Brilliance Shipped Yesterday!
Evan Kirchhoff
Haven't seen this on here yet, so maybe I get to break the news :)
I started to wonder why my credit-card debt was oddly high, and then I
remembered the program I ordered somewhere around the turn of the
century. I called up Digital Creations, and sure enough, Brilliance
went out yesterday.
Yay! Two cheers! (just found out about the dongle _now_ <grumble>).
--
Evan Kirchhoff, kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Evan Kirchhoff
>
>Haven't seen this on here yet, so maybe I get to break the news :)
OOPS! Meant to post this to c.s.a.graphics, where it would be
somewhat more appropriate...sorry.
--
Evan Kirchhoff, kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Russell Donaldson
: In article <CB7IK...@ccu.umanitoba.ca> kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Evan Kirchhoff) writes:
: >
: >Haven't seen this on here yet, so maybe I get to break the news :)
: OOPS! Meant to post this to c.s.a.graphics, where it would be
: somewhat more appropriate...sorry.
No problems - the Dongle is hardware - :-) ... or should that be :-( ?
--
+ Russell A Donaldson - Wanganui New Zealand Ph +64-6-344-2275 +
+ russ...@radical.amigans.gen.nz | Life is too short to drink bad wine +
Paul Kolenbrander
> went out yesterday.
>
> Yay! Two cheers! (just found out about the dongle _now_ <grumble>).
Dongle??? Sh*t!!! Now that's one proggy I won't be buying. Not until I
can get a decent electronic dongle-switch under say $60.- I do some
testing and reviewing and last June I had Real-3D 2.0, Caligari24 and
DynaCad here. All three dongled. That has severely put me of dongles.
Especially as neither of them were transparent and had strict warnings
on them not to connect or disconnect with the system powered on. Now
Dyna has a very nice editor and support several 3D output formats. So
naturally you make an object, save it, kill Dyna and start up Caligari
to see what it makes of it. Which won't start as it can't find it's dongle.
So switch of system, change dongle, switch on again. Only to find that
you needed just that little more finetuning... You get the picture... Well,
apart from being hell on the nerves, as far as I can judge all these power
surges aren't very healthy for the system. And especially the harddisk. So
I have decided not to buy anymore programs that force me to mistreat my
poor Amy in this way. If everybody would and sales would slump, a more
(buying) customerriendly protection could be found. One that doesn't
hanper the registered user and might even, in the long run, prematurely cause
a fault or malfunction in said user's computer system.
Please note that I can fully understand the need for copy protection. But
I don't think these kind of dongles are it. And if they are, then why don't
they include an electronic dongle-switch, or give you a discount voucher for
one. (Like the more dongles you have, the less you pay for it.)
> Evan Kirchhoff, kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca
CYa, Paul
--
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Turfveldenstraat 37 \ Fido: 2:2802/123.1 Paul Kolenbrander
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Evan Kirchhoff
>Please note that I can fully understand the need for copy protection. But
>I don't think these kind of dongles are it. And if they are, then why don't
>they include an electronic dongle-switch, or give you a discount voucher for
>one. (Like the more dongles you have, the less you pay for it.)
Q: Can you multitask Brilliance! and Real3D 2.0?
A: No, and you can't even run them sequentially in the same
session -- you have to power down the entire system to switch between
them...
(Maybe future Amigas should have a row of 10 to 20 "dongle ports"
along the side? ;) This is ridiculous, and hopefully the current wave
of dongled programs will cause enough enraged users (ie. people who
actually want to own more than one of these programs) to kill this
trend. If not, the only hope is the route by which disk-based
copy-protection was (partially) killed: massive, vicious piracy that
makes it painfully obvious to the software companies that anyone who
wants a cracked copy can get one anyway.
--
Evan Kirchhoff, kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Adisak Pochanayon
>> century. I called up Digital Creations, and sure enough, Brilliance
>
>testing and reviewing and last June I had Real-3D 2.0, Caligari24 and
>DynaCad here. All three dongled. That has severely put me of dongles.
Small correction here. Caligari 24 does not come with a dongle. I had
Caligari 24 for half a year directly from OctTree and it came with no dongle.
