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Re: Demo Functionality
>>>>> "Fred" == Fred Salerno <salernof@gate.net> writes:
In article <Pine.A32.3.91.960415143330.47286A-100000@navajo.gate.net> Fred Salerno <salernof@gate.net> writes:
Fred> Its good to see many functions are disabled in the demo like
Fred> writing to floppies, formatting, and the command keys. I
Fred> just came across the crack for Executor which is supposed to
Fred> work with 199o,p and q, and its about time the "hackers"
Fred> were outsmarted. Makes you wonder how many illegal copies
Fred> are being used out there...
We knew from day one that Executor as we produced it would be easy to
crack. We didn't want to get into an escalating game of cat and mouse
with the crackers because they have too much free time on their hands;
we'd spend more time making Executor better than carefully monitoring
them and putting in more elaborate and sophisticated anti-cracking
code.
Once Executor 2 is a final deal and we have CD-ROMs sent out to
everyone and every new purchase of Executor 2 results in a CD-ROM
being sent out, then Executor will feel more like a commercial product
rather than "shareware", which it never was meant to be. We'll then
be able to make updating programs available via the net that update
the paid for version of Executor and we'll largely be back to where we
were before we hacked out features in Executor 2.
I think Executor is especially prone to piracy because many people
will rationalize not wanting to pay for it because it doesn't yet run
all Mac programs or because they only use it occassionally. This is
sad because we spend money very effectively over here. If we can
boost our current revenue up by a factor of four once Executor 2 is
out then we'll make substantial progress in the remainder of 1996.
I'm sure pirates couldn't care less, but the good thing is a lot of
readers of this newsgroup *do* care. We're very happy with our
customer relations and we look forward to the day when Executor starts
getting international exposure (we'll be sending beta1 CD-ROMs to
press people around the world).
So yes, people who have cracked Executor are marginally annoying, but
don't let them get you down.
>> The beta demo is unable to format or write to floppies. That
>> functionality has been intentionally removed from the demo to
>> encourage people to purchase the full-featured version.
--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com
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