Wrong License Id

[koganam]

Btw, I don't think he's using or cares about the Vendor license system.

He's probably using MachineId as part of a homegrown solution to check that the NT installation is one of his friends.

He probably built a hardcoded list of strings containing all the machine ids of his friends.

In Initialize or OnStartUp (assuming NT7), he checks the property MachineId to make sure it is present in this list of "approved" machine ids.

It's easy to assume he's porting his code to NT8, thus his question.

What problems could arise from using MachineId in this way?

Answer: None.

We would have to surmise that the method on any machine will always return the same value, even if that value does not match what NT exposes, because they have chosen to massage and hide it internally. In that case, all he has to do is provide a reader to his friends. The reader will return whatever value it will, and that is the value he needs to match in his code.

That is the problem with any obfuscation/encryption string. Ultimately, there is always the "output hole", where the final result can be matched.

Obviously this is not as convenient as in NT7, where the MachineID value that was returned by the method call was the same as that displayed by the NT Help dialog. We can cavil, or we can simply use the information that is gettable.

Just my $0.02.

[bltdavid]

We would have to surmise that the method on any machine will always return the same value, even if that value does not match what NT exposes, because they have chosen to massage and hide it internally. In that case, all he has to do is provide a reader to his friends. The reader will return whatever value it will, and that is the value he needs to match in his code.

That is the problem with any obfuscation/encryption string. Ultimately, there is always the "output hole", where the final result can be matched.

Obviously this is not as convenient as in NT7, where the MachineID value that was returned by the method call was the same as that displayed by the NT Help dialog. We can cavil, or we can simply use the information that is gettable.

Just my $0.02.

Dog gone it, koganam!

You're gonna make me download and install NT8 just to see if Cbi.License.MachineId is gettable, aren't ya?

Oh well, gotta start playing with NT8 sooner or later ...