[rescue] Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 08:10:55AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Anyone remember when copy protection was REALLY bad back about the late
> 1980s?  Anyone remember how many people abandoned (for instance) Lotus
> 123 because they couldn't back it up?  The industry appeared to have
> learned the lesson then.  I guess the beancounters forgot it again ....

The most famous one was Microsoft word version 1 for the PC. The copy 
protection routine was written by a somewhat unsupervised co-op student.

If it detected a copy that did not have the proper hidden files. it issued
the message "The tree of evil bears bitter fruit. Now trashing System disk."
It then exited do without doing anything. 

Someone had a partialy trashed disk with a legal copy of Word on it. It
started up, did not find what it wanted and issued the message. The guy looked
around and found that his system disk was indeed trashed. He sued and won
a considerable settlement. 

That's why no Microsoft product uses any kind of copy protection. 

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667  IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
VoN  Skype: mendelsonfamily. Looking for work as a CTO or consultant in 
handheld gaming, large systems development, handheld device construction, etc.
See U.S. patent applications  20050108591,  20050107165.