[Joe Forster/STA]

Hi guys,

As a software developer, I believe that adding suspicious or potentially malicious code to a software hurts the user and voids the trustful connection between the developer and the user. While the developers always disclaim all damage and loss, caused by their own software, they shouldn't add questionable code on purpose.

As a hacker, I believe that using undocumented system functions is a very bad idea (unfortunately, M$ operating systems are known to be extremely ill-documented, except when a third party comes to the rescue!) because their functionality may not be exactly as documented and may change any time, without notice. As a result, you may have strange problems if your PC has "non-standard" hardware or software installed. (Meaning: hardware and software that the code hasn't been tested with.)

As a self-conscious user and administrator of the home PC's of my family, I would hate to have any software running on my systems, without my knowledge. This even includes those sh*t little icons in the system tray, which I carefully get rid of; viruses, ad-ware and other malicious code is much worse than that.

The Starforce copy protection has gone too far in the last year or so. It's becoming too similar to trojans and may have severe consequences to the stability of your system. (And the average user doesn't even know the reason as all copy protections are well hidden, for a reason!)

Whether this thread has any chance to call the attention of game publishers, I don't know. Actually, I don't think so... Still, I'm against intrusive software, be it trojans, ad-ware or copy protection!

Joe