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There are companies that provide services like this such as SafeDisc[^] and SecuROM[^] (http://www.securom.com/[^]).
There are also companies that provide USB key protection like Nexcopy[^] and KeyLok[^].
You could include some form of serial number, and you can obfuscate your code to discourage reverse engineering. and you could include a live validation check with a server you own to watch for duplicate keys.
Nothing is perfect though, there is always someone who finds a way round these things. And all of these things impact negatively on genuine paying customers.
You're better off encouraging your customers to pay through excellent support and customer service, good follow ups, regular updates and sensible prices. Forget the people who copy it, they are a minority anyway.
Simon
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If there is only one if statement that does the check, it really doesn't matter whether you use system registry, usb dongle or computer hash. Every application written in .Net can be easily decompiled and it only takes putting ! in the if statement to make an application work on every computer. Obfuscators make it more difficult but not very much. Even application written in native c++ or vb can be easily cracked. In case it's assembler that does the cracking.
The fact that general users will not be able to make necessary registry manipulation does not mean anything as usually it's crackers you crack the program and not users. Users just download them from warez websites. Crackers on the other hand have much more knowledge than general users and use advanced tools for cracking.
What I suggest is that you put checks at different places in the program and not so obvious. Having a dll called license.dll will attract crackers. On the other hand you can put some code in license.dll which looks like license check but does nothing in reality.
Good luck!
P.S. Remember that it is very difficult to make an application that can not be cracked. The only thing you can and should do is make more difficult your program to crack and put reasonable price on it so that it really does not make sense to crack it.
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Giorgi Dalakishvili wrote: Crackers on the other hand have much more knowledge than general users and use advanced tools for cracking.
Like their brains 
xacc.ide - now with TabsToSpaces support IronScheme - 1.0 beta 1 - out now! ((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))
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Giorgi Dalakishvili wrote:
What I suggest is that you put checks at different places in the program and not so obvious. Having a dll called license.dll will attract crackers. On the other hand you can put some code in license.dll which looks like license check but does nothing in reality.
I agree.
Giorgi Dalakishvili wrote: Obfuscators make it more difficult but not very much.
Sure they can. I like Skater since it allows you to obfuscate methods and properties with "unprintable" characters and can cause Reflector to crash. I'm sure there's probably ways around it, but making it more difficult can deter the lesser motivated crackers.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer
"Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
"Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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OTOH multi megabuck protection systems like SecureOmgWtfLolBbqDisk don't stop the no cd hacks for more than a few hours or days, so I'd rate it as a lost cause.
The only way to effectively limit piracy is to design an app that can't work without talking to servers owned by the company that wrote it.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots.
-- Robert Royall
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dan neely wrote: only way to effectively limit piracy is to design an app that can't work without talking to servers owned by the company that wrote it.
True. I mentioned that the other day to some guy who didn't want people to copy his app that uses a sql express database. Require your app to "phone home" and it does keep it on a leash so to speak when it is out in the wild
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer
"Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
"Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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I'm directing my reply towards the OP.
Paul Conrad wrote: Require your app to "phone home" and it does keep it on a leash so to speak when it is out in the wild Smile
Just a simple phone home isn't any more effective than any other simple in application check. You need to store either a critical portion of the data or application functionality on a remote server.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots.
-- Robert Royall
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dan neely wrote: Just a simple phone home isn't any more effective than any other simple in application check.
Totally agree. I wasn't going to go into deep details as to how I approach my copy protection methods. It's proprietary 
dan neely wrote: You need to store either a critical portion of the data or application functionality on a remote server.
That's part of it, but which parts is the question 
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer
"Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
"Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Paul Conrad wrote: Require your app to "phone home" and it does keep it on a leash so to speak when it is out in the wild
I liked the way you described it .. but certainly I would agree on that ... thats what I have been thinking of for an application of mine !
Sincerely Samer Abu Rabie
Note: Please remember to rate this post to help others whom reading it.
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Thanks. It should not be just doing an application check, but handling control of the critical parts of the app from remote as well. See dan's post, as well as my reply to him ( I would share how I protect my code, but it's a heavily guarded secret )....
BTW, my app isn't just on a leash, but has a choke collar on the leash. It really isn't getting away 
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer
"Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
"Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Sincerely Samer Abu Rabie
Note: Please remember to rate this post to help others whom reading it.
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Imagine this situation:
Multi-user system over network. When error occurs on either machine, it is logged on a single shared file across the whole system. If one machine trues to write while another one already is, then of course IOException is thrown. (file is being used by another process...)
Question: Is there any logging library that is reliable for this kind of situations? It must be able to wait and try to log the event as long as the target file is in use or for a specified time. Am I asking for too much?
Insert funny quote here.
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Hi blackjack,
well there is a library called log4net http://logging.apache.org/log4net/index.html[^].
If you read through the documentation you will find somthing called RemotingAppender or UDPAppender. What you can do with this is to send all your logging events to a special sink. This sink will get all events and could write them into a single file.
I think this is a much better way than using a shared file...
Hope this helps you a bit.
Regards
Sebastian
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SeMartens wrote: well there is a library called log4net http://logging.apache.org/log4net/index.html[^].
I haven't use this too ... but if i wanted to make it by hand I would think of some kind of queue where when a user has an error sends it to the queue which will watch that logging file ... and when the file is available it logs the error ... if it couldn't ... it waits then tries again.
Sincerely Samer Abu Rabie
Note: Please remember to rate this post to help others whom reading it.
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Depending on your situation (company network, access to a mail server, etc.), you might consider using email. It gives you the benefit of being able to add attachments, etc.
I haven't used Log4Net, but it does support emails: log4net.Appender.SmtpAppender.
Something that looks pretty similiar to Log4Net that I've used is, the logging application block from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc309506.aspx[^]
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I am getting an error loading a function from an unmanaged DLL, but I'm getting this error:
System.DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'MyLibrary.dll': The specified module could not be found.
(Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E) I have the DLL file in the project next to the source code files, and its properties are set to "copy if newer". Even "copy always" did not work. The file is there, but the application can't find it (at least in VS Debugger)! 
I tried checking File.Exists("MyLibrary.dll"), and it returns true!
Any idea what's happening? 
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Post the code you are using to load the dll.
Simon
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[DllImport("MyLibrary.dll")]void myFunction();I think I found the error: MyLibrary.dll depends on another DLL, and that other was not found. The error message is misleading.
Thanks.
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Cool. At least you figured it out.
Simon
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In C#.net
I am tring to update progressbar , text box
from thread. Please advice
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Check this[^]. Other way is to use BackgroundWorker class.
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What's the problem? Are you getting an exception? Post it with the stack trace and all the details.
You must update GUI from the main GUI thread. You can use .InvokeRequired[^] to check if you are on the GUI thread or not, and you can call .Invoke() to request that the GUI thread execute your method.
There's an article about it here[^].
Simon
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I believe the exception you are getting is a cross thread exception ... this occurs when your thread is trying to access controls in the form which are created by the main thread ... a common exception in UI especially when using threading and asynchronous calls ... read about threading ... and search for cross threading exception.
Sincerely Samer Abu Rabie
Note: Please remember to rate this post to help others whom reading it.
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Hi
I'm trying to do a logical AND between two integers (x && y) but I get the following error:
Operator && cannot be applied to operands of type 'int'
I get a similar error when converting the integers to byte.
Is there another operator/function I could use or to what should I convert the integers to be able to do the logical AND?
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