Scrondar

Originally Posted by Wasgo

What needs to be pointed out was this wasn't a protection technique, it was meant as an attack. He specifically only had one serial number which had this effect. He was targeting a specific group, (I believe he said on EFnet), and this did not necessarily have anything to do with furthering his revenue. It comes across as him being very angry with this group and him punishing them.

Good point, and well taken. Still, if this kind of thing catches on, his actions will likely create some anxiety in all those Bearshare and BitTorrent users out there.

DeBary_FL

Originally Posted by Wasgo

What needs to be pointed out was this wasn't a protection technique, it was meant as an attack. He specifically only had one serial number which had this effect. He was targeting a specific group, (I believe he said on EFnet), and this did not necessarily have anything to do with furthering his revenue. It comes across as him being very angry with this group and him punishing them.

I'm really having a problem understanding the reasoning here. That particular group that you refer to is literally stealing from the author. They're using his intellectual property and not paying for it. I don't blame him one bit for being very angry with this group. It seems to me that you're trying to blame the wrong party here. The person who is responsible for having his/her PPC hard reset is the person who is using the illegal registration code from the warez site to steal this man's software.

Actually, I have a positive suggestion. How about the people who've had their PPCs hard reset by this software go to this site or similar sites and report exactly what happened? :approve:

Waxwing

Originally Posted by Wasgo

What needs to be pointed out was this wasn't a protection technique, it was meant as an attack. He specifically only had one serial number which had this effect. He was targeting a specific group, (I believe he said on EFnet), and this did not necessarily have anything to do with furthering his revenue. It comes across as him being very angry with this group and him punishing them.

Your argument holds no water. All he is doing is cutting out/off users of an illegal warz group that is stealing the use of his program. They are the "specific group" that he is targeting and as a result of their and only their theft, they are having problems. I do not feel sorry for them at all. :realmad:

hebead

The fact is that there is no software that's 100% free of bugs. Thus, no real gurantee that you will not be a victim of an accident Hard-reset.
otherwise, there won't be any updates unless for new features. Developers update their software regularly to fix bugs and complains from their customers.

Also, the registration key is so easy to miss entered.

DeBary_FL

Originally Posted by hebead

Also, the registration key is so easy to miss entered.

In this case simply misentering the registration key wouldn't have caused a hard reset. You would have had to enter a specific, illegal key.

Wasgo

Originally Posted by DeBary_FL

I'm really having a problem understanding the reasoning here. That particular group that you refer to is literally stealing from the author. They're using his intellectual property and not paying for it. I don't blame him one bit for being very angry with this group. It seems to me that you're trying to blame the wrong party here. The person who is responsible for having his/her PPC hard reset is the person who is using the illegal registration code from the warez site to steal this man's software.

Originally Posted by Waxwing

Your argument holds no water. All he is doing is cutting out/off users of an illegal warz group that is stealing the use of his program. They are the "specific group" that he is targeting and as a result of their and only their theft, they are having problems. I do not feel sorry for them at all. :realmad:

I don't feel like seperating these since they make the same point. I don't feel the pirates are in the right. They're in the wrong. But, I feel Anton is more in the wrong. Take an example: I know you're going to steal my lunch because you do it everyday. So I poison it. Had you not stolen it, you wouldn't have died. So it's your fault. Admittedly this is taking the argument to the extreme, but the simple principle remains that people do not get to set punishments to whatever they deem fair. Anton choose a punishment for these people that he wasn't entitled to choose. Are they in the wrong? Of course they are. Is he warrented to hard reset their devices? If so, what gives him that right, and where does that right end? The whole point of the legal system is a standardized set of laws and punishments to avoid this sort of vigilante justice. If he feels that the legal system failed him, so be it. But he still doesn't have the right to decide his feeling of injustice allows him to destroy the legally owned data on their pdas. Criminals, the immoral and everyone else still has rights.

DeBary_FL

Originally Posted by Wasgo

I don't feel like seperating these since they make the same point. I don't feel the pirates are in the right. They're in the wrong. But, I feel Anton is more in the wrong. Take an example: I know you're going to steal my lunch because you do it everyday. So I poison it. Had you not stolen it, you wouldn't have died. So it's your fault. Admittedly this is taking the argument to the extreme, but the simple principle remains that people do not get to set punishments to whatever they deem fair. Anton choose a punishment for these people that he wasn't entitled to choose. Are they in the wrong? Of course they are. Is he warrented to hard reset their devices? If so, what gives him that right, and where does that right end? The whole point of the legal system is a standardized set of laws and punishments to avoid this sort of vigilante justice. If he feels that the legal system failed him, so be it. But he still doesn't have the right to decide his feeling of injustice allows him to destroy the legally owned data on their pdas. Criminals, the immoral and everyone else still has rights.

