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Showing posts from January, 2007

Discussion: Consumer Software Activation and Try&Buy

Consumer Software Activation and Try&Buy over the web are the two most powerful and pervasive usage models of machine locked copy control as demonstrated by the models almost exclusive use by the worlds top software publishing companies including Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe and Intuit. Other forms of digital distribution and online license management are very popular and in common use, however these two simpler forms of machine locked copy control have proven to be the only realistic options when large numbers of consumer customers are involved are large scale site or OEM licensing of software. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents 1. Summary of common types of digital copy control for software publishing. 2. Criteria for evaluation of Activation and Try&Buy technologies 3. Table comparing popular Activation and Try and Buy Technologies. -----------------------------------------------

Personal

Listing of some of the research articles and stories relating to Dirt Bike riding, surfing and playing music: Listing of riding spots I've researched around Southern California Listing of Helmet Camera's for use in dirt bike riding A compilation of clips from the web regarding old riding buddy Geoff Eldridge , the former Publisher and Editor of Australian Dirt Bike Magazine. He was one of Australia's best Enduro riders and a good friend to all that got to know him and ride with him.

Inventions

1984 Interactive teaching method for teaching musical instruments - this system used a combination of cassette recording and quick lesson notes to speed the development of customized learning for people learning musical instruments. 1986 - 1992 PC Online - a pre internet community of connected modems enabling the exchange of artwork for advertisements in local newspapers. Interactive CD multimedia - Using Apples Hypercard software Ric developed a system of interactive CD presentations that synced with commercial Audio CD's. One example product was an interactive version of the B-52's Love Shack album that would display relavent technical, trivia and liner notes as the CD was played in an Apple Macs CD player. The floppy disk with the software was sold with the Audio CD. Hypercard controller for Fairlight music computer - Ric developed a Mac based control system for the popular $100,000 music computer called the Fairlight which used a complicated user un-friendly control system

Inventor of Activation

Is Ric Richardson the inventor of Activation? Well judge for yourself. Ric's patent US patent 5,490,216 was written and claimed in November 1992 and granted in 1996 at least 3-4 years before copies of Activation protected products from Microsoft started to turn up. At the time many people thopught it was some kind of magic. "People use to think we has a secret video watching them put unlock codes in" said one of Rics early coworkers Steve Cox. Have a look for yourself... especially interesting is the patents reference to machine locking of licenses to sepcific devices using the machines hardware configuration. And just to think that most of todays popular software products use this same principle to protect themselves from uncontorlled copying... to date it has been 15 years and counting.
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