gm@trsvax (09/25/85)
This was an article which appeared in this week's (Sep 24) "PC Week". I
thought it was kind of funny. Reproduced without permission, of course.
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What do you do when your program summarily announces that it is "Trashing
Program Disk"? It happened to us while we were reviewing Microsoft Access--a
new telecommunication program. We had diligently performed the hard-disk
installation and had successfully run the program a dozen or more times.
Suddenly we were assaulted with an error message that struck fear into our
hearts:
Internal Security Violation
The tree of evil bears bitter fruit
Crime does not pay
The Shadow knows
And finally the punchline: "Trashing Program Disk." Since the "program
disk" was our system's hard disk, this was no laughing matter. Luckily,
Access didn't really destroy all our work--it merely deepened our animosity
toward copy protection.
Microsoft's response was unsatisfactory. "Don't worry about it," a
spokesman said, "It really doesn't do any damage."
That's debatable. Clearly, Microsoft's snide message is intended to be
displayed when copy protection is circumvented. When sloppy programming
allows such foolishness to frighten and insult a legitimate user, however,
that's unforgivable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------bill@persci.UUCP (09/27/85)
> > What do you do when your program summarily announces that it is "Trashing > Program Disk"? It happened to us while we were reviewing Microsoft Access--a Call your lawyer. If you bought it legitimately, you could have quite a field day. -- William Swan {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill
sdo@celerity.UUCP (Steve Oualline) (10/02/85)
In article <53400078@trsvax> gm@trsvax writes: > > What do you do when your program summarily announces that it is "Trashing >Program Disk"? It happened to us while we were reviewing Microsoft Access--a >new telecommunication program. We had diligently performed the hard-disk >installation and had successfully run the program a dozen or more times. >Suddenly we were assaulted with an error message that struck fear into our >hearts: > > Internal Security Violation > The tree of evil bears bitter fruit > Crime does not pay > The Shadow knows > > And finally the punchline: "Trashing Program Disk." If this happened to me I would write the following letter to Microsoft: Dear Microsoft, I was running a legal copy of Microsfot Access when it displayed the message "Trashing Program Disk". The program disk I was using was my 40 meg hard disk. I examined the disk and it looked like all my programs and data were intact. However I could not be sure that your program did not trash any of the program or data files by modifing them is a subtle way. I had to re-install all the programs that were on my hard disk to insure that they were ok. I also had to examine all my data files to make sure that your program did not trash them. This process took 5 hours of my time. Your neglience in allowing such a program to exist and the malicious error message that resulted cost me 5 hours of time. My time is worth $25.00 an hour, so you owe me $125.00. If I do not receive a check within two weeks I will turn this matter over to the courts. Sincerely Joe User --------------------------------- If they did not respond within 2 weeks, I would file suit in small claims court. Software manufactures should never install malicious copy protection in their software. We as users must take strong action against this type of programming.