[superblue]

I bought copies of Macromedia MX Studio and MS Office X last year to use on my iBook. I've just got a G4 and installed them on there too. The only problem is the applications detect each other's serial numbers over the network and won't let me launch two apps from the same studio on different machines (i.e. Word on the G4, Entourage on the iBook, or Flash on the G4, Dreamweaver on the iBook)

Now I know when you buy software it's a single license, but I'm not about to go and buy a 2nd copy just for my G4. I don't use pirated software, and I don't download free MP3s. I just want to use the software I paid a lot of money for in my home, the way I want to! There's only one of me, even if there are two macs!

Does anyone have any workarounds for this? I know I can turn off the network (not ideal) and I presume I could exchange serial numbers with someone in a similar predicament... Any other ideas?

[cpac]

I can't speak for the MX apps, but as for office if one were, say, annoyed with the network traffic its license checking caused, one could turn on the Jaguar firewall on both networked computers and thereby prevent that network checking from going through.

[BTP]

You can analyze the traffic and see what port MX is using. Office is well known and you can find that fix if you look. I think MS Office is port 2222. Turn off the port, problem solved, I believe.

I guess you could use a packet sniffer to do this.

Smarter people, lend a hand?

[[APi]TheMan]

Yes, there exists a method to cripple Microsofts measures. Check your e-mail, superblue.

[superblue]

Well I'm happy to say that by being a security conscious user, and simply enabling my Firewall, I have accidentally blocked MS Office from detecting itself on my other Mac.

Macromedia on the other hand, persists.

[mofu]

Try Firewalk (http://pliris-soft.com/products/fire...firewalkx.html)
it offers application specific firewalling. It is shareware that shuts off after 2 hours or something like that, should be long enough for you to see if it works. Then register if you want it full time.

You should only need it on one machine, but I'm not sure. . . .

Brickhouse seems to get all the firewall talk for OSX, but I think Firewalk is closer to what a user needs to really understand what spyware or trojans might be misusing their network access.

That said I still feel that Firewalk falls far short of ZoneAlarm/ZoneAlarmPro for Windows based PCs. ZA is by far the best personal firewall I have used.

Would be nice for someone to write a GPL OSX personal firewall app that approached the functionality of ZA . . . .anyone ???

[KidRed]

What about VPC? My only recourse with that was use a different serial number otehr then my legal one. However, I forgot about that when I upgraded to v6 and now my wife can't ue it while I'm downloading music

Any methods for VPC other then reinstalling from scratch with a different serial?

[ThisGuy]

has anybody figured out what port Flash MX uses to communicate with other copies on the same network?

[wataru]

Originally posted by KidRed:
What about VPC? My only recourse with that was use a different serial number otehr then my legal one. However, I forgot about that when I upgraded to v6 and now my wife can't ue it while I'm downloading music

Any methods for VPC other then reinstalling from scratch with a different serial?

Have you tried using the firewall to prevent VPC from communicating? If that doesn't work, you can probably get it to re-request a serial by deleting the appropriate preference file. It should be in /Library/Application Support/Connectix or something.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by ThisGuy:
has anybody figured out what port Flash MX uses to communicate with other copies on the same network?

try Little Snitch