rec.autos.simulators

Now, were you to call TOCA a trojan horse, that would be
accurate.   Were StarForce not able to affect anything other than
your TOCA install, I would be willing to call it malware, but
considering that it installs itself as a device driver and presumably
interferes with more than just the operation of TOCA, I would consider
that replication (infecting other programs with its local brand-o-evil)
similar to how viruses spread long before internet-borne worms were the
de facto standard.   It's decidedly not quite to the level of those old
viruses that would seek out every .exe and .com file to infect, but it's
certainly not without its own ability to spread itself to other aspects
of your machine.

It is a grey area, but I consider it a pretty dark shade of grey.

It looks like a trojan to me, not a virus.

cheers
John

I dunno man, I've seen Bugs dressed as Daffy, but he is still a rabbit.
It may fool Elmer, but I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay smarter than that.

Uh... that's all folks.

--
MRSisson

LOAD "GPL",8,1
RUN

That would jibe with the experience of the CD Freaks forum poster I quoted
above; the guy whose USB flash memory device would no longer work.

Boycott 'em all, that's my motto!

--Steve

I'm going to test the waters and demand that Codemasters take back
TOCA2 and refund me my money due to this Starforce crap.

   Splitting hairs.  You might as well say that Sea-Green really isn't a
shade of green because it has a small bit of blue included.  I'm not saying
it IS a virus.  But what I am saying is, it's make-up, distibution, and
over-all secretiveness of the it's operation is so like a virus it might as
well be one.  A trojan, a wyrm, a viri...it doesn't matter...users are not
inviting the program onto their systems willingly and are not able to
easily remove it.  

I'm glad I got the xbox version. ;)

Cheers,
Rod.

I've always held you in high regard for your strict adherence
to usenet standards and helpful answers to racing sim related
questions, but calling Dave Henrie stupid goes a bit too far in my
book and definitely crosses the line between voicing one's opinion and
needless name-calling and flaming.

Maybe you should try to get out more, you seem to be rather
frustrated at the moment. Head down to the local pub mate, throw a
couple of darts, enjoy a couple of pints of that fantastic ale they
serve and you'll feel better in no time at all. ;-)

Cheers,

Uwe

--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
GPG Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

David

The only problem I had with the Starforce copy protection was that
initially it would not read the game disk with my old 1x DVD-ROM
drive.  I swapped drives with my wife's computer (she had a 2x DVD-ROM
drive and never watches DVDs on her PC), and that did the trick.
Since then, I've had no problems with the Starforce copy protection.

It does suck that the Starforce drivers install without notifying the
user, but they seem to be rather non-intrusive to me, and they don't
perform any spyware functions that I know of.

Also FWIW, there's a guy from Starforce, I believe, who is very active
on the Codemasters TOCA2 forum, trying to offer support and solutions
to make the Starforce copy protection scheme more user-friendly -- for
example, he (or "they," at Starforce) are working on an updated driver
that will allow users to run multiple games on a LAN using a single
RD2 DVD-ROM disk.  THAT kind of attention and support from a developer
-- ESPECIALLY one focused on copy protection -- is a wonderful thing.

And, from my perspective, as much as I'd like to have a no-CD crack
for RD2 in order to "save" my disk, I can understand the
manufacturer's need for robust copy protection, and from that
perspective I think it's kind of cool that RD2 has NOT been
successfully pirated yet.

-- JB