[geeks] Adobe's Software Activation

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 @ 23:06 -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke said:

> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Phil Brutsche wrote:
> 
> >No, it's not BS.
> >
> >Yes, they are writing stuff to the MBR.
> >
> >No, they aren't the first (someone else mentioned Intuit).
> 
> At what point are PC users going to stand up and say "MY COMPUTER!  Not
> yours!  Mine!" and tell these corporations where to stick that crap?

I don't have high hopes of it happening any time soon.

Take a good look at Microsoft's new operating system plans.  Each
releases takes more and more control away from the owner of the system.

Other examples:

    - the game Half-Life 2 contacts the home website every time you
      play.  To install, you have to be Internet connected and the game
      downloads encryption keys.  The CD install only moves files to
      your system.  After downloading the keys, it took 45 minutes for
      my AMD64 3000 system to decrypt and install the game.  Then it
      refused to play until it downloaded updates.  There is no way to
      download updates without using their system.  This is a game for
      goodness sake!
    - New ideas from Microsoft are for your computer to store data on
      remote servers.  Don't pay your bill?  Don't access your system
      either...
    
...and on and on.  It's getting worse all the time.

Even open source programs are starting to do stupid shit like this.

gtkgnutella, a P2P program, contacts the master servers and refuses to
run properly if you haven't updated in awhile.

So, even without writing to special areas like the MBR, there are plenty
of even more stupid things for software to do.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [Well, I have entered the "metallic years." 
Silver in my hair, gold in my teeth, lead in my ass... -- Sheldon Hall in
the rescue list]