I bought RA 3 to play with a friend that night but was unable to because of the missing digit.
If they know they shipped manuals with a missing digit, they could have a very simple routine on their site that will accept the 19 digit key and FILL IN the missing digit!!! It would do this at the registration page.
Bot obviousely they do not want to pay their programmers the half hour's pay it would take to do this!.
Instead, they want me to E-Mail their tech support, have the tech support READ my e-mail (assuming they can read), realize what I need, have their computer generate a brand new key (thereby taking one away from possible future sales) and then send me an E-Mail with the new key.
I am sure that the Tech guy does not work for free and how many times a day will he have to do this times the number of tech support guys that are doing the same thing?
Seems to me that they are LOSING money here!
The difference in security between 19 digits and 20 digits is not that great so why not do it themselves???
Being a software engineer with a history in encryption (although it has been years now, being retired) makes me believe that they are using a Matrix Value system where the key values generate a specific end value (via XOR, Add/Subtrack, Cross-Value check) which all can be ran through an algorythm to generate that 20th digit.
They can even go so far as to lock the use of their algorythm to the registration page and then tag your account as using it and do a database lookup to see if the leading 19 digits have been used before and how many times. Generating an ALERT if it has been used more than X number of times.
This method would be more cost effective than loading their tech's time with e-mail responses.
Lance
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I bought RA 3 to play with a friend that night but was unable to because of the missing digit. If they know they shipped manuals with a missing digit, they could have a very simple routine on their site that will accept the 19 digit key and FILL IN the missing digit!!! It would do this at the registration page. Bot obviousely they do not want to pay their programmers the half hour's pay it would take to do this!. Instead, they want me to E-Mail their tech support, have the tech support READ my e-mail (assuming they can read), realize what I need, have their computer generate a brand new key (thereby taking one away from possible future sales) and then send me an E-Mail with the new key. I am sure that the Tech guy does not work for free and how many times a day will he have to do this times the number of tech support guys that are doing the same thing? Seems to me that they are LOSING money here! The difference in security between 19 digits and 20 digits is not that great so why not do it themselves??? Being a software engineer with a history in encryption (although it has been years now, being retired) makes me believe that they are using a Matrix Value system where the key values generate a specific end value (via XOR, Add/Subtrack, Cross-Value check) which all can be ran through an algorythm to generate that 20th digit. They can even go so far as to lock the use of their algorythm to the registration page and then tag your account as using it and do a database lookup to see if the leading 19 digits have been used before and how many times. Generating an ALERT if it has been used more than X number of times. This method would be more cost effective than loading their tech's time with e-mail responses. Lance