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From: cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: "Look up a word in the manual" copy protection
Message-ID: <1812@vax135.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 18:41:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: vax135.1812
Posted: Mon Jul  6 18:41:16 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Jul-87 01:51:42 EDT
References: <4807@sgi.SGI.COM> <6816@g.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 25
Summary: I'm for it

In article <6816@g.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.csnet (Sean Casey) writes:
>
>Word can't express the frustration at having to pull out a manual that I
>don't even need after reading it once, and having to look up a word to
>continue with the program.  What's the point of having a hard disk if it
>takes two minutes to locate your manual and look up the word?

A key-manual is the protection scheme that is least abusive to my
equipment.  It doesn't take anything like two minutes if you know where
your manual is to start with.  Think of it as a soft dongle (pardon my
French).  Disk-based copy protection gronks my drives to dust, and it
is (in my humble opinion) likely to destroy the disk long before my
manual would become unreadable.  And you can't even put disk-protected
software on hard disks in the first place, so what's the beef?  Unless
you like a "key-disk" scheme, where you get to swap out the master disk
after verifying its presence.  That is still somewhat awkward and puts
the master disk somewhat at risk.  Not bad, not good.

As long as there are thieves, there are going to be locks.  Let's not
promote the use of locks that damage the merchandise.

-- 
	Charles Poirier   (decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4,attmail)!vax135!cjp

   "Docking complete...       Docking complete...       Docking complete..."