There's no stopping the insanity...
Nov. 26th, 2001 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpCopy protection, as well as various other schemes designed to thwart piracy, came on strong in the early days of personal computing and then waned as it became clear that there was really no way to get the upper hand with pirates, and that the only people who were affected (and not positively) were your legitimate users.
At least in the U.S. by my observations.
Some programs, notably applications developed in Europe and Russia, nonetheless aggressively pursued copy protection, often with the use of "dongles," or hardware devices that had to be installed on one's computer in order for the program to work.
My favorite horror story concerning these devices concerned an expert-system building tool (which shall remain nameless) that used this form of copy protection. On a trip from Florida to California to pitch our company's services to a prospective client, the demonstration program I was to show crashed and burned for no apparent reason. There were no warning messages or anything. Just a hung computer.
Upon returning home - with no contract, as you might imagine - it turned out that any machine to which we attached the dongle I had taken with me to California would crash if we tried to use the expert-system tool.
A call to the publisher revealed that the dongle was dead. A short conversation later, it was determined that passage through an airport x-ray machine was enough to disrupt the programming on the dongle's delicate internal circuits. Some additional conversation later, it became clear that the vendor had known about this problem for some time, but had declined to inform its customers, for reasons best known to its management. Had we known about the problem, perhaps that demo would have turned out differently.
The point of all this recollection is my immediate experience with an outfit in the U.K. that's flogging a new translation product called SDLX. I paid for an "upgrade" from a competing product and received a license number, but attempting to download the product (13.4 MB) from the company's site is turning out to be a real bear.
My first attempt to download via a web page died, which did not prevent me from getting an automatically generated piece of mail congratulating me on my download and informing me that my 20-day free support period started now. All subsequent attempts to download the file died, except for the part where I get this e-mail (I have more than a dozen as I write this).
Failing this approach, I decided to go the alternate route, which involves downloading 10 disk-sized files. This is a pain in the butt, as now I have to handhold the process every few minutes, but I need the files.
Clicking on the third file in the series, my browser opens a new window and begins to display a binary file. Right-clicking and doing a save-as does nothing.
Two strikes.
I do some digging and find I'm doing a behind-the-scenes ftp download. After some tries, I figure out the user name and password. I'm downloading the 13.4 MB file as I type this.
I don't think I should have to work this hard, especially as (a) I need a special password to install the software from the downloaded .exe file and (b) I need my license number and an Internet connection to activate the software. (BTW, the publisher suggests that I get online and deactivate the software in case I decide to reinstall Windows at some time in the future.
ROFLHMS.
* * * I got a call from a client, and have a 4-page item that's due by Wednesday. November is turning out to be a very thin month as far as translations are concerned, but on the other hand, that gave me an opportunity to get some good momentum going as far as the store is concerned.
Cheers...
At least in the U.S. by my observations.
Some programs, notably applications developed in Europe and Russia, nonetheless aggressively pursued copy protection, often with the use of "dongles," or hardware devices that had to be installed on one's computer in order for the program to work.
My favorite horror story concerning these devices concerned an expert-system building tool (which shall remain nameless) that used this form of copy protection. On a trip from Florida to California to pitch our company's services to a prospective client, the demonstration program I was to show crashed and burned for no apparent reason. There were no warning messages or anything. Just a hung computer.
Upon returning home - with no contract, as you might imagine - it turned out that any machine to which we attached the dongle I had taken with me to California would crash if we tried to use the expert-system tool.
A call to the publisher revealed that the dongle was dead. A short conversation later, it was determined that passage through an airport x-ray machine was enough to disrupt the programming on the dongle's delicate internal circuits. Some additional conversation later, it became clear that the vendor had known about this problem for some time, but had declined to inform its customers, for reasons best known to its management. Had we known about the problem, perhaps that demo would have turned out differently.
The point of all this recollection is my immediate experience with an outfit in the U.K. that's flogging a new translation product called SDLX. I paid for an "upgrade" from a competing product and received a license number, but attempting to download the product (13.4 MB) from the company's site is turning out to be a real bear.
My first attempt to download via a web page died, which did not prevent me from getting an automatically generated piece of mail congratulating me on my download and informing me that my 20-day free support period started now. All subsequent attempts to download the file died, except for the part where I get this e-mail (I have more than a dozen as I write this).
Failing this approach, I decided to go the alternate route, which involves downloading 10 disk-sized files. This is a pain in the butt, as now I have to handhold the process every few minutes, but I need the files.
Clicking on the third file in the series, my browser opens a new window and begins to display a binary file. Right-clicking and doing a save-as does nothing.
Two strikes.
I do some digging and find I'm doing a behind-the-scenes ftp download. After some tries, I figure out the user name and password. I'm downloading the 13.4 MB file as I type this.
I don't think I should have to work this hard, especially as (a) I need a special password to install the software from the downloaded .exe file and (b) I need my license number and an Internet connection to activate the software. (BTW, the publisher suggests that I get online and deactivate the software in case I decide to reinstall Windows at some time in the future.
ROFLHMS.
Cheers...
