www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,50688,00.html
Servicemen in Iraq * 40 Western Firm Pulls Staff from Yanbu; Cautions * 41 Gunmen Kill Settler, Four Daughters Amid Gaza Vote * 42 American Trucker Free After 3 Weeks as Iraq Hostage * 43 More Breaking News * 44 Wire Service Photo Gallery Tech Jobs Partner 45 Today's the Day. But it is unlikely that Apple imagined people would walk into computer stores, plug their iPod into display computers and use it to copy software off the hard drives. This is exactly the scenario recently witnessed by Kevin Webb at a Dallas 46 CompUSA store. Webb, a computer consultant from Dallas, was browsing his local CompUSA when he saw a young man walk toward him listening to an 47 iPod. The teenager stopped at a nearby display Macintosh, pulled the iPod from his pocket and plugged it into the machine with a FireWire cable. Intrigued, Webb peeped over the kid's shoulder to see him copying Microsoft's new Office for OS X suite, which retails for $500. When the iPod is plugged into a Macintosh, its icon automatically pops up on the desktop. To copy software, all the kid had to do was drag and drop files onto the iPod's icon. Unsure whether the kid was a thief or an out-of-uniform employee, Webb watched as he left the store. And while the iPod has a built-in anti-piracy mechanism that prevents music files from being copied from one computer to another, it has no such protections for software. Ironically, Microsoft has pioneered an easy-to-use installation scheme on the Mac that makes its Mac software relatively easy to pilfer. The company is known for its sometimes heavy-handed, anti-piracy mechanisms in such products as Windows XP. When installing Office, users simply drag and drop the Office folder to their hard drive. Everything is included, including a self-repair mechanism that replaces critical files in the system folder. By contrast, a lot of software on the Windows platform relies on a bunch of system files that are only installed during an installation process. Simply copying an application from one machine to another will not work. Plus, getting a copy of the software application is only half the battle: most software won't work without a registration number. Usable serial numbers, however, are readily available on Usenet, IRC, Hotline and applications like Hacks and Cracks. As well as any external FireWire drive, there are now a number of tiny key-chain drives that plug into computers' USB ports, like M-Systems' 48 DiskOnKey and Trek2000's 49 ThumbDrive. Some are available with up to one gigabyte of storage space. However, most USB ports are a lot slower than FireWire, requiring the virtual shoplifter to hang around while the ill-gotten gains are transferring. CompUSA and other computer stores could take a few simple steps to prevent software from being copied, said Mac expert Dave Horrigan, who writes a syndicated Macintosh column. Any Mac can easily be configured to allow changes only by administrators, he said. Also, a system profile tool logs all peripheral equipment, but it must be running to log an iPod. For Macs running OS X, a locked dummy file in an application's package will protect the entire file from being copied without a password. But Horrigan didn't think the iPod presents a serious piracy threat to Microsoft, and doubted the company would take special measures to prevent in-store copying. Dennis Lloyd, publisher of iPod fan site 50 iPodlounge, also said this is the first time he'd heard of an iPod put to such use. Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of the Lycos 80 Privacy Policy and 81 Terms & Conditions Note: You are reading this message either because you can not see our css files (served from Akamai for performance reasons), or because you do not have a standards-compliant browser.
|
http://csua.com/feed/