I've recently noticed Microsoft using a new approach to prevent their Age of Empires II game from being pirated. They require the original CD to be in the drive for the game to start. If you make a copy of the CD and try it, it just prompts you for the original CD. This leads me to believe that they have something special on the original CD that the program looks for when it starts. So essentially, the CD behaves like a dongle. Pretty clever, don't you think

:cool:

Chris, I love your embarassed smiley face. What sequence of characters do we need to generate it? In fact, is there a list somewhere with all the available "face" character sequences? Thanks, Alvar

I can think of a few reasons: 1. Relatively nice weather. 2. It's a more central location for European and Latin American attendees. 3. Mickey Mouse (Disney World). 4. King Kong (Universal Studios). 5. Shamu (Sea World). 6. The water parks. 7. Busch Gardens (in Tampa). 8. International drive. 9. Microsoft got a really good deal on local convention center(s) and hotel rooms. 10. It gives Microsoft employees an extra incentive to go -- they can stay afterwards for vacation.

This is true but you're missing the point. Most text containing hyperlinks contains a description of what the link is for. In this case, the link's description didn't say much about it except that it was for those with "LD relationships". It said nothing about it containing sexual material, which to most (if not all) companies is highly objectionable. So what Jamie is asking for is just a warning message for any links that may be considered objectionable by corporate "big brothers". I don't think he personally had anything against the link itself but his superiors may have thought differently and he just didn't want to deal with such an issue. Personally, I agree with him. Regards, Alvaro

Thanks for the great link

Here's one I got from a friend: How to Impress a Woman Compliment her Cuddle her Kiss her Caress her Love her Stroke her Tease her Comfort her Protect her Hug her Hold her Dine her Listen to her Care for her Stand by her Support her Go to the ends of the earth for her How to Impress a Man Show up naked Bring beer

PVCS? My condolences

Andy, InstallerVISE is pretty cool! It has just about every feature you can think of, including custom DLLs like you mentioned. I even used it to remove and then install an NT Service once. It also comes with a dialog editor you can use to add your own custom dialog boxes -- and it's all script-less! When you get a chance you should download an evaluation version of it. I guarantee you won't be disappointed. I just wish I could get compensated for promoting this product so much. ;-) Regards, Alvaro

How about tools for backing up source code? I'm working with another developer on a Visual Interdev web project (in local mode). Unfortunately the server doesn't have SourceSafe attached to it so there's no easy way to do version control on the files that get released. So what I do is that every night before I go home, I backup the files. How? I use a tool called InstallerVISE. It's a pretty nice tool for creating single-file installation programs. I've found it easier to work with than InstallShield and the best thing is that it requires no scripting! So I just open the project in InstallerVISE, hit the "Build" button (just like in VC++), give it a file name, and that's it! I get a quick and painless backup of my source files into one EXE file. Anyone have a similar scheme? Alvar