At 3:19 PM 12/20/1996, Andrew Loewenstern wrote:

Hal Finney writes:

...

The answer presumably is that the software manufacturer will sell software with such limits for much less than he will sell unlimited software. That's because software piracy is such a major problem, and this way he can be protected against piracy from this copy of his program. So people with these CPU's can buy their software a lot cheaper.

I believe this is a pipedream. As it stands now, virtually all of the software that requires special hardware dongles is ridiculously expensive, even compared to similar offerings from other companies.

Why do you think this is? I don't understand why I would buy a more expensive package that required a dongle rather than a less expensive package which does not. This is mysterious. Peter Hendrickson ph@netcom.com