Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!ux.acs.umn.edu!mndaily From: mndaily@ux.acs.umn.edu (Linda Seebach) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games Subject: Re: Chessamster 2100 patch - possible? Message-ID: <3901@ux.acs.umn.edu> Date: 11 May 91 08:31:47 GMT References: <1991May06.155345.17107@cs.ruu.nl> <1991May7.002909.17186@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1991May07.103100.12997@cs.ruu.nl> Organization: University of Minnesota, Academic Computing Services Lines: 48 In article <1991May07.103100.12997@cs.ruu.nl> ptavoly@cs.ruu.nl (Peter Tavoly) writes: >Sigh.. Utter Spectum Tauri (tm)! You still don't get the point do you? Who >do you think those 'people fed up with entering words' are? They don't have >the manual, that is why they are 'fed up'! Those who actually bought the >game did so because they valued it worthwhile, in contrast to those, who >just copied it because they could get it for free. If you play it, buy it! Bullshit. I bought the game. I still have my reciept. And I *LOATHE* entering words from a manual. Right now my computer is over at a friend's house doing some ray-tracing, and transfering files through it's serial port. I could have played any of three or four chess games, or SimCity, except that I didn't bring the manuals for all of them. It would be reasonable if the questions were at least about things you could reasonably learn. For instance: The Animation Studio (Disney) has manual lookup that tells you how many letters, and gives you enough context, that if you have a *lot* of experience with the program, you don't need the manual to enter a word. Although I could, in theory, memorize all umpteen (40 or so?) complete games from the back of the CM2100 manual, I think it's ludicrous to expect me to do so... >PS.: Manual protection schemes *cannot* be removed by commercial programs > like Project D etc. since they are embedded in the program code itself, > sometimes they are encoded as well (uhh.. from my 64 days :). Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Back in the days before I knew either assembly (for any machine) or C, I could take a binary and break a protection scheme. It's embedded in the program itself. Oh, gee, really? I thought it was a shell script embedded in the startup-sequence. What you do, see, is you find the manual protection scheme (easy enough) and then you read through it. Somewhere, it will have two possible branches (most likely) - one back into the routine (the Failed case) and one into the rest of the program (success case). Replace the beginning of the routine with a branch to the rest of the program, and leave the rest of the routine there - it's harmless. A decent hacker can do this in about half an hour, at most. (Admittedly, I don't know if I still could - high-level languages have made me lazy.) It is most certainly *NOT* impossible. > -ThomasT. --SeebS-- (And I'm never *going* to be Linda Seebach) -- mndaily is the Minnesota Daily, and does not speak for the U of M. Linda Seebach does not speak for the Daily. --SeebS-- does not speak for Linda. Marcel Marceau speaks for no one.