Thread: win 96 key
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Old 06-05-2009, 03:09 PM
DonS DonS is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Santa Clara, CA
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As long as we're bringing up 15-month-old posts...

Quote:
"We all know that we could sell our keys over and over on eBay"
Someone is currently doing just that. I guess he's not concerned that his personal information (name, email address, postal address) is in the information he's "selling".

Quote:
If the developer was truly worried about people passing around keys he would have purchased one of a thousand different security wrappers that eliminate the possibility of passing keys. The wrapper currently used (armadillo) offers none of this protection.
Actually, Armadillo does offer that, and Win96 used it prior to 01 March 2004. From the initial release until March 2004, keys were "hardware locked" - registration keys depended on a "hardware value" that was compiled from several machine-specific sources. A key generated for one PC wouldn't likely work on another. Unfortunately, that became a major headache - for me and for users. Moving to a new machine, or even replacing a network card, could invalidate a registration key. So, I switched from the "hardware locked" keys to keys based on "personal information".

EDIT: When the key system changed in March 2004, every registered user was invited via email to get a new, non-hardware-based key. Nearly all users took advantage of that; some did not (and now, more than 5 years later, seem to be discovering that their 5-year-old keys aren't working with new versions of Win96).

EDIT2: And some, who requested and were sent a new "non-hardware-based" key, are saying their original keys don't work... instead of using the "new format" keys they were sent in early March 2004.

Last edited by DonS; 06-05-2009 at 03:14 PM..
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