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Symantec Hit by Product Activation Glitch
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, Symantec has hit a snag in their product activation scheme. On a certain machine, the software machine would always ask for the activation when the computer is started or restarted, despite the fact that they have thoroughly tested the scheme." According to the article, Symantec has finally managed to replicate the problem, and those hit by the bug are asked to contact Symantec's support channels. However, there's no mention of a fix yet.
This is showing evidence in favour that activation schemes are just plain bad business. E.g. the potential money you save by hindering piracy minus the lost sales due to pissed off customers => positive or negative?
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How many times do we need to see stuff like this?
Product activation only irritates legitimate buyers of software and all it does to software piracy is encourage hacking or mass duplication of enterprise edition CDs.
When you have legit customers using 'pirate' discs because the product activation features annoy them (or completely prevent them from using the software at all) you've just backed the slowest horse in the customer satisfaction race.
It's not like M$ didn't have the same snags over two years ago with XP. Product activation schemes are just another flavor of compatibility problem that the software/hardware industries have been having since the first geek stuck the first expansion card into bus slot. Try as they might, coders always miss SOMETHING and no matter how many hardware and software configurations are tested prior to release, there will always be more combinations than they can test.
Product Activation on products as important as antivirus apps is bad IMO. When average users are confronted with this, its easy for them to get frustrated with, and what happenes when average users get frustrated with software? They dont use it.
As with all stories about virri, here is the link to a FREE Antivirus app.
Remember back in the day, when copy protected 5 1/4" floppies were all the rage? The software would lock up and freak out. And within a couple of days somebody would post a program to copy the disk without the protection to your local BBS. Sometimes just copying the floppy would make the software more stable. Remember dongles (some companies STILL use them)?! Remember the dongle remover programs that tricked the program into thinking there was a dongle there when there wasn't?
Copy protection rarely stops piracy, and usually screws with the customer. Online activation is just the newest wave. Even M$ can't get it right. Has anyone met somebody who really really likes online activation?
IMHO, the best way to fight piracy is to have a great product that's reasonably priced. And the purchase price buys you support and updates. Each CD key can only register once for a support/update password, so those who pirate the software don't get support. And catching a pirated key/support p assword combination is as easy as running your HTTP logs through an analysis program.
No vendor will ever completely stamp out piracy, the best they can hope to do is making purchasing the product as attractive as possible.
Product activation doesn't faze the pirates, all it does is enrage legitimate buyers and drive them to competitors (or to pseudo-piracy themselves).
Last week I started setting up two new G5s for a client. They use QuarkXPress, the 6.0 version of which has adopted product activation (I've been steering all my clients to Adobe InDesign, but this particular one was willing but unable to switch for some reason). Any Mac people reading this who historically know how bad Quark is can see where this is going. Three times, I retyped the two codes on the sheet that came with the upgrade CD to activate the software, and I'm punching the damn things in correctly-- what do I get? "Invalid serial number." So I have to call these fucktards to get this shit activated, which I'm not doing until I have the second machine running, so I won't have to call a second time if that one fails as well. And after I clone the build to the second G5, I'll have to uninstall the Macromedia shit they got and reinstall and activate it, because that has activation as well. What a colossal waste of time.
And all of these companies make it such a fucking hassle to get a multi-user install code, that when I do a build destined for multiple machines I just have clients buy single-user licenses so they're covered, and I install the shit with warezed site-license codes. Why doesn't every company simply offer a web page where one can go, punch in all of their single-user codes for a given product, and in return get a single code good for that number of licenses? I don't have time to sit on hold with the Volume Licensing Department, I have work to do! And Quark, those fucking bastards CHARGE you to consolidate licenses, so I just used warezed multi-user codes for them, too, as long as my clients have enough single licenses to cover themselves. You can take my Office v.X Volume License Edition install CD when you pry it from my cold, dead hands-- no more typing in those stupid fucking codes from MS, either.
Oh, and speaking of MS, last week I had to add 5 CALs to a client's Terminal Server. Microsoft e-mailed us two "proof of purchase" type codes, and we had to go to a web site and punch them in to get the actual install code. But did that work? Noooo, I ended up having to call them to get the fucking code. All this jumping through hoops, I ended up billing the client for an HOUR, just to punch in a fucking 25-character license code. It's ridiculous.
As you can see, these anti-piracy features do nothing but waste my billable time (and ultimately my clients' money), and force legitmate users to turn to cracks and hacks and codez to get things done in an efficient manner.
You know... I'd really like to know just how they think a customer's gonna be able to pull that off.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
got to be such a PITA!
My company standardised on Office 2000 at a cost of > $300 per seat (10 seats). The original activation was sooo easy; we have an "always-on" Internet connection, the software connected to Microsoft's site and we were off to the races in about 30 seconds after installing.
As computers will do, several went belly up and I had to replace them. One needed nothing more than a bigger hard disk, but required re-authorization. In the meantime (less than 6 mos), MS had released Office XP. Wouldn't you know that activation was no longer so easy! The software kept coming up with "server not responding" and I was forced to call to get an authorization code. This activity included an extra copy that we bought that had never been activated! So much for their promises of being easy to authorize.
After a couple of 20 minute (mostly on hold) sessions to get authorization numbers, I tracked down a cracked copy of Office. I still keep the original licenses in a locked cabinet in case we are ever audited by the software gestapo, but I re-install off of the cracked copy to avoid the authorization. I personally think this is a forced upgrade policy.
We can no longer buy Office 2000. What do you think I'm going to do when we need a new copy of Office? Microsoft has forced me to pirate their software!
(posted as AC for obvious reasons)
Symantec should realize their market, and for those who paid, expect to be able to use their product.
Luckily they don't have this yet on the macintosh side...