Structuring The Forum

[sayzer]

....Personally, if I was running Crownhill, any customer of mine would get a password to access my forums...

Personally, if I were running Crownhill, I would consider password-access for the future - not at this time. By at this time I mean the next 4-5 yrs.

Look at Microsoft; they made their products widely available and did not push very much on crack issues or widely available password combinations.
Their products have become as "need" for office environment.

Now, they will no longer allow crack or pirate software of theirs to be run.
They allowed it purposely up to now to have people learn it, use it, access it, find it for free…but starting from 2007, it will no longer be possible as the validity will be continuously checked online. I see their strategy as a highly intelligent investment that was made years ago, and now they are harvesting.

By the way, their stock price from 2007 will have a significant trend as addicted people will have no choice but pay for their products.

Good example for the others.


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[mister_e]

But as all human made stuff, another one will crack it. Nothing is 100% safe, there's always a method. always

[malc-c]

There have been orgainisations and individuals who hate Microsoft for what it is or for no reason at all, but still like the fact that any product (not just Microsofts) can and will be cracked or circumvented. Its not just the expensive mainstream products, sometimes software costing as little as $20 will have a key gen or serial patch made if the software proves popular.

Whilst its nice of Crownhill to make the forum available to everyone and not just its customers, and at a finacial loss according to Melanie, I suspect that there is some return where people end up making a purchase based on the support it finds in these forums be that a PIC chip or something more expensive.

[sayzer]

As programmers, we all know that there is no such thing as “crack”.

There is “finding the key” or “finding the pass code”; but never there has been a “crack”!

It is, technically, possible to find the key for 128-bit encoded message.
Even for 512, 1-Mbit or more.

But, practically, it is not that easy.

If all computers in the world come together and work for us continuously, it will take at least a decade to find the key for 64-bit encoded message (somebody did try that already).

Now imagine, by the time you find the key just for 64-bit with all that computer power, we will be using 1-Mbit of encoding.


Take a look at Crownhill.
They are now providing a USB key which is a hardware key (still there are ways to go around it).
MS or any other well recognized products could also use hardware key. But they have never considered it. This is their strategy and it is working well.

IF the owner of Crownhill takes a step forward and makes its product free for schools, for the next, say, 5 yrs, THEN afterwards there will be millions of potential users in the market; but by the time they become potential users it will not be free. Repeat this every 10 yrs (5+5) and have more and more potential users for the future.


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