CRONEJP@UREGINA1.BITNET (08/31/87)
Its begining to look like I'm posting more flames to this
newsgroup than anything else.....
Incidendtly this is A LONG posting....
I'd like to think that I make some valid points in
it, but if you have an allergy to long Flames that
are targeting Companies with pain in the ass Copy Protection policies.
Then avoid this message...
now on to the Flames..
Anyways....
I just figured I'd post this to warn people about a product
thats been out for a couple of months which I've had no
end of trouble with.....
The company is MicroProse and the product is Silent Service
Not Being into piracy, I have nothing like Maruader etc...
but products like Silent Service make me wish that I did have
maruader, the program is HEAVILY copy protected, with what appear
to be nondos tracks and the copy protection causes HEAD BANGING
on my 3.5 inch drive (thought that I'd gotten rid of that noise
when I ditched my C64 in favour of the Amiga 1000,
(in fact I believe that Silent Service was responsible for the
failure of my df0: (maybe I'm just being paranoid...))
Not being happy with just the copy protection, there is also
a KEYWORD type setup in the program....
(You have to identify a destroyer silouete (SIC) and
trust me, the differences between the destroyers are NOT readily
apparent and of course the matching pictures in the manual
are scattered ALL over the manual...)
I could ALMOST put up with the CP except for one rather major
annoying flaw in the program....
NATURALLY any intelligent Amiga user would write protect
his purchased program disks....
except that.... Silent Service doesn't like
being prevented from writing to the disk...
After a War Patrol is finished, whether you wish to record your
high score or not, the game attempts to write to the disk....
If it can't write to the disk, then it reopens the Workbench
screen and pops up the standard Can't write volume Silent service...
you cancel the operation, and the program goes back to its main
menu, NOW if you attempt to start another patrol, the program
crashes back to the deadend workbench screen....
and you have to reboot and listen to your df0: getting hammered to
death.....
if you let the thing write to the disk, then you stand a 80 percent
chance of getting a trashed disk the next time that you
fire up the game.....
Think I'm pissed off????
OF COURSE I AM.... I paid bucks for this thing, and only
the largess of my dealer in coping with the fact that
6 (THATS RIGHT SIX) of them have died on me...
has made this situation at all tolerable....
(if I had to keep sending the thing back to Microprose
I'd be able to play Silent Service about once every
three months...
I phoned MicroProse about the bugs in the thing and listed them
off to them, and the twit at the other end had the temerity
to tell me that
"We have as of this date, received NO complaints about the program"
and he told me to buy one instead of pirating it....
(I hung up in his ear, I wasn't paying long distance to Maryland
from Saskatchewan to listen to someone insult me.....)
As soon as I get another one from my dealer
the first thing I'm gonna do, is find someone with
Maurader and get this damn thing deprotected....
Because in the end run, I LOVE the damn game....
i just wish that it would quit dying on me....
I appologize for the length of this posting, however
if there is a moral to this whole story, it would
be to make sure if you buy any microprose game,
that you can copy one or two backups of the thing for yourself...
If there latest products that they are advertizing for the amiga
are as badly copy protected as Silent Service then I'd recommend
that you think five or six times before you buy it....
(that may be the number of times that you need to get it replaced...)
Jonathan Crone
<CRONEJP@UREGINA1.BITNET>
or
<CRONEJP@UREGINAV.BITNET>
NO (thats right NO) pithy saying today.....
Except for.... as a salute to monty python...
ARGH MUCK OR GLAR!!!!
rms@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG (Roger M. Shimada) (09/03/87)
In article <8CRONEJP@UREGINA1> CRONEJP@UREGINA1.BITNET writes: >I just figured I'd post this to warn people about a product >thats been out for a couple of months which I've had no >end of trouble with..... > >The company is MicroProse and the product is Silent Service Stuff about head banging, keyword protection, and that Silent Service writes to itself, and can't deal with a write-protect. I'll mention how it will hang if you cruise too long. Stupid piece of junk. >Think I'm pissed off???? >OF COURSE I AM.... I paid bucks for this thing, and only >the largess of my dealer in coping with the fact that >6 (THATS RIGHT SIX) of them have died on me... >has made this situation at all tolerable.... ... >Jonathan Crone My first copy of Silent died on me days after purchase. I sent it back and also ordered a backup copy. (Despite all the flack about this poorly implemented product.) Wound up doing the following: Write-protect Silent Service. Make a copy with Marauder, whatever. (I.e., a copy that by no copy protection standards is identical.) Boot Silent Service. Shudder at head banging. Once to the main menu, replace original with copy. Play normally. I like the stupid #$$!!@@@ game too much too. I'll send a nasty letter when I get a chance. Roger Shimada ihnp4!meccts!rms rms@MECC.MN.ORG
fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (09/04/87)
Jonathon Crone posted a long article complaining about the problems
caused by the copy protection on Silent Service (MicroProse). He is
absolutely right! I would never have bought the game if I hadn't been able
to defeat the copy protection. Fortunately Marauder II does a fine job.
It not only gives you a non-protected copy on a standard DOS disk, it
strips out the "Identify the silhouette" protection scheme.
Silent Service is a great game but the copy protection doubles its
cost, because you also have to buy Marauder II. MicroProse would sell a
lot more of them if they didn't have such an objectionable copy protection
scheme.
