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From: ericb@athertn.Atherton.COM (Eric Black)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Copy protection and the consumer (dongles)
Message-ID: <165@teak.athertn.Atherton.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 88 22:54:05 GMT
References: <4663@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <22628@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1852@optilink.UUCP> <6622@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1869@optilink.UUCP>
Reply-To: ericb@Atherton.COM (Eric Black)
Organization: Atherton Technology, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 19

In article <1869@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>The software I've seen using dongles only needs it to start up.  In a 
>multitasking system, you start up all your dongled software first.

I've seen software (useful software, too) that checks peridically for the
dongle -- one example is Superbase (a relational database) for the Amiga.

Unfortunately, this is one which doesn't give you a second chance to install
the dongle; if, during its sojourns, it decides that the dongle is missing or
wrong, it dumps you in the street.

Makes it kind of hard to juggle dongles in a multi-tasking environment...
Even single-tasking, I hope it never gets a read error on the dongle!

Games, maybe -- "productivity software", NEVER!
-- 
Eric Black	"Garbage in, Gospel out"
   UUCP:	{sun!sunncal,hpda}!athertn!ericb
   Domainist:	ericb@Atherton.COM