1 Jan
2011
1 Jan
'11
11:55 p.m.
On 01/01/11 23:18, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:
I do reward the developer, but I do hate when I'm
treated as a thief.
Exactly!
I used to use a RAW image converter which was included with a memory
card I bought. The developers re-wrote it for V4, based it on .NET and
gave a few V3 users (myself included) a free upgrade. Of course, this
broke Linux support (they never supported Linux, but that never stopped
it from working).
The icing on the cake? It phones home every so often. Turns out the
activation server has a "remote kill" option. They RK'd all the V3 keys...
IMO, this falls under the same category as Sony removing Other OS from
the PS3. Nobody could care less about the security, but once Sony pissed
off the Linux users (and hackers), everyone started looking long and
hard at the crypto. End result? It's now pretty much cracked black and
blue. The firmware DSA keys have been recovered, signatures defeated...
game over.
I bought a software to hack the TPM chip of the IBM
Thinkpad. A client
had it locked, and needed to unlock it. The software is good enough, and
I PAID for it. But the developer locks the software to my machine and,
if I change the motherboard (it happens with time) or format the HD, I
loose the key that makes it work, and the developer DOES NOT send me a
new key, in any case.
OK, tying a licence to a hard drive... that's stupid. Maybe it was OK
*years* ago, but it sure as hell ain't OK now!
In the past three years, I've swapped:
- A Seagate 7200.11 which died. It and its mate were replaced with
Western Digital RE2s after Seagate refused to provide warranty service
on the 7200.11. Did I mention the Seagates packed in because of a
firmware fault? (yes, I fixed them both, thank $DEITY for FTDI
USB-TTL232 cables).
- Laptop got a HDD upgrade -- from a Seagate 80GB to a Western
Digital Caviar Black 250GB.
- A WD 500GB in my HTPC -- upgraded to a 1TB WD GreenPower. Inaudible
except in a soundproof chamber.
- Two 500GB Seagates in the server. Upgraded to 1.5TB WD GreenPowers
after the 7200.11 debacle.
And that's just the ones I can remember... and doesn't count the number
of times I've formatted one or more of the drives and reinstalled WinXP.
I've also lost count of the number of times I've had to call MS to get
my copy of XP Pro reactivated... part of the reason I'm not planning on
upgrading my desktop machine to Win7 is because I don't feel like
dealing with that bullcrap any more.
I'm the buyer, not the one who pirated it.
:-)
"Circumvention for interoperability: I bought new hardware, and the
license says 'one user', not 'one machine'."
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/