Filipa,
I'm still curious: did your students discover that they had all been
using illegal versions of the software and that this was likely
causing the problem? And were entire variables being dropped after a
particular operation was conducted?
I'm just a little concerned that, if this type of capability is built
into the program to prevent piracy, it could accidentally occur even
on legally installed versions. Perhaps someone with advanced computer
or programming knowledge would find the suggestion ridiculous, but I
find that several day-to-day programs often don't function as they
should (a windows user could probably guess which company's mediocre
software I'm referring to) so it is a bit disconcerting to think that
STATA might suddenly develop a "glitch" and drop part of the dataset
being used.
If it is merely dropping of variables, I suppose it should be obvious
if this were to ever happen. But if it applies to observations as
well, the potential for a glitch to occur might be cause for concern.
It also makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to just design
STATA to just not work altogether when unauthorized licenses or
activation keys are used.
Best wishes,
Chris
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 2:59 AM, Filipa de Castro
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Demo Crazy:
>
> I had some students having the same problem you report, some time ago,
> which took me ages to understand what was going on and was very
> unpleasant. But once I realized what was happening (they were 3 with
> the same dropping variables problem) they had a mature reaction not
> blaming STATA for losing hours of work rather they assumed they error
> and apologized and accepted a penalty in their marking, and off
> course, moved on to use legal versions of STATA.
>
> I can´t believe you really think you could sue STATA for a pirate copy
> that does not work well.
>
> Filipa
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 4:46 AM, Demo Crazy <[email protected]> wrote:
> > After seeing this post
> >
> > http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-08/msg01142.html
> >
> > I tried to install my *legal* copy of Stata 10 with one of those serials available on the web. I found the same behaviour: random dropping of variables.
> >
> > Therefore the original Stata itself (not version modified by others as gus from Stata suggest) includes undocumented functions: this is definition of MALWARE. Is it including also other undocumentd parts of code that allows it to steal my personal data?
> >
> > I thinks that this behaviour from Stata can be sued. Just a notice telling that this dropping has beed made because the license is not valid would make it legal. But otherwise Stata guys are crackers, includign malware in their product.
> >
> > Thank you a lot STata: you have finaly convinced me that I won't ever buy a new copy of Stata and just move to other statiscal package (preferibly open source like GNU R, but maybe SAS or another)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > *
> > * For searches and help try:
> > * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> > * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> > * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> >
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
