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> What the heck is a Dongle?
A dongle is a piece of hardware which attaches to one of the ports on
the back of the machine. It's a copy protection scheme; when the
software which uses it queries that port, it returns a value. That way
they can sell the software with no copy protection; it just queries the
port and if it doesn't get the value back that it likes, it won't run.
If you run the software WITHOUT the dongle, it gets back no value, which
of course, also causes it not to run.
It's called a dongle, but it's spelled "colossal_pain_in_the_ass" for
certain uses. Some don't have a passthrough capability, so you can't
plug whatever _was_ in the part into it, some are quite large, so you
can't scootch the machine up to the wall since it sticks out so far, and
some of us who use laptops _and_ home machines are constantly having to
move the damned thing.
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