Attention, MODDERS!!!
Do you develop
game mods? Do you routinely transfer large amounts of
copyrighted material to a whole lot of users at once? Do you closely follow the
licensing terms you are given? Can you be
100% sure that you do?
A single mistake could cost you your project and possibly your
career as a developer.
What if we told you that you could transmit copyrighted material to your users
without actually transmitting it? Would you take us seriously or dismiss it as
magic? Better still, what if we put this magic into a
computer program for you?
Wouldn't you be interested in a program like that?
If you know your way around a
command line, then don't bother with the rest of this page.
Get it now!
1. A Non-Trivial Problem
So, you've been working hard on that presentation for the better part of a day and it's finally paying off. Upper management will surely be impressed with how you handled the editing ― and just in time for the quarterly report, too. Pleased with yourself, you figure that you might as well get the formalities out of the way early, as computers were never really your thing. You recline comfortably in your home office chair as you try to log onto your company's virtual private network and... nothing happens.
A thousand images flash through your mind in an instant, most of them bad. As you ponder the gravity of the situation, you try and try again ― all in vain, for the network is utterly unresponsive and you are running out of tricks fast. Pacing yourself, you try the corporate phone line, as someone is sure to be working, even this late an afternoon on a weekend. Fifteen minutes go by before you finally manage to raise someone and the news is not good.
The network is down and is unlikely to become operational before daybreak.
Cursing under your breath, you run the situation through your head again and again as you scramble to find a way out. Making your predicament infinitely worse is the fact that your boss wanted this thing on his desk ten minutes ago yesterday and he does not like to be kept waiting. Just as you wave a mental goodbye to your annual bonus, your mind stumbles upon an unlikely solution.
What if you simply sent the updated version of the accursed document via the company email system?
Since only the VPN is out of action, this should be a trivial matter, if only for a small technicality ― the files that make up the presentation you've been working on are
highly confidential and cannot simply be shared with just anyone, not even your office mates. True, you could encrypt the document, but with what? There ought to be at least a dozen recipients, scattered across three different departments ― each with a set of encryption keys of their own. Even if you could reach some of them, Murphy's law guarantees that you'd miss that one guy whom you
cannot afford to leave out of the loop.
2. An Elegant Solution
The scenario playing itself out above could have had a very unhappy ending. Fortunately for our protagonist, he was able to send the documents in question securely through a company-wide email message.
The question is:
How did he do it?
Welcome to the official website of
Open Source Laboratories, Ltd. ― your personal gateway to the world of high-performance computing. To find out how our friend got out of the potentially disastrous situation he'd found himself in, continue on to the
next article by clicking on the link.