RC> I cant really blame any of the software vendors from 
 RC> protecting their licenses, any more than a municipal 
 RC> cable TV system going after those that steal cable TV.

 RC> As for the Tax software, for every 6 copies used last 
 RC> year, only 2 were legit purchases, at least from what I 
 RC> heard..

Copy protection has been tried over and over again since I started using
PC's in 1981 and has never gone over well. Several articles have revealed
that the C-Dilla/Safecast program being used by Intuit runs as a Service
under Win2k & XP, using 1.4mb of memory and continues running even
after Turbotax has been uninstalled. Intuit was finally pressured into
posting an uninstall program for the C-Dilla program. It also writes data
into unused sectors in the drive partition table area. A partition backup
would not save the activation data so after restoring the partition it
would have to be activated again. I don't have much use for companies that
are doing unknown things to my drive, especially if they don't cleanup
after an uninstall.

Bob Bainbridge 
bob_bainbridge{at}prodigy.net

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