The lucky winner of my 'Catch the Pirate' contest is...

[Graham Banks]

I fully support Naum and don't agree with Kirill's comments on this.

Alex is right to raise the issue and to seek to want to prosecute this person. It is up to that person to raise his or her own defence. I don't buy the argument that his machine may have been hacked. It may have been, but most people take basic precuations. And hackers simply would not be interested in stealing Naum. They have other better more lucrative targets. They have probably never heard of Naum, let alone want to steal it and post on a file sharing network.

I would recommend anyone to buy Naum, it is a great program at a sensible price. Keep up the good work Alex.

Yes - it's important to realise that Kirill speaks as an individual and that his comments are not a CCRL stance.

[Kirill Kryukov]

I fully support Naum and don't agree with Kirill's comments on this.

Alex is right to raise the issue and to seek to want to prosecute this person. It is up to that person to raise his or her own defence. I don't buy the argument that his machine may have been hacked. It may have been, but most people take basic precuations. And hackers simply would not be interested in stealing Naum. They have other better more lucrative targets. They have probably never heard of Naum, let alone want to steal it and post on a file sharing network.

I would recommend anyone to buy Naum, it is a great program at a sensible price. Keep up the good work Alex.

Yes - it's important to realise that Kirill speaks as an individual and that his comments are not a CCRL stance.

Yes this is certainly true, I expressed only my own opinion above, thanks for clarifying!

[Martin Thoresen]

I don't agree with Kirill either. I will continue to test Naum because I really like this engine.

However, going public with the full name of the person that is supposed to be the "thief" here, was wrong.

He may be innocent until the opposite is proved.

[AdminX]

I don't buy the argument that his machine may have been hacked.

And hackers simply would not be interested in stealing Naum

I am not going to say that this Pedro person is or is not directly responsible since I really do not know. Alex does have the right to try to protect his work that is for sure. I will tell you this however. Sometimes hackers only want to steal your resources. Think use of your Hardware (CPU) and Internet connection (DSL/ Cable) here. They can turn your PC into a Server, Use it as a Bot, or even use the processing of your CPU to crack their stolen but encrypted password hash. My point is it's not always about your data.

[naum]

Hi,

As you can see from my post, I didn't provide person's full name and data even though I am 100% sure he is guilty of distributing his copy to others.
Just think about it.
There are maybe 500 people in the world who actually know what Naum is.
There are maybe 10000 hackers who are good enough to break into someones system. I have a couple hundred customers.
Basic math question. Calculate a chance that hacker breaks in one of my customer systems, finds the zip file (not just naum.exe but original zip file that I send) with Naum, knows what that is and steals it. Very, very, ... small chance.

As for Kiril's comments, I don't understand why would someone be upset with my comments unless it hits close to home. BTW he never was my customer, so his threat that he will never buy or test Naum is meaningless.

Regards,
Alex

[George Tsavdaris]

Hi Alex. I supported your work and tested some Naum versions. I think it is insane what you are saying now. There are 100 ways to get unauthorized access to anyone's machine these days, including those mentioned by Ted.

I announce here that right now I deleted Naum 2.1 from my hard drive and I won't touch any commercial Naum version again. I am not a full time security expert, I am a normal person. My little knowledge in networks is just enough to understand how unrealistic it is to expect people to protect their machines from any threat.

Do you say that:
There are MANY people, clever and knowledgeable enough, that can invade without my permission to my computer any time they want and copy anything from my computer?

Please answer before seeing my next sentence.

I use COMODO firewall which is free and supposed to be the best one. Can they still do it?

I doubt in both cases. Because i don't understand how they can know the characteristics of the computer of the person they want to do this thing! The IP for example. How they can know it?
I mean how realistic is a hacker to spend time to organize such a plan in order to steal a 30-50 € program, a Chess program, Naum?


I understand what you are trying to say. You bought a program, some hackers took it from your PC, and you are suddenly accused of piracy!
Ridiculous! But ridiculous only if hackers can do that of course, which i doubt with the easiness you describe they can do it.....

But on the other side what do you want the author should do? To let it go? Because hackers may did such thing?

[naum]

Just to clarify that Kiril is not a paying customer.
He has Naum 2.1 (to delete) because he got the copy for free as part of the CCRL team.

[Sylwy]

Hi Alex !

You are right ! See the scandal Tony Thomas-Hiarcs.

Regards,
Sylwy

PS: My silence was broken only for Alex-this formidable man-sorry !

[Sylwy]

Hi Kirill !

Don't be extremist-please.All my engine tournaments and tests are on a PC without internet connection.That's all !

Regards,
Sylwy

[naum]

Hi Pedro,

Thanks a lot for the information.

Alex