    Don't be extorted by EA to pay them extra
>money for the right to a safe, reliable, convenient to use form of their
>products.  
    
    >    Because of their disregard for the customer I would prefer never
    > to buy another EA product. 

    I admit that I have, thus far, not used any of EA's products. Although
    I have been very much tempted to buy a couple, I have been stopped by
    the thought the stories of their copy-protection.  I would not say what
    .0 should do, but I won't buy an EA product on principle. (At least, I
    have made it thus far without it.) The products I use either have no
    copy-protection or at MOST require a dongle. (I will live with that. It
    is a slight inconvence, and the compnay has a right to protect their
    labor.)
    
    Mark 

    I don't feel that a dongle has any place on a multitasking machine.
    How do you use multiple dongles?  Unless they merely poll for the
    dongle at the start of the program and then allow you to remove
    it later.
    
    Ed

    
    This is true.  1) I personally don't use multi-tasking that much and I
    need all the memory I can use for Logistix (the one that uses the
    dongle - and the only "protected" one).  2) I would prefer that dongles
    weren't used, however my point is that it at least allows one to use it
    without worrying that some brain-damaged copy-protection scheme is
    about scratch a whole disk. 
    
    There are a number of software houses out there that know
    "professionals don't cheat" as one ad puts it. I would prefer those
    as well.
    
    Mark

    re. : .4
    	I don't understand; why couldn't the copy protection code that
    reads/uses a dongle be brain damaged?

       What is a dongle?  

> Why don't you spend a little more money to buy Marauder, and make your own
> unprotected copy of DPaintII?


	The trouble is my protected copy of DPaintII is no longer readable.
	I did make regular working copies with DiskCopy but I don't suppose
	that helps, so I'll have to get a fresh one from the dealer, again!


> I don't understand; why couldn't the copy protection code that
> reads/uses a dongle be brain damaged?


	The idea of copy-protected disks is that each time you run the program,
	it'll check that the original distribution disk is mounted and access
	it. If it happens to be corrupted, and you've not made an image backup,
	your investment is lost, and such a copy calls for Marauder-like
	utilities, which I don't possess by the way. You wouldnt have that 
	problem with a dongle, unless the device itself gets damaged.



Iv

I think the question is: why couldn't the "copy protection" of a program which
requires a dongle be broken so that it would no longer require the dongle.  This
might be of interest to people who find dongles a pain.  (Or of course to
thieves.)

I  presume that how hard it would be to remove the test for a dongle would
depend on how the application uses it.

	Paul

P.S. A dongle is a small passive piece of hardware which you must plug into the
machine before running a particular application.  All the ones I know of for the
amiga plug into the 2nd gameport.

    
    Other side notes about copy-protection:
    	I have heard of some products that the image backup will not
    work. It MUST be the original disk.
    
    	I have also heard that the gyrations on the disk drive that
    some schemes use can not only lead to a greater chance of corruption,
    but also worry the user about the drive itself. One complaint was
    the grinding of the drive was a real concern. It just didn't sound
    like they were normally reading the disk, but doing something that
    wasn't straight-forward.  The disk later went bad.  After listening
    to a couple of these horror stories on the Usenet especially in
    the early days of ADos, I decided that I didn't want any part of
    that if I could help it.
    
    	In regards to using the dongle, the program doesn't do any funny
    gyrations on the disk.  It simply looks for the dongle in the 2nd
    gameport (which I never use anyway).  Since I never use the gameport,
    I just put the dongle there and forget about it. If you are a person
    that uses the port frequently, I understand how that could be very
    irratating. 
    
    Mark