just saw the worrying Poseidon news

[Rassilon]

@T-Bone

When Hodges learned this, he gave Elbox a choice, either remove the code and APOLOGISE to their customers, or go fish. Elbox REFUSED to apologise, and decided, of their own free will, to go fish. This decision was %100 Elbox.

When I learned that Elbox had this code in their drivers, I was surprised, but not worried. I have had a mediator for a couple of years now with a Gfx card/TVCard/Soundcard/Ethernet card and have had NO problems with drivers trashing my HDD.

So as such I feel no need to have Elbox apologise to me.

While I agree that it might not have been the wisest move to include the anti-piracy code, now they have removed it I don't see why CH got so upset.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

@AmiGR

I have developed 1 or two programs on my miggy (including progs for the Elbox TVCard drivers) , so through testing I have had my fair share of crashes.

In all this time I have not had Elbox's RDB trashing code activate at all.

If I was cynical I would say that the anti-piracy code was a convenient excuse for CH, after all he has a number of other possibly (<----note the word possibly) conflicting companies using his software!.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

@T_Bone

How is that an incentive to block Elbox? A license is a license. Makes no difference to Chris who the card is licensed to, he gets his fee.

Now I'm not saying that this is the same situation, but look at the last time Elbox had a contract with a driver supplier.... CGFX..... and look what happened, another company nullified there contract by arranging an exclusive contract.

You ask why someone might do that? for money, why else!

As for the anti-piracy code it was an easy get out clause, that enabled CH to cancel the contract. Elbox removed the code and things were ok for a while, then CH decided out of the blue that he didn't want to support Elbox any more.

TBH the only way CH could lose out in the Elbox deal is if someone pirated a keyfile, otherwise anyone that purchased a Spider card has to register Posiedon to get any proper use out of it.

Now you would argue that if Elbox had purchased an OEM agreement the piracy wouldn't have happened and CH would have got his money, but look at my previous point with CGFX, Elbox lost out, MONEY, becuase a supplier back stabbed them.

Now you wonder why they appraoch other suppliers with a cynical attitude!

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

Hi Chris,

(Please note that I have a mediator with gfx card/sound card etc, but not USB card from any supplier)

Having read your Soap Opera I can only conclude that you over reacted.

I understand your concern over the anti-piracy code, but as it was removed by Elbox that should have been the end of the issue. Your insistance of a public apology, (when no one had accidently activated the anti-piracy code) was unecessary, and a poor excuse for removing support.

At the end of the day you did yourself a dis-service by not continuing the keyfile system. Had you continued it you would not have lost money, only made some from registrations from Spider users.

Just because an unscroupulous individual decides to hack your USB stack it is not down to Elbox, and unfairly penalises users that have already registered or would like to register posiedon. To blaim them without proof for the hack is childish not to mention silly, and makes you out to be paranoid (which i am sure you are not).

It would be nice to think that you will reconsider for the users sake. (Please note that I am not doing this on my behalf as I have an A1 and await OS4 with its stack). Instead I am suggesting that you reconsider for the benefit of the users, yourself, and the Amgia community.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

@T_Bone

Even when the whole trojan incident happened, Chris *could* have walked away from the contract, but he didn't, he asked them to apologise, which was a VERY easy thing to do for Elbox. Chris didn't even have to do that. Elbox had a way out, a damned easy one at that, and didn't take it.

I think you should look up the meaning of the word trojan, as it doesn't describe Elbox's anti-piracy code.

We both know why Elbox did not appologise
- They didn't believe what they did was wrong, after all they were trying to safegaurd their investment.
- Apologising is admission of guilt leaving them open to being sued.

Now I'm not saying that what they did was right, but they removed the code from the driver, the code that was the cause of CH concern. THERE problem solved, any further requests were for his own gratification.

If one person can come forward with the legitimate and proveable occurence of the Elbox code going awry (without them hacking it!) then we may start to get somewhere. But until then there is no point in Elbox appologising for something that as far as we know hasn't happened.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

Hi Xeron,

you wrote:

He wasn't asking them to apologise for the code triggering, he was asking them to apologise for the codes existance, which is known and proven. I think Chris' problem was Elbox maintaining that they had done nothing wrong.

I understand that, and I wrote in a previous message they won't do that because it would leave them open to legal action.

As I said before I don't condone their practise, but I understand why they did it, and as far as we know no-one has been a victim of it. (Yes it would be very difficult to prove anyway)

But I know that you have developed lots of software, so you should have experienced the odd developmental crash  ;-) has any triggered the elbox code to your knowledge?

I think its highly unlikely that anyone could trigger it unknowingly without resorting to unscroupulous means.

I just don't see why the public appology was such a big thing to CH.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

Hi Xeron,

as I said in my previous posts I don't condone their methods.

I just understand why they wanted to include an anti-piracy deterrent, and why they haven't appologised ie.e legal problems

With regard to whether you had managed to trigger the code through programming experiments accidentaly  - I was trying to show that if a programmer (who by nature would have more crashes than a normal user) hasn't triggered the code, then it would be highly unlikely that a user could.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

by AmiGR on 2003/11/19 15:44:04
They had NO contract with VFD...

Well thats untrue. Elbox provided Frank Mariak with an A1200 tower complete with Mediator, Voodoo3 card and development docs. They did that because they had a contract. I don't know whether it was written or verbal, I imagine it was written (as in email)

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

@Chris Hodges

What confuses me in this matter, is that you went along with their bundling option for a good while before you requested that they highlight the unregistered nature of the version of poseidon that was available.

If I was being cynical I would ask why it suited you originally but not now?

As for using the feature list, while again I can understand you wanting to protect your property, their marketing of the spider was netting YOU registrations. So you shot yourself in the foot?!?

If they were to market the Spider card as- A USB2 card - it wouldn't sell many because it doesn't mention any benefits.

By marketing the card with the featurelist of the available USB stack it seems much more attractive. So why would you want Elbox to sell fewer Spider cards? It would mean you get less registrations. It doesn't seem (on the surface at least) to add up.

Rassilon

[Rassilon]

@Neko

If CH wants to make any money from Elbox Spider registrations then it is in his interests to let them use the poseidon feature list.

As it was CH who approached Elbox to use the Posiedon stack, and they produced the drivers, and indeed he would also benefit from sales of Spider cards through Poseidon registration he's done pretty well so far.

If I told you that you could buy my car and that it had a V8 engine and certain bhp, 6-CD changer, and certain add-ons like a chrome gear stick handle and bucket seats: BUT ONLY IF YOU FIT THEM YOURSELF AFTERWARDS ON YOUR OWN TIME AND MONEY, you wouldn't buy it, would you?

Uh-huh, if I told you that you could buy a DVD from me and I told you that you can skip between the different sections of a film, BUT ONLY IF YOU BUY A DVD PLAYER, you wouldn't buy it, would you? - Oh yeah thats how it works in real life.

Sometimes things are quite as clear cut as we would all like to believe!

Rassilon