Sony has far to go in rootkit case

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But that's NOT all..

Every variety has been tried. Punching holes in a 5 1/4 inch disk. Messing with CRC data on the tracks. Serial numbered chip checks. And now the latest copy protection from people who don't really understand software.

Come on guys, give it a rest. Copy protection has always been met with vicious backlash.

You have to remember the flip side of the picture as well. Back in the day, Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS was THE defacto word processing application. Why? Was it THAT good? No. It was a pile of cr*p. It had an arcane, non-intuitive interface. Case in point - when pretty much everyone standardized the help button as F1, WP buried their default help key as Alt-F7 or some such. When you loaded the program, you were presented with a blank blue screen. Blue screen of death? FEH! How bout the Blue Screen of CONFUSION!

BUT WP had NO copy protection. What's more, they never bothered to check your serial number when you called 'em for tech support. As a result, the app got pirated like it went out of style. Sure, it sold plenty of copies, but for every copy sold, maybe 5 or 10 got copied, taken home (for learning purposes, of course). And it was THE standard. Knowing WP was a critically important bit to anyone hoping to get a job that dealt with computers. If it wasn't on the resume, odds are excellent you would NOT get the job.

Two things happened to change all that. Windows and the sale of WP Corp to Novell. Novell immediately insisted on checking serial numbers. When the vast migration to Windows began with Windows 3.1x, the WordPerfect team's programming skills (er...rather lack thereof) really began to show. WP 5.1 for Windows was an even bigger pile of cr*p than it's DOS cousin.

WP for Windows (any version) on a single machine with a local printer and no networking might be ok, though it did, back in the WP 6.0 days, require huge quantities of memory (16 to 24 MB - which wasn't that common in those days) to do more complex tasks. On a network, WP was (and IS) a nightmare. Every time you type something, it pings a networked, shared printer to see if the printer can handle printing it.

At any rate, I digress. Since Novell bought WP and later shuffled the whole stinking mess off to Corel, WP's fate has changed from First to Worst. I don't buy the nonsense that Microsoft Office was the sole reason for WP's demise. Yes. Office IS a better product, but it didn't help WP by them shooting themselves in BOTH feet.

Speaking of Microsoft... For many years up to and including Windows 3.11, MS never really did much in the way of copy protection. As a result, many versions of DOS and Windows 3.11 were installed on computers by unscrupulous computer vendors who never bothered buying licenses for the computers they sold. I've seen the exact same copy installed hundreds, if not thousands of times this way. Even with Windows 95, their copy protection was lame, at best. The serial numbers for 95, 98, ME and even 2000 were hardly more than a guilt trip.

And even still, with all this piracy going on, MS still managed to make TONS of money and make Bill Gates one of the richest people on the planet, second only to the Sultan of Brunei.

So... Does DRM and copy protection work? Heck no. If someone wants something badly enough, they WILL find a crack for it. Does not copy protecting content work? Most people are honest enough. Now that Napster's gone legit and most of the other P2P apps have been shut down, and people have been trained to get their music fix from a store like iTunes or one of the other plethora of music services, I don't see DRM as anything but a nuisance.

Posted by: Wolfie2K3   Posted on: 12/21/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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