On Thursday 30 August 2012 10:29:43 Kent A. Reed did opine: > On 8/30/2012 12:22 AM, Jon Elson wrote: > > Igor Chudov wrote: > >> I have this CNC plasma cutting table here: > >> > >> <...> > >> Supposedly, what is wrong with it is that someone stole a laptop with > >> a USB key that made this table work. > >> > >> <...> > > > > Plasma cutting is not rocket science. X, Y and torch on/off. Maybe > > torch height control, > > but many older machines did not have it. What motors and drives does > > it have? > > If those can be isolated, it might be easier to do a LinuxCNC retrofit > > than try to > > obtain a copy of the software and license key. > > > > Jon > > Granted my experience is now more than 10 years old because I began to > refuse to accept software that required a USB dongle to operate, but the > software that was being so carefully protected often turned out to be > immutable crap. Changing to LinuxCNC gets you freedom. > > Besides, getting another USB dongle means you now have another dongle to > lose or break:-) > > Regards, > Kent
I'm with Kent here. The last time we had a dongle protected software in a position of importance at the tv station, it was an A/B Roll editor from Ring Video Systems, ran on an amiga and had some sort of transparent parport dongle. Supposedly you could still use the parport but we never did. You don't print "video" to anything but tapes or hard drives. The dongles were crap, failing in a few months & it never took less than a month to get another. When the 3rd one failed, they had no more & had to go run down the guy that wrote the code and confiscate his. I'm thinking that a contract coder was all he/she ever was at that point and it was time to bail. But at the time, they were the only game in town. At that point I demanded a dongle free version of it, so they went back to the coder to get it. That was an instant Autocrash. 3 times, which took about a week each time around that loop. In the meantime I had sent the original code to a gent in .de land who knew a bit about amiga's, and he sent it back the next day all fixed up. I called RVS after their 3rd try failed and informed them that we had cracked the program and that it was running just fine, and dared them to take _any_ legal action because we had documented the dog & pony show they were and would counter sue for heavy duty civil damages if we ever heard or saw a thing. I think they must have crawled back under their rock because I never heard of them again. No more little 1" advs in the trade papers either. When I am getting screwed, the whole world WILL hear about it. Or as much as has an internet connection... Its the same when I find something that Just Works(TM). Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself. -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
