My old man vs LC Standalone

[Lagi Pittas]

One other thing about that - it doesn't have to be a thieving hacker.
I wrote a invoicing system for a company years ago (Foxpro for DOS ) and
years later I got
a phone call saying the system was coming up "I'm Melting ...." - I could't
for the life of me
remember why I put that message in. Went to the company and some "clever
sod" was cleaning up the hard disk and deleted some of the
"unused" files in the data directory.

Personally I think your time is wasted putting any protection in other than
name and email and address (say) tied to the system
and if they have been messed with - It's the user either trying to run it
on his laptop (let him) or somebody has taken a copy.
Then wait three months and then tell them there is an error "call this
number" - if it's the user he will phone  for help.
If its a thief - just offer him an "upgrade".

That is how Microsoft ate Lotus's lunch back in the day was $495

Although Multiplan (the precursor of Excel) had protection - Excel did not
(in fact the whole of office did not)
you just put in a serial code or one from a serial code generator. This
allowed Microsoft to get office in the hands of
students and others who did not have the money to spend.
Years later everybody with a "illegal" copy was offered an amnesty and
"upgraded" to a legitimate version of office for £65 if memory serves.

The upshot is EVERYTHING can be broken. Back in the apple 2 days it was
more fun to crack the disk protection than play some of the games.
The disk protection routines got so clever that one of the disk copier
utilities built in a 6502 emulator so you could single step the code of the
bootloaders
and patch that part of the disk.

Finally we got "Snapshot" that was hardware that allowed the saving of all
the memory to disk (later copied for the spectrum and c64)

Happy days ...
https://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/08/27/apple-ii-copy-protection/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256709
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Books/Beneath%20Apple%20DOS.pdf



Regards Lagi


On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 11:17, Keith Martin via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> On 22 Oct 2019, at 4:02, kee nethery via use-livecode wrote:
>
> > it would look for Hypercard itself on their disk and start erasing
> > stuff in it
>
> I applaud the ingenuity and totally understand the reasons for her doing
> that, but it should be said that damaging *other* software – beyond
> the stack itself – on purpose is a questionable tactic that feels like
> revenge, especially if it's designed to be silent. It is the actions of
> a virus! Not the best grounds to be standing on if this came out and
> lawyers got involved, even if the victim was clearly a thieving hacker.
>
> However, fascinating idea and impressive dedication.
>
> k
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