Just my 2 pennys.(posted 9536 days ago)I agree with Nicola, if someone wants to cheat they will find a way. About the only thing to do is detour cheating. Thats what I've been saying all along.
I also think that the re-record code should be commented out of the main source tree in mame, but anyone wiht coding skils could always replace it. It would only detour a regular joe from cheating.
I'm a firm believer in the open source movement. Alot of people put alot of work into MAME. They did not write mame for MARP/TG, nor do they have MARP/TG in mind while they where creating MAME.
The MAME team is about emulation, its not about high scores. Giving Nicola or the MAMEDEV team a hard time about not "getting into TG/MARP" or not "Understanding our problems" doesnt do MAME any good. There job is not securing a recording so a high score can be proved, there job is about emulation.
Now, if we could find a way to ultimitaly prevent anyone from cheating in an open source manner, I'm sure Nicola would include it in the source code. There would also be hundreds of developers knocking at our doors to find out how we made them pirate dudes stop cracking there copy protection. As previuosly stated and what Nicola was also stating. A piece of software sitting in a foriegn environment with the user at complete control is a very big security risk. You can not guarantee complete security, hence his false security statement.
All recordings no matter what is done will still be considered as invalid if not visually verified. I think this will not be a problem in the coming years when everyone has one of them little cameras sitting on top of there monitors that could be pointed at there monitor while playing a game. Until then, all scores are suspect to cheating. I'm sure someone will find a way to defeat the cameras also. :) PS: I still beleive that a TG version would fall under the personell use clause for official verification of the TG record books if it is not "distributed". There could be a clause in the TG record books that a MAME recording was done with a MAME version or a TG/MAME version that a person asked Mark to give then to record with.