Yup, I second the concern. Better to de-activate Stata when the
license is invalid. My 5 cents.
2009/11/9 Christopher Hajzler <[email protected]>:
> 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/
>
--
Wincent Ronggui HUANG
Doctoral Candidate
Dept of Public and Social Administration
City University of Hong Kong
http://asrr.r-forge.r-project.org/rghuang.html
*
* 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/
