Preventing date rollback

[Dan Packman]

In article <333 at bria> mike at bria.UUCP (Michael Stefanik) writes:
>In article <1991Jan7.201353.17937 at nas.nasa.gov> vancleef at nas.nasa.gov (Robert E. Van Cleef) writes:
>...
>>Software protection schemes that are tied to system hardware numbers, such 
>>as ethernet addresses or CPU ID numbers are just as bad - all it takes is a 
>>visit from your friendly hardware field engineer to break everything. 
>
>If you are doing something like swapping motherboards, then simply let the
>software company know in advance what you are doing, and I'm sure they'll 
>accomodate you.  If you want to take the attitude of "why should I have to 
>call someone else when I'm changing something on my machine", then you're
>living in a vacuum, and your expectations will never be met.
>...
Good points on both sides. One common scenario is the system fails from
a hardware problem.  The field engineer comes in and swaps out the faulty
board (eg, ethernet).  The system is rebooted.  The copy-protected software
fails because it is keyed to a number that changed when the board was swapped
out.  If one were *planning* a hardware change, then it behooves one to contact
the software company in advance.  This is not always possible.  In this latter
case it is clear that protection schemes should be tied to numbers that
don't change often and the company should be available in real time to get
software up again after such an unanticipated hardware change.

>technoignorami (tek'no-ig'no-ram`i) a group of individuals that are constantly
>found to be saying things like "Well, it works on my DOS machine ..."
^^^ We have a problem with individuals like this too...


Dan Packman     NCAR                         INTERNET: pack at ncar.UCAR.EDU
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