>>What is the purpose? >>Simply to RIP even MORE money out of anyone that is stupid>enough to love FS - .FULL STOP (in case you cant see it)Hi Ozzie?My honest concern was not MS ripping off anyone. It is all those lines of text delaying start-up or load times. Plus the acknowledgment of gauge trust seems overkill whether a security issue or revenue source.I don't want my thread going down the tubes via the MS sucks theme. Please start your own if you want to bash. I really like FSX. Thanks. :)Bob.

Someone correct me if I'm somehow wrong, but Microsoft doesn't make money though code signing off the regular end-users.Regular FS users do not have to pay for a gauge license as I've seen it refered to.My gauges are all code signed as I mentioned, and the cost was so low I don't even bother passing the cost on to end users because it would amount to pennies each.The only way MS would make money (my guess) through code signing is through royalties, fees, etc., companies like Comodo, Verisign and Thawte pay to have their Root CA included with the O/S.That's my guess.Maybe someone who works for Thawte, etc., might have more insight.-Bryan

Though we were late out of the blocks, ours will all be signesd going forward and we'll redo the current offerings as well:-)

>Did you check the fsdevelopers association? The problem is>being adressed.>>Jos

Can't say for sure why this "feature" was added to FSX, and I agree with those who say the FSX.cfg was a bad place to put the info (a seperate config for that info would have been nicer) but I can see potential uses for it.Imagine this scenerio. You loaded up a nice freeware plane and clicked through all the gauge messages and fly it for a while. A while later, after installing some other planes, you go back to that first plane and suddenly a trusted gauge dialog box pops up for one gauge. You click through it, but your plane that worked so well before is now having problems or causing FlightSim to crash.Now you have a basis for troubleshooting: That trusted gauge popup (in this case) is telling you that the gauge file got overwritten with another one sometime after you first flew that plane. (Let's say one of the planes added later came with an earlier, and buggy, version of that same gauge.) Granted, I haven't actually tried testing something like that out to see what exactly would happen. But I imagine that if the gauge file is changed, then FSX will either pop up the trust gauge dialog box or will complain that the gauge has changed since it was last registered. Which is a situation that may sound familliar to those of you with software firewalls. :)"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

Is it possible for the addon vendor to install it in one of their machine...and then, they just cut paste that section of their cfg and zip it as part of their payware?:)MAnny

Not quite that simple, the fsx.cfg lines contain the full path, including folder/drives so if someone installed FSX in a different location it wouldn't work quite right. However, I could imagine addons that use an installer setting up the trusted gauge lines automatically. (The installer would get the drive/path info from either the registry or user input and the other data needed would be provided by the author.)"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

Leave the politics at home please. This thread will wind up locked very quickly if it breaks down into governmental political dynamics.

>Is it possible for the addon vendor to install it in one of>their machine...and then, they just cut paste that section of>their cfg and zip it as part of their payware?Unfortunately no, Manny. In the absence of an included "signed certificate," the user's system will generate a unique hash code for each unsigned gauge, that would be different for everyone else using the same gauge on their system.During development, each time I compile a new build of a gauge I have to go through the same Q&A and a completely new trusted GUID hash is created and a new entry is added to my fsx.cfg file...After twenty or so builds, I open fsx.cfg and delete the "old" entries, otherwise my fsx.cfg would grow to gigantic proportions!I had suggested to ACES early in the beta process that it would perhaps be best to spin the "Trusted" section off to its own .cfg file, but obviously that wasn't done.

Everyone should, as I did, tell Mickeysoft at '[email protected]' to put a freak'n 'Run/Accept All' button into that program module.

Bill,I would have fewer problems with the "trust - click" process if we could accumulate points based upon the numbers of gauge licenses. Say when you get to 10,000 gauge licenses you could submit them to Microsoft for a free toaster or a Valium the size of a hockey puck for those of us who are paranoid. :) You know, just to take the edge off having to make so many decisions to trust so many people. LOL. Bob...