Caligari Broadcast, on the other hand, does have a dongle but anyone who can
afford Caligari Broadcast (or Real 3-d at $600) can afford an electonic dongle
switch ($60) or get a simple manual one for about $30.
adisak
Paul Cardwell
doesn't matter -- if you use copy-protected software (via software) crackers
will break it, if you use dongles people won't buy it (well some will --some
hardware crackers could duplicate the dongle (its not impossible)).
No productivity software should be copy-protected (except company's
copyrights of the software -- duh). I *was* going to buy it, but since I also
want Real3DV2 -- hmm..I guess the solution is Imagine 3.0 and Panther.
Paul
.___________________________________________________________________________.
| Arc Wave, real life: Paul Cardwell | INet Address: a...@judy.indstate.edu |
|----------\\-----//--------------------------------------------------------|
| ---- \\\^ ^/// "Amiga, the wild side of power computing." ---- |
| ----- \\|.|// Amiga,OS/2,Unix,C Programmer ----- |
`------------\\-//----------------------------------------------------------'
Evan Kirchhoff
>Caligari Broadcast, on the other hand, does have a dongle but anyone who can
>afford Caligari Broadcast (or Real 3-d at $600) can afford an electonic dongle
>switch ($60) or get a simple manual one for about $30.
If you've got an electronic dongle switch, can you then multitask two
dongled programs, or do you have to exit one program, switch the
active dongle, load the other program, and so on and so on?
--
Evan Kirchhoff, kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Mike Danielsen
I have a mouse joystick switcher that also buffered my normal joystick port.
When I plugged in my Caligari Broadcast dongle, it blew out the switcher.
So, remember, dongles are not normal joysticks and may not work with a switcher.
Mike Danielsen
mi...@areaplg2.corp.mot.com
Paul Kolenbrander
That depends on how the program checks the dongle. If it does only on startup
it's just a question of switching active dongles, if it checks for the dongle
at certain points in the program (Like Real seems to do) it means there is no
easy way of multitasking two or more such dongled programs. It means quitting
one, switching active dongles and starting the other one. A nuisance as well
as most likely a quick way of fragmenting your memory.
And to make things clear, I've not bought Real-3D (It's out of my budget) I'm
running an (official) copy I got for reviewing the program in this computer
magazine. Same for the DynaCad and Caligari I mentioned in my original post.
These were loaned to me by a dealer I know well to check out some things for
him. And have gone back to him. Although I have an A4000, I am by no means
a 'Daddy Warbucks'. :-)
Paul Kolenbrander
> >In article <CB7IK...@ccu.umanitoba.ca> kir...@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Evan Kirchhoff) writes:
> >> century. I called up Digital Creations, and sure enough, Brilliance
> >> Yay! Two cheers! (just found out about the dongle _now_ <grumble>).
> >
> >can get a decent electronic dongle-switch under say $60.- I do some
> >testing and reviewing and last June I had Real-3D 2.0, Caligari24 and
> >DynaCad here. All three dongled. That has severely put me of dongles.
>
> Small correction here. Caligari 24 does not come with a dongle. I had
Well, the Caligari24 I had did. With a dongle identical to the DynaCad one.
Maybe only European ones have dongles? Or the newer versions have? Anybody?
> Caligari 24 for half a year directly from OctTree and it came with no dongle.
> Caligari Broadcast, on the other hand, does have a dongle but anyone who can
> afford Caligari Broadcast (or Real 3-d at $600) can afford an electonic dongle
> switch ($60) or get a simple manual one for about $30.
First of all I'd like to see one for $60. The xheapest one I've found so far
is over $150.-. Which is a hell of a lot of money (Over a third of the street
price of Real-3D) just to be able to connect several dongles at the same time.
Granted, it is cheaper than having my A4000 fixed in case of... But still.
Furthermore a manual one will not suffice and most likely cause damage to the
dongle(s) your Amiga or both. So one has to have a decent electronic one. Is
there maybe anybody in here who can design one and would release the schematics
to us non-EE types?
But on the whole the current dongle-protection is more of a hardship to the
registered users than it is really a copy-protection. I've been hearing some
persistent rumours of somebody reverse-engineering the Real one and making a
cheap PALled version of it. Anyway, unless I do really, really need a specific
program, I will not purchase dongled ones anymore. And I hope more people will
follow this example and thus force manufacturers to use a more customerfriendly
way of copy-protection...