piracy
SOPA and PIPA are two pieces of proposed legislation designed to "stop" Internet piracy… in the most hamfisted way imaginable. As Mitchell Baker explains: Assume there's a corner store in your neighborhood that rents movies. But the movie industry believes that some or even all of
software development
If you’re at all familiar with computer history, you might have heard of Bill Gates’ famous 1976 letter to the Homebrew Computer Club. The letter was written to address rampant piracy of Bill ’s earliest product, Altair BASIC, which was being passed around quite freely by hobbyists in paper
security
Software is digital through and through, and yet there's one unavoidable aspect of software installation that remains thoroughly analog: entering the registration key. The aggravation is intentional. Unique registration keys exist only to prevent piracy. Like all piracy solutions-- short of completely server hosted applications and games, where
security
Microsoft has finally activated the most aggressive part of their Windows Genuine Advantage program -- active notifications. After downloading the latest Windows updates, if your Windows cd-key doesn't validate against Microsoft's online database of cd-keys, you may be greeted with this unpleasant five-second mandatory delay dialog