Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!mandrill!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: An Idea for Hardware Protection
Summary: Give 'em a dongle they want
Keywords: "personal" dongle
Message-ID: <933@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 88 01:24:19 GMT
References: <8801090958.AA20842@ucscb.UCSC.EDU> <4779@videovax.Tek.COM>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 23


How about a graphics program with a nifty light pen, or an image
digitizer program with a gizmo that sticks in the printer port, or
a neat sound digitizer and audio editor with a little device that
plugs in the game port, or a word processor with a novel simple
to use OCR wand, or....

Idea:  get some hackers and EEs together and cook up a neat program
that useses a real keen widget that isn't exactly easy to reproduce
in single copies.  The widget (light pen, sampler, digitizer, OCR,
etc) makes the program so useful everybody wants to run out and
snap one up.  Eventhough I could have pirated DigiView, it would
have been fairly difficult for me to knock off the gizmo that does
the digitizing, thus I just went out and bought the program; it
wasn't that expensive anyhow.

You've got to make a program that isn't useful without the dongle
and vice versa.  If it works sans dongle surely some enterprising
person will just patch out the dongle checking part of the program.
And-- it'll be on every pirate BBS in a day or two.


--Bill