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Mysteries Of The CDRW and Backups Revealed
Talinom writes "Tom's Hardware has a story that details information regarding some of the new (and old) copy protection schemes out there, as well as results from several different CDRW drives. There are a lot of sites devoted to this topic, but Tom's is usually rather thorough."
There are so many different copy protection schemes out there. Some are really simple, like throwing some file in an obscure directory on the user's hard disk. Others are really complicated, involving the detection of various debuggers that might be present and working around them in such ways that the software can't be broken.
When it comes down to it, copy protection is just like system security. In system security, as we all know, the programmers have to find security holes before the 1337z h4x0rz do, and close those holes. (Remembering to enjoy a Negra Modelo after each security hole is closed.) Similarly, copy protection is a war between the implementer and the hacker. The only difference between copy protection and security is that the roles are reversed: In security, the implementer is the good guy and the h4x0r is the bad guy. In copy protection, the implementer is the evil force and the h4x0r who breaks it is the good guy. That's a fact, and breaking of copy protection should be rewarded with large sums of money by the implementer. Call it a sort of fine on copy protection that doesn't work. In other words, anybody who implements copy protection will eventually go bankrupt because it will get broken eventually.
keep copies protected is to not give them out.
Maybe these companies should stop selling the programs entirely. That would stop the piracy.
Linux is dead.
LU
99% of the people who want copies of software don't have to worry about copy protection- someone else has broken it for them.
They merely need to use their P2P client of choice to download a cracked image of the CDs.
Remember last April when Andreessen said "If a computer can see it, display it and play it -- it can copy it,..."
Article found here.
As Dan Briklin says "With ever changing technology, in order to preserve many works we will need to constantly move them ahead, copying them to each new media form before the previous one becomes obsolete. Also, as we create new media, we need to preserve the knowledge of the methods of converting from one media to another, so we can still access the old works that have not yet been moved ahead. This is crucial. Without this information, even preserved works could be unreadable.
The most famous example of that type of translation information was an inscribed slab of rock from 196 BC found in 1799. It contained a decree written in Greek that was also written in two forms of Egyptian. It's called the Rosetta Stone. It let scholars finally read ancient works in hieroglyphics that they had physical possession of but whose language had been a mystery for 1,400 years (despite being common for the 3,500 years before being superseded). Cuneiform, a form of writing used by many ancient civilizations, was similarly opaque to scholars until they found a text in multiple languages carved into a cliff -- the Behistun inscription."
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Friends don't give friends proprietary software.
I only distribute Free Software to my friends.
I highly doubt that he has any DVD-ROM games. If he does, he probably doesn't mind doing it for that.
I'm sure that he does mind having to find and swap out one of 30 CD's each time he wants to switch games, wait for the system to start responding thirty seconds after he puts the CD in, closing the autorun popup 'install' screen, starting the game, waiting for it to spin up the 52x so that it can read three sectors off of it, and praying that some hairline scratch on the surface doesn't cover one of those three sectors.
If you're a short-attention-span gamer like me, it's a lot more convenient to pick up a commodity 60gb drive, run cd-image-spoofing software or no-cd cracks than it is to set up a pile of CDROM drives so you can play your games at a whim.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
I personally call it copy prevention since it describes the technology in question and has the same acronym. Every time I read the term "copy protection", I cringe. Just count the number of times it's been used in the article...
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
while i generally subscribe to the "if you build it, they will crax0r it" school of thought, as far as i know bleemcast (bleem for dreamcast) was never successfully cracked. i don't know all the details of it's protection scheme (i haven't kept track of "the scene" in a while), but as i remember it involved tons and tons of bad sectors that rendered it practically impossible to copy.
i'm sure someone else knows/will correct me if i'm wrong...
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Twinbee is lovely character. Perhaps you will enjoy with him?
Yes, he has cost the company nothing because he wouldn't have bought it anyway. But that 15 year old kid would be a god with a lesser tool as well. Maybe not a broadcast quality finished product at the same level as something done with 3DSMax or Maya, but up to the limits of the whatever tool s/he used.
Talent shows. His demo reel would display concepts like design, flow, use of color, etc. Not competence in a specific tool.
Just like a race car. Just because you're good at age 15 (even REALLY good), doesn't mean a high $ ride in NASCAR or F1. Show your stuff in gocarts and migets first. Then the boss will pick up the cost of the topline tool. Be it a Grand National car, or a $5000 software package.