Hello Fatty,

Sunday, June 02, 2002, 7:39:07 PM, you wrote:

Fd> Oftentimes, early software is acquired because a member of a cracking team,
Fd> the supplier, works at Babbage's, Electronics Boutique, or any of a number
Fd> of other companies which sell software.

Fd> See, the employees have access to the boxes maybe a week and a half or so
Fd> before they go onto the shelves. Some of the stores allow employees to take
Fd> software home and try it; others don't, but have local managers who don't
Fd> care, or local employees who have five finger discount powers. All it takes
Fd> is one copy.

yeah thats another possibility ofcoz.... however, since the
"release-candidate" type of copies given to magazines for review
(weeks if not months before the release!) are often very close to the
final master (maybe except some late, rather cosmetic fixes) and also
those copies are -good for the warez ppl- seldomly copy-protected
there are a lot of suppliers in magazines actually ;=P (that also
explains why some games appeared as warez which never made it to the
shelves :)) ...that might have changed during the last years though,
its been quite some (long ;=P) time since i've activly contributed
to that part of the scene ;=) (other ppl on this list could probably
tell though hehe)

--
Best regards,
groepaz mailto:groepaz@...