I have to respectfully disagree. Anton didn't destroy anything. All the offenders have to do is restore a recent backup. They were smart enough to do regular backups, weren't they? Anton just caused them minor inconvenience and hopefully gave them something to think about the next time they try to install pirated software. Frankly, the more I think about it the more I'd like to see other software developers do this sort of thing!! :realmad:

hebead

I wonder why he is not using the Pocket PC ID to generate the key.
May be he is lazy on generating a key for everyone.

myself, I don't like to go on a risk of a hard-reset to protect him from people who are using a pirated version and the fact is that this type of people will never buy a software even if it's not crackable.

hebead

Originally Posted by DeBary_FL

In this case simply misentering the registration key wouldn't have caused a hard reset. You would have had to enter a specific, illegal key.

How do you know that the worng "specific" key is not the same as the misentered one.???

DeBary_FL

Originally Posted by hebead

How do you know that the worng "specific" key is not the same as the misentered one.???

To quote the software's author: The people who are using this key have no excuse, the chances of entering the pirated key by mistake is 1/10000000000 which is approximately 0.000000001%.

Qutie

Quote:

The fact is that there is no software that's 100% free of bugs. Thus, no real gurantee that you will not be a victim of an accident Hard-reset.

Exactly. And exactly the reason I won't trust my machine or my data to vindictive code. For the folks that steal other people's work... nice going ;p

As for me losing something... no, I'm not losing anything. I pay for my software and in that payment I believe I should be able to trust that nothing purposely detrimental will happen when I use it. Removing software that carries something detrimental means I'm upp'ing the insurance for myself that I won't be out and about and have my machine accidently hard reset.

If you are happy using it, have at it. For me, there's enough garbage out there that can cause problems without adding something with it deliberately built in.

Caledor

You know those little things inside CDs, DVDs and other things that will set off an alarm when you leave the store if you didn't pay for them? How about we replace them with explosives? Get those thieves real good.

OOPs, Billy-Bob the checkout clerk forgot to run it through the defuser when you bought it. Sorry that your face is missing.

DeBary_FL

Originally Posted by Qutie

For the folks that steal other people's work... nice going ;p

Did you really mean this the way it sounds? If so, then I have to assume you don't do, or ever plan to do, any work worth stealing, or you wouldn't feel this way. If I'm misreading what you meant, then I apologize in advance.

gt24

A ton of people, at one point, asked "why don't you come up with something better?" Fine then, here is my something better.

I call it spin-lock, for no specific reason.

The program, on install, either reads the serial from a prior installed program, or reads in a typed serial. If the serial is blacklisted, the program does nothing except goes into lockdown mode.

Now, no matter WHAT code you type in, it isn't a valid code. Uninstallation and reinstallation doesn't fix things, for little crumbs are left all over the system (as files with interesting names, strange registry keys, and other neat programmer tricks).

When you are finally comming from your pirate days, you are told to enter a specific registration code, which just shows a secondary registration code screen. This registration dialog box uses a totally different algorythm to determine your second code. You have to type in this "I'm not a pirate" code to allow your device to accept the first code, which is your actual code.

By having this snappy lockdown system which leads to a pain in the A** to decypher registration system to prove that you are allowed to register the program, you have just made things a lot harder for the end user who wants to pirate your program. He has NO clue if his program is in lockdown either, and if he types in the all clear code when his copy is fine, it locks down (so it is more like a switch).

This lockdown code will change with every release, the algorythm for the 2nd registration code can change a lot to, as well as how it marks you as a pirate, because it has absolutely no harm to legitimate users. In fact, they have no clue that anything is going on. However, if you are a pirate, you'll either pull out all your hair to get this program to work, or just pay.

That is my solution... what do you think?

Wasgo

Originally Posted by DeBary_FL

I have to respectfully disagree. Anton didn't destroy anything. All the offenders have to do is restore a recent backup. They were smart enough to do regular backups, weren't they? Anton just caused them minor inconvenience and hopefully gave them something to think about the next time they try to install pirated software. Frankly, the more I think about it the more I'd like to see other software developers do this sort of thing!! :realmad:

I'm glad you've decided they performed a recent backup. Glad to know pirates are so careful. But seriously, most don't. Then what?