| From: | Alastair M. Robinson |
| Date: | 17 Aug 2000 at 00:39:43 |
| Subject: | Re: Amiga Piracy |
Hi,
>> This is how it works with Psion software. Each machine has a unique
>> serial number, which you give when registering shareware. The
>> registration code you receive back only works on your machine.
> Doesn't some Microsoft software read the MAC address of your ethernet
> card?
Yes - Windoze itself has a function to generate a string which has a *very*
high probability of being unique to that particular call. It's not too hard
to generate a string unique to particular machine, but generating one unique
to *every machine in the world* is much harder - and to make it easier, if
your machine has a network card fitted, the MAC address is incorporated into
the string.
The outcry last year happened because Office'97 docs were including one of
these GUIDs - and it suddenly dawned on people that this could theoretically
be used to match a document with the machine on which it was written.
Now the question is: was this deliberate, or were M$ just a bit too clever
for their own good?
All the best,
A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
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