Discferret questions

On 02/01/11 18:23, Tony Duell wrote: You mean like this? THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. In other words: "This software might not work, and if it doesn't, you can't sue us. Ha ha ha." Usually law > contract terms. AIUI (and IANAL), you generally can't sign away legal rights in a contract, and adding terms like that is a great way to get the whole contract nulled and voided. I usually manage to find OSS/FS alternatives for most things, but there are exceptions: - Cadsoft EAGLE. Closed source EECAD package. There are two free licences available (Freeware and Freemium) -- give CADSOFT your email address and you can get a Freemium licence which gives you twice the usable board area and still no pin limits. Started using this *years* ago (just after V4 was released) and - Bibble Pro. Closed source RAW converter. Rawstudio and UFRaw work, but need significant work. I wanted a turn-key solution -- spending hours doing postprocessing on Canon CR2 images from my 7D isn't something that appeals to me. Bibble will pull the tone curves from the camera metadata, and use them as a starting point. Usually halves (or better) the post-processing time. - SlySoft AnyDVDHD. I fscking HATE DRM. Hate hate HATE. I do NOT want some nonce in Hollywood telling me that I can only watch my ?25 BluRay or DVD disc in 1080p HD because my NEC MultiSync EA231WMi (a bloody expensive IPS-TFT LCD I bought for photographic work) isn't on the "blessed devices" list. ?70 for a lifetime name-locked licence (they had a sale on a few days ago) is worth it for the amount of aggravation and pain it saves me. - VueScan. Still the nicest non-OEM scanner driver I've seen. Cheaper than SilverFast, and just as capable, if not moreso. A great way of getting a bit more life out of a scanner that's no longer supported on later versions of Windows (read: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400, a very expensive 5400dpi film scanner). None of these packages has a machine lockout or online activation scheme -- EAGLE and AnyDVDHD use keyfiles, Bibble and Vuescan use username/serial number pairs. A serial number calculated based on the name. Something along the lines of 'add each letter of the name together in ASCII'. When someone registers, you give them a code which matches their name; that code unlocks the software. I have a couple of apps for the RiscPC which use the DS2401 hardware serial number chip. Gits. Most of them were foolish enough to use the OS SWI call to access it -- so someone wrote an RMA Module to hook the SWI and fake it out based on the name of the calling process. Tied to the machine? Not any more! It even emulated an ID chip on machines which never had one (A3000 anyone?) meaning such encumbered software could be copied amongst machines quite easily. A few network apps were -- I'm told -- a bit more sneaky: sending broadcast pings every couple of minutes to see if another machine was running with the same HWID... Oh yes indeed. I'm a software developer by trade.. pirating software seems really, really hypocritical to me. Illegal, immoral, name it. Though if I've bought a valid licence without a time limit, I want to use it, irrespective of whether the developer still exists, or if they'd rather sell me V2.0 than activate my copy of V1.5. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/