Dongle anyone??

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mikkie wrote on 1/12/2003, 8:13 AM
>>the Dongle was invented by an Engineer whose first name is Don and family name starts with "g".

Interesting...

Might be one of those things like any facial tissue being called Kleenex, 'cause if you look around various eqipment manufacturers/retailers they also apply the dongle moniker to anything that, well, dongles. The first examples that come to mind are the short cables with connectors that attach to laptop cards for networking or USB, in particular those by Belkin & if I remember corectly, (the old) Compaq & D-link.
mbo wrote on 1/13/2003, 3:12 AM
Hmm,
probably no point in it at all. Steinberg use dongle for their software and there is plenty of their product cracked ready to download. Any software (if is popular enough) will be cracked whatever it is protected with. The price of dongle will push up the price of software up and probaby further reduce the number of people ready to pay for it. This is the true and not much can be done about it.
Michal
Maestro wrote on 1/13/2003, 6:04 PM
My company uses parallel-port dongles in the software it writes and markets, and after two years of working with them, we're starting to gradually move away from them towards a file-based licensing system. Mostly because they're expensive (since each has an internal clock)--about $40 each. We sell our software for anywhere from $5000 to $40,000 per seat depending on configurations and we originally thought it was positively the most secure way to go.

Then I was poking around on Kazaa the other day and noticed that there was a cracked version of Sonic Scenarist, which I hear sells for about $22,000 and uses a dongle. DVDs were supposed to be crack-proof, and that theory got blown right out of the water. This leads me to one of my most fundamental computing theorems:

Nothing digital is sacred or safe.
Jimco wrote on 1/13/2003, 8:21 PM
The link you provide is full of pure rubbish. One vital point the writer seems to have missed is that when you pay for software, you are not buying the software itself. You are purchasing a license to use someone else's software. In the case of Windows or Office, that "someone else" is Microsoft.

He also states that you have to provide Microsoft with personal information to activate Office. That's just simply . . . well, a lie. You only have to provide your country. That's it. If you require a new activation code to install on multiple machines, you may have to give your name (because you may have to call MS) and a phone number so they can call you back.

I know all of this to be true because I not only support Microsoft; I work for them. I understand how the process works, and I understand the thought and reasoning behind it. I do think that product activation is a PR disaster (my own opinion, but one I know to be shared by others in my organization who are very high up.) As with all other Microsoft software, look for significant improvement in this area as we develop new and more innovative ways to approach the problem of piracy.

As to whether or not the analogy of stealing a car is a good one, your only argument is that it is not one because when you steal software, you are not taking away anything from the owner of that software. I can't believe that you can actually believe your own logic! I'll bet SoFo folks who may be reading this don't look at it that way. The developers of software devote their entire lives to developing that software for many years. For someone to then take it without paying for it is actually even MORE of a process of theft than if you had stolen their car for many developers.

My 4 cents.

Jim