Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!LIN@MIT-MC
From: LIN%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Softwar
Message-ID: <1387@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Jun-84 07:04:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1387
Posted: Tue Jun 26 07:04:00 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jul-84 04:45:04 EDT
Lines: 16

From:  Herb Lin <LIN @ MIT-MC>


    From: syming%B.CC at Berkeley
    They sent us a tape with a fixed time (two months or so?)
    payment notice and stated that the program would vanish after that time. Of
    course, we paid in time and they sent us a 20(?)-digit long key word and
    instruction to make our trial copy a one-year-life-time program, since the
    service contract was year by year.

I'm a bit confused.  How could this particular program make itself
vanish without some external reference to a date?  It seems that a
simple routine to change the date to the date of original purhcase
whenever the routine was invoked would do the trick.  Do you know if
anyone ever actually has their program vanish?  Maybe the whole thing
was a bluff?