It's a real shame when legitimate users who purchase a program have to
turn to programs like Marauder II (which, incidentally, is a fine program)
to protect their investment in software. That kind of additional cost
shouldn't be necessary. But because of firms like MicroProse lots of
people who aren't pirates have to buy Marauder II.
--Fabbian Dufoe
350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
813-823-2350
UUCP: ...gatech!codas!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3 kent@xanth.UUCP (09/06/87)
In article <153@jc3b21.UUCP> fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) writes: > > Jonathon Crone posted a long article complaining about the problems >caused by the copy protection on Silent Service (MicroProse). He is >absolutely right! I would never have bought the game if I hadn't been able >to defeat the copy protection. Fortunately Marauder II does a fine job. >It not only gives you a non-protected copy on a standard DOS disk, it >strips out the "Identify the silhouette" protection scheme. > > Silent Service is a great game but the copy protection doubles its >cost, because you also have to buy Marauder II. MicroProse would sell a >lot more of them if they didn't have such an objectionable copy protection >scheme. > > It's a real shame when legitimate users who purchase a program have to >turn to programs like Marauder II (which, incidentally, is a fine program) >to protect their investment in software. That kind of additional cost >shouldn't be necessary. But because of firms like MicroProse lots of >people who aren't pirates have to buy Marauder II. > > >--Fabbian Dufoe Now I'm a little hot. Marauder II claims to be a tool for legitimate disk backup. Sorry, I just don't see _any_ reason to remove "keyword from manual" protection except piracy. The folks that have been nice enough to remove disk drive homoginizer copy protection schemes in favor of keyword from manual schemes, to let you do your own backups and run from hard disks, have every reason to be furious (not to mention filing lawsuits for abetting of a felony) with the makers of Marauder II. Sorry, but I have yet to see a keyword in manual scheme so tough that it wasn't worth typing in the words just to help keep the makers of a decent game in business long enough to produce their next game. Notice that, so far as I can tell, _no_ on disk protection scheme can work against the teenage kid who is willing to filezap or disassemble the whole game to remove copy protection. Nor can any dongle or keyword in manual scheme long survive such a determined attack. Every program that I have ever heard of for the Amiga is readily available in pirated form, which makes all forms of copy protection a bad joke on the users by the vendor. I just don't think that a manufacturer providing the service of backing up disks whose original vendor tried to interfere with backups, a laudable goal, should also sully itself removing legitimate theft protection schemes that do not interfere with the normal use of the software. Notice the difference. Weird tracks and obscure or unreadable files are copy protection schemes. Dongles and keyword in manual schemes allow copies, they are theft protection schemes. It would be a good idea to keep the two clearly distinguished in our minds. Comments? Kent, the man from xanth.
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (09/07/87)
In article <2380@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >In article <153@jc3b21.UUCP> fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) writes: >> >> Jonathon Crone posted a long article complaining about the problems >>caused by the copy protection on Silent Service (MicroProse). He is [...] >>shouldn't be necessary. But because of firms like MicroProse lots of >>people who aren't pirates have to buy Marauder II. >> >> >>--Fabbian Dufoe >Now I'm a little hot. I dont want to hear about your sex life. > Marauder II claims to be a tool for legitimate disk >backup. Sorry, I just don't see _any_ reason to remove "keyword from manual" >protection except piracy. The folks that have been nice enough to remove >disk drive homoginizer copy protection schemes in favor of keyword from manual >schemes, to let you do your own backups and run from hard disks, have every >reason to be furious (not to mention filing lawsuits for abetting of a felony) >with the makers of Marauder II. Sorry, but I have yet to see a keyword in >manual scheme so tough that it wasn't worth typing in the words just to help >keep the makers of a decent game in business long enough to produce their next >game. > > >Comments? You bet. My first comment is, Kent you silly person. My second comment is, if I own a legitimate copy of a copyrighted work, I cannot copy it. If its software I cant make a copy of it and give it to a friend, if its a book, I cant xerox a chapter and give it to somebody, or if we are talking about paintings, I cant reproduce them by taking a photo, or it looks like i cant even sit in front of it with Dpaint and *copy* it. But. I can take my legitimate copy of a copyrighted painting, and deface it with a magic marker eight ways from Sunday. Its *my* copy. The copyright means I can't *COPY* it. I didnt copy it. Did you sign an agreement when you bought your software promising you would not *change* it ? This is not an issue of piracy or marauder, this is what rights do you have to the software you purchased. Kent, I looked up xant in the dictionary, and it said: "yellow" So: >Kent, the man from xanth should be: > >Kent, the man from yellow. Sorry about that. -- Richard Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard "It's too dark to put the key in my ignition..."
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (09/08/87)
Mail is broken through uhnix1 or academ, so I'm posting this here. To: Kent (the man from Xanth). If you had been following this discussion you would have noted that the keyword protection scheme in Silent Service involves identifying an ambiguous silhouette of a combat vessel of some sort. There have been at least two people complaining about the difficulty of this task. I presume that you have to do this anyway during the course of the game, but I think it a little steep for them to expect you to master the game before you can start playing it. -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- 'U` <-- Public domain wolf.