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Subject: 
Re: Lego Creator Success
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.fun
Date: 
Sat, 9 Jan 1999 07:09:29 GMT
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Joshua Delahunty <dulcaoin@alumni.cse.ucsc.edu> wrote:
Requiring the CD in something that amounts to a game or home fun
program is the norm, no matter how much you install.

Not anymore, IMHO.

Well, opinions, humble or otherwise, are mostly irrelevant with
respect to this.  I buy a ton of games and "home" software and get to
use even more because my friend works at Babbages and he lets me try
some things before he buys them for me with his discount.  With the
exception of multiplayer-specific games that allow some sort of
spawning or use of an audio CD during play, the vast majority of your
games, card-making, goof-off home-type software (which is what Creator
is) require the CD in the drive.  It's a simple and mostly effective
(for most people) anti-piracy device.

Yes, it can be a pain, but it is the norm.  There are exceptions, of
course, but they are exceptions.

I can't think of one piece of CD software I own (all entertainment
titles) where I can't either install it all to the hard drive directly,
install it all the hard drive and change the drive letter in an .INI
file, or at the very least use virtual CD software to not require the
use of the CD as a dongle.  Certainly not any that can't be backed-up.

Well, there you're talking about *you* taking steps to circumvent the
CD checks.  That doesn't mean having the checks isn't still the norm,
it means a good many of them are almost laughably easy to defeat and
you've found ways to do it.  I do it myself, mostly just because I
have so freakin many CD's, on the order of a couple hundred or so that
I would consider games or apps that I "currently" use (I just put
Warcraft 2 in the old box a while back, but much newer stuff went that
way long ago).

Except for Creator.

You and I are on the same page with this, BTW.  I've noted your
mentioning your inability to assert your rights to make a backup of the
software, and that in itself is a major reason that this copy protection
scheme was a bad idea.

Yeah, not trying to be argumentative here, but I can't be mad about
them requiring the CD in the drive.  It IS irritating, but the backup
issue is much more customer-unfriendly.

It burns me up, that's for sure.  I can tell you this - if ANYTHING
ever happens to my Creator CD I am going to hold TLG to the same
replacement policy they provide for lego pieces.  It's their fault you
and I can't back this thing up, not ours.  So if it gets scratched or
damaged, they can foot the bill for replacing it.

The biggest reason I feel negative about the situation, however, is
that  placing non-standard data tracks on the CD has rendered the
software UNUSABLE on standard machines.  My drive is NEC.  It's nearly
brand-new.  I would expect that this sort of "digital trickery" would
fail on at least SOME drives, and that's makes the scheme a bad idea.
The fact that the drives are high-speed CD and DVD-ROM drives is even
worse.  The folks with the faster hardware (and therefore most likely to
get the best speeds out of the software) can be unable to even launch
it.  Grrr.

I haven't noticed any problems with Creator with respect to its funky
track layout, and I've installed it and used it on everything from an
old IDE 8X CD to a new 32X IDE and my Plextor 12-20X SCSI CDROM.

I'd also point out that this situation didn't occur with LEGO Island,
which is ironic to me since Creator is -- at least potentially -- much
more interesting software to me.  They didn't try this with any of the
Mindstorms software or the 8299 software either.  Perhaps those titles
wouldn't be as interesting as pirate material, but it is an unbalanced
approach.

I bought Lego Island and returned it within the hour.  :)  No reason
to back it up.  It is strange - and something I can't stand.

--
Unofficial listing of weekly US Lego Shop at Home phone specials
http://www.lugnet.com/lsahs/
800-835-4386 (S@H USA) / 800-267-5346 ext 222 (S@H Canada)
www.lugnet.com/news/ - Focused discussion groups for LEGO fans worldwide



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Lego Creator Success
 
(...) Whoops. Dunno what I was thinking. I didn't really respond to what you wrote, but rather to something like "having <copy protection> in something that amounts to <entertainment software> is the norm, not matter how much you install." In my (...) (26 years ago, 10-Jan-99, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Lego Creator Success
 
(...) Not anymore, IMHO. (...) I can't think of one piece of CD software I own (all entertainment titles) where I can't either install it all to the hard drive directly, install it all the hard drive and change the drive letter in an .INI file, or (...) (26 years ago, 9-Jan-99, to lugnet.general)

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