🚀 go-pugleaf

On 4/19/2005 4:01 PM McGrandpa brightened our day with:

>"Raymond Martineau" <bk039@ncf.ca> wrote in message
>news:334a619sabjio0qjpdj512tkllj6vtl9el@4ax.com
>  
>
>>On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 02:29:02 GMT, "McGrandpa"
>><McGrandpaNOT@NOThotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>"Inglo" <ioo@??.¿¿¿> wrote in message
>>>news:lxO8e.325$Xb4.185@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com
>>>      
>>>
>>>Well, that's just one more reason to like Steam a bit more.  A .sys
>>>driver for a CD check.  That is just too much.   Is there even
>>>anything in the EULA about that crap?
>>>      
>>>
>>There's a lot of stuff that appears in EULAs that most people can't
>>find out.  If you pick a random EULA and calculate it's readability
>>statistics, you'll find they generally require a grade 12 reading
>>level as well as being difficult to read.  These statistics don't
>>mean a thing, but they do help demonstrate what is already known.
>>
>>Honestly, I don't believe that they even read their own licenses.
>>Some recent batch of demos from the Maximum PC cover disk where their
>>EULAs allow you to play two hours - yet the timer only allows one
>>hour of play.
>>    
>>
>
>Aside from the EULA part, read what it was Inglo said that one anti 
>piracy scheme did:
>
>It installed a Windows SYSTEM DRIVER that is going to be there even if 
>the disk is not.  Businesses evidently are allowed to be as invasive as 
>they want, do whatever they want, as long as they can get away with it. 
>I use Steam because (so far) it appears to be clean of malware and it 
>does offer some benefits.  But that system driver installed just to do a 
>cd check?  Nope.  Gotta go.
>McG.
>
>
>  
>
Do a little googling on Starforce, you'll find lots of info
<http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=lang_en&safe=off&q=system+driver+starforce+copy+protection&btnG=Search>

The worst thing about it, it works.  Almost all the other copy 
protection stuff out there can be got around, Starforce is a hard nut to 
crack.  So it's liable to become more popular.
I had my first intro to Starforce with a really crappy game called 
Breed.  Whenever you launched the game it would take a minute or more to 
verify that the CD was present, grrr.  The game Breed itself sucked, so 
I uninstalled it (and left it sitting on a table in the laundry room of 
my apartment building), yet the Starforce driver was left behind. 

I went APE-FUCKING-SHIT.  If I had a few more screws loose I might have 
turned into an anti-starforce version of SayNo2Steam.  Luckily I know 
enough about deleting and uninstalling system drivers that I was able to 
purge my system, other people have to rely on downloading dubious 
starforce removal programs that I wouldn't touch.

-- 
People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

Steve ¤»Inglo«¤
www.inglostadt.com