re how to the disks copy protected in article c dvh fan ucdavis edu ez othello ucdavis edu victoria milliron says a possibility for the software registration conondrum would be to have the distributor register the copy when the software was sold the clerk sticks it that s kind of extra work that one cannot expect the store people to do imho it would be easier if companies sell their software as cheaply as possible and to sell the customers detail manuals for the brain deads quick reference books how to do books and videos paid support hot line for the registered purchasers these can be part of their package i have seen many books to teach people how to use dos wp and other software i i suspect either users can t read the manuals or they don t have manuals either way there is to be made btw books are quite a bit more expensive to reproduce than a disk what is the problem with parallel port security keys i haven t used anything that had hardware key copy protection schemes so i don t know what the drawbacks are i know the companies that make them claim they re uncrackable with the popularity of multitasking and pseudo multitasking systems eg os windoze mack system it is pretty easy to run a debugger and figure out the protection schemes by disassembling tracing trapping the application during run time schemes like compressed software special loaders would be easy pray even to beginner hackers hardware keys unless well designed and totally transparent is a pain in the b t we having using a piece of software under windoze that uses a hardware key the key interfers with the printer stuff with other programs and often has to be unplugged for those software to work properly but i ve seen cracks of autodesk d studio floating around i don t have one so don t ask and i had heard that it had parralel port keys all the hacker has to do is to remove modify code that communicate with the port vamilliron othello ucd edu my apologies if i rambled but vi inhibits my communication skills greatly k c lee elec eng grad student os windoze mack are not trademarked
