I don't know when I've seen so much misinformation is such a short post.
Please read comments below on each paragraph.
At 08:15 AM 7/3/2005, K4SB wrote:
>I paid for RITTY many years ago, and it ran fine until I decided to
>back up the hard drive. Wham, there went the first key. Brian wrote
>the software so that the "key" is
>embedded in the root system of the computer. I know of no other
>software which uses this method. Of course, he neglected to mention
>you had to remove the key before backing up the drive.
Complete nonsense. The "key" as you call it is embedded in the executable
itself, not in some "root system of the computer". It is linked to the call
sign of the purchaser. See additional comment below.
>Still have the program on an old disk, and it's useless.
Only if you want it to be. Brian still furnishes updates to registered
users, even though he is out of the programming business. The latest
version (as far as I know) is 4.54, which he sent me about a year ago.
>Plus, that annoying announcement at random intervals of something
>similar to " This software is licensed to K4SB...blah blah"
That announcement is transmitted when the registered callsign is NOT
transmitted at least once in every ten transmissions. It's a simple attempt
at anti piracy. It will be transmitted by even properly registered stations
when the one-in-ten rule is not observed. In normal contesting or DXing,
the using station will of course transmit his callsign nearly every
transmission and most of us will never see it. Only if a registered station
makes ten transmission without sending his call sign will it appear. Who
ever does that, except perhaps while testing?
>And then there was the infamous racket created when a ham in S.A.
>cracked his code and apparently sold or gave away copies.
The code was NOT cracked, the SA ham simply gave out illegal copies to his
buddies. You may recall during contests seeing the "This software is
licensed to K4SB...blah blah" being transmitted by certain stations. Those
were the illegal copies.
Do you blame Brian for wanting to protect his code? I don't.
>... I wouldn't touch a program written by him with
>a 100' pole.
Too bad for you. Brian is a brilliant programmer. Think about this: his
program - the whole thing - takes up less than 60 kb. That's kilobytes, not
megabytes... and yet it outperforms programs hundreds of times the size. He
wrote the original code at a time when DSP was not even in the amateur
glossary. He was WAY ahead of his time.
His disgust at piracy and subsequent withdrawal from ham radio programming
was a huge loss to the amateur fraternity.
I no longer use RITTY for transmitting because it does not integrate with
any Windows contesting program, but I still have it running on a second
computer for receiving purposes, and it is still the best. Brian also wrote
a program for calculating inductance called coil.exe which, IMO, is the
best available, and I've tried 'em all (almost). His Yagi Optimizer
program is still in use by those who want the best antennas possible.
I miss him.
--
Bill, W6WRT
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