frogboy, you may very well be right. the crack could have been the cause, not some intentional revenge code put in by stardock. i don't know how you programmed the thing so obviously i can't say. but i would think the painting code and the activation code would have to be intertwined fairly well in order for altering one to affect the other.
for anyone who is curious about what i program, i'll tell ya. the most warezed one is called Bash HTML Editor. it's $14.95 and i do happen to think it's the best html editor there is. i run several sites and use it constantly so it has to meet my own needs, which is why it's under constant development (50+ versions released) even if i don't sell any. i've sold only a handful of copies, yet have about 600KB of names and IPS of piraters. and obviously it's not that they just don't want to use the program, because i was getting the same names appearing over and over and over as they re-enter a serial everytime the program catches em and un-registers the app.
sure i'd like to make money off of it consider the ungodly amount of time i have spent making it over the past few years, but the fact is most people won't pay for software.
to me tho it's not hypocritical to try to be downloading warez from the same sites that post warez of my own software, because i'm not targeting the piraters. i change up serial routines and log IPs, but it's more of a game than a war. with my latest program, Install-Block (does as it sounds, prevents all installations, by kids, employees, etc, a well as blocking anything else you want), tho i knew i couldn't simply use a serial-protection, and instead develop two vesions of the program: the trial, and the full version. rather that has anything to do with it or not, i sell this program on a frequent basis. cracks have been made, but they haven't kept up with the latest releases.
my other two programs have also had keygens made, but i admit those programs aren't real good anyways and plan on giving them out free sometime soon. (tho $9.95 and $4.95 aren't exactly breaking the bank)
but anyways, no i'm not a big-time developer with millions of dollars in sales to try to protect (or even thousands) but i can see both sides in the argument. and rather the problems that are happening were caused by the crack itself or simply the use of the crack, i don't see how someone can say that piraters deserve for their systems to be fried, etc. do they/we deserve for the pirated software not to work? sure. do people who run crack databases, or employees at games companies who make copies before it even hits stores deserve punishment? yeah. but i don't think the end user has done enough to warrant anything like that.
