Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:46:13 +0200 From: "mdff" <nospam@mgedv.net> To: "'Jonathon McKitrick'" <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Hidden spot on hard drives? Message-ID: <20051011084601.A13C8186800@mgedv.at> In-Reply-To: <20051005184437.GA36369@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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> the company where I work (with Windows) is evaluating a copy > protection > product that stores info somewhere on the HDD where the user > cannot touch it, > a format will not erase it, and Norton Ghost will not find it. > a> if you invent such copy protection, be sure that it will get broken sooner or later. it's always just a matter of time and interest of someone. b> if this is a business-product for usage on companies clients, this thing has to be able to be backed up. no admin want's prods in his LAN, where he can always re-install the whole box instead of restoring an image (think about this for let's say 500 users) c> if the harddisk fails, well... just read b. as far as i experienced, private and illegal users will always steal software, regardless of how good the protection was. companies which need the software and work with it, will pay for it sooner or later (if they really need this software, they will pay support, too). and hundreds of hours of very expensive time these days goes into "un-locking" and installing software with stupid and annoying license-systems. last weekend i was setting up a new cluster-system for a customer running AIX with some application server software. this stupid software needs keys for every node which makes it impossible to install this software on a central SAN without having local copies on all cluster-nodes. THIS is annoying. btw., for now, i figured out how to crack this mechanism in 5 minutes. they have a real big license-system, many operators, online-licensing pages, web- and mail-systems setup for it, forms, fax-forms, etc... guess how much this costs? the customer AND the software company have to waste much time for this licensing stuff... i was writing a license-number thing for a software of one of my companies as well, and guess what? 5 days after releasing, there was a working serial on crack-pages available (someone posted his own serial). and now, no more keys 'cause it won't stop anyone... br... PS: no reply, im @questions...
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