The whole idea of theft protection through software is pointless. Someone steals your empeg, it's gone. Period. You're not going to get it back.

Make the display show the owners name and address, and what do you think is going to happen? The thief is going to call you up and say "I'm sorry I stole your stereo, I'll mail it back to you..." Not likely.

Make the empeg completely inoperable by anybody but the authorized owner (probably not possible, but just suppose) and do you think the thief will say "Gee, I can't make it work. Guess I'll have to return it..." Oh, yeah, that could happen.

Perhaps there is some small-minded satisfaction to be gained in the knowledge that if you can't enjoy your empeg any more, at least the thief won't either, and won't be able to sell it because he can't make it work. But give some thought to just how big an inconvenience that is going to be to the thief. Let's see -- he invested two or three seconds smashing your window, another one to two seconds pulling it out of the dash. Gosh -- it's enough to make a hard-working stereo thief go into another line of business, finding out he wasted five seconds stealing something he can't make use of.

As far as these elaborate schemes involving PIN numbers, serial numbers and emplode software that only works with proper authorization, requiring great technical expertise and perhaps help from Hugo to change -- why bother? The average stereo thief probably couldn't boot up a Windows computer, much less dig into a Linux operating system to defeat some complicated anti-theft counter-measures. Just have the empeg display the contents of an easily editable (by the owner) text file on boot up and let it go at that.

No protection scheme, whether it be hardware or software, will be of any benefit whatsoever to the owner should the empeg be stolen.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"