on the other hand sometimes protections are (were) lame. I remember probably 16-18 years ago "cracking" a CAD software worth thousands of dollars by just modifying the script used for the installer: the software was using a protection scheme based on some hard drive serial number, so that the activation code cannot be reused on a different system. The problem (for them) is that they implemented this in the installer too and the installer was using some kind of simil-VB scripting for doing the check. I modified it to print the activation code instead of just verifying it and pronto the installer became a keygenerator :D

It had been a great satifaction..