231–240 of 302 posts
Cracking this dongle; wouldn't this be a federal offence in the US? Not being snarky - genuine question! I am not from the US :-)
Yes and in every country that adopted a copyright treaty with the US, so all of them except China
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Many years ago I was a technician supporting a few custom programs on thousands of PCs. The developer of one of these programs had added a date check to his code so the program would refuse to run after a set date and each new release would increase this date by a few months so it would stop working after a few weeks if he ever stopped creating new releases. His contract ended and a few weeks later his software, now…
If you think it's bad now, the early days of the web were absolutely filled with scumbag grifters who made small fortunes hiring contractors and then refusing to pay. Many of them disappeared in the y2k dot com bust, but then seem to have reappeared in SF after 2008. In the late 1990's, my second ever Flash app development client stiffed me on a $10k invoice. He finally figured out 6 months later that he didn't have…
Wait, you mean they used your little ruse as a means to be paid themselves??
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Another method (much more common for software that asks for two pieces of information, like a name and a key) is to take a memdump of the process at the "your key is invalid" dialog, find the invalid key you just typed, and hope that a valid key is somewhere nearby in memory. Unlike the assembly trick, this requires 0 programming expertise beyond the ability to type `strings` on the command line. This works because s…
When I was a child, in the 90s, I did this all of the time. Input a unique string I could watch for, fire up SoftICE, watch for the string, and then step through until the == comparison happened, then either grab the calculated key and input it, or patch the comparison from == to != or just return true, depending on the implementation.
I did a massive crack that involved a program and it’s inf/dll hardware driver package.
Some of the most rewarding work I’ve done and also just so tedious!
Having to stop the OS like that and accidentally getting to the kernel but then not wanting to lose my position so having to hit step over and step out until just the right place… whew.
You pay for software? You need to keep that big dongle plugged in your computer all the time! You pirate the same software? No need for any dongle!
At a time where games have shit like always online DRM, it's a bit reassuring to remember that software developers making the experience worse for their customers isn't new. You pay for software? You need to keep that big dongle plugged in your computer all the time! You pirate the same software? No need for any dongle!
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If a user gets ongoing value from software it makes sense for them to be willing to pay ongoing for that value. What users need is that the value they get from a product is more than the money they are trading for it. A one off license would be the result of a race to the bottom due to competition.
If I get ongoing value from my fully paid off car, should I keep paying the OEM? How about my house or my bike or my shoes? My toilet (huge ROI on this one)? My fridge?? Why do we feel that software gets to impose this ridiculous SaaS model? The only real answer is "because they can", not because it's helping anyone. Reality is that many modern software developments have plenty in common with designing a toilet. You…
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> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. In my experience this continues to this day due to people who require drawing on air-gapped computers, because the drawings/simulations they work on are highly sensitive (nuclear, military, and other sensitive infrastructure). But I'm sure there are als…
Hardware dongles are incredibly rare now. Even on airgapped machines, you'll see a local Flex license server running. This is especially true when you have a small network of multiple machines that may require the use of a network license. Dongles are just too delicate, they get lost or break. Or you end up with overzealous security software that decides to block anything that isn't a mouse or keyboard. There are ple…
Very cool to read an article about windows 95 still being used in production - a nice contrast to the infinite AI hype cycle over everything. Tech may move fast in flashy areas but not in the more "boring" parts of the industry.
The screenshots show the program was made for DOS. Very likely Windows was used just for network file sharing.
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My grandma used to be playing casual games from a certain publisher on her PC. They were all trial versions, though, limited to 30 minutes or so. Turns out, the time left was stored in the registry, and didn’t have any validation – so when a 10 y.o. me made a quick edit, she was left with 4294967295 minutes of trial left.
back in the mid to late 90s, I got a trial for compuserve that was a free 2 month trial. I liked it as as they provided dialup PPP access so was able to use it as full time internet access. It wasn't quite "2 months" of access though. It was 1500 hours of access (which in practice > 24*62). However, their usage accounting software wasn't great. I had it setup to reconnect if the connection dropped, and they didn't do…
I noticed it created a windows dial up connection. When you launched the browser the login info worked on this. I could just dial their server and save the username and password and use any browser or game normally.
Today on "Hacker" News: a third of the commenters wring their hands and question the morality and legality of subverting copy protection on software almost half a century old.
In practice, I couldn’t care less and it’s obviously morally OK.