Safecast (c-dilla) on OS X

[gmask]

Well this is interesting but I don't beleive it is going to cause sweeping changes in the industry.

For 1 Turbo Tax is relativley cheap, 2 they release a new verison that you have to buy for every new tax year, 3 taxes are frustrating people are going to be especially tense, 4 most people using Turbotax are probably over 18 and not fanboys

So for them it make sense for them not to have strict anti-piracy protection.

[dvornik]

I think adobe and macromedia software is relatively cheap as well and you have to buy it every year... Am I wrong?

For volume customers safecast/c-dilla is a total disaster. I have never seen any other license management system under which legitimate volume customers would rather use keygens than get legal licenses.

[gmask]

>>I think adobe and macromedia software is relatively cheap as well and you have to buy it every year... Am I wrong?

Hmm you don't have to .. for Flash maybe you need to but you have to buy a new verison of TurboTax because the tax information is changed every year .. you can't use an old version.




>>>For volume customers safecast/c-dilla is a total disaster.

Could you clarify what this is?? IS it the piracy protection scheme?

[dvornik]

It is extremely hard to manage even when it works as it's supposed to. You need to back up the licence files for each workstation before you ghost it and then return the file there before you run the application for the first time (if you click on the 3ds max icon by mistake or put a wrong file to a wrong workstation your license is lost). Things can go wrong every step of the way. Online activation only works for 3 workstations. If you have 30 that you payed for you need to ask your boss to ask his boss to call someone that doesn't know what you are talking about in the first place and tells you not to call him ever again (well... at least that's how it worked for us).

In case you are using some kind of harddrive protection device (like a Centurion Guard for Windows or OS X) .... Then email me and I'll help you to resolve the problem for just $2,000 :).

It's extremely buggy and conflicts with antivirus and CD-writing software. When it REALLY fails you need to lowlevel format your drive. (Man I had to go through this for more tan 2 years just because of this ****ing licence management. discreet switched to Flexlm for volume customers eventually - and Flexlm just WORKS after one phonecall).


Buttom line - C-dilla/Safecast is a management nightmare.

[gmask]

>>>Buttom line - C-dilla/Safecast is a management nightmare.

Okay so I'm still confused?? Is it a third party license management software? What exactly does this have to do with Turbotax?

[dvornik]

Yes it's a third party license management. Created by Macrovision. discreet was one of the first major companies to use it. It was a total disaster if you ask me.

It makes some changes to your harddrive that can only be undone by lowlevel formatting. This alone should raise some red flags.

Turbotax (http://www.turbotax.com/), part of Intuit, introduced this license management last year and was faced with an unprecedented customer backlash. Safecast/C-dilla IS a very problematic license management software. When normal people are forced to deal with it they get even more frustrated than semi-geeks like myself. There was an extremely forceful resistance to Safecast from the customers of Turbotax and it was eventually dropped. Turbotax apologized. (those are not the most up-to-date links)

http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=7077
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1326696,00.asp

although things may not be as simple:
http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=9527

Now Macromedia and (I believe) Adobe are implementing the same license management system.
Go figure.

[gmask]

>>>Now Macromedia and (I believe) Adobe are implementing the same license management system.


Hmm.. it would be news to me that adobe was adopting it.. they have had weak protection for mos tof their apps for awhiel though and dropped dongle licences for the AE pro bundle because it annoyed to many customers when they wouldnt; work on other computers, break or become obsolete.

[dvornik]

Google search for "adobe safecast" should make you worried.

[gmask]

Originally posted by dvornik
Google search for "adobe safecast" should make you worried.

Awww.. I'm not too worried.. I did notice that in one article they mentioned that adobe does allow you to install on two computers.

It also said at least in their trials that it is lenient.. meaning that if you have to reinstall your app ever once and awhile you would not be prevented and if so you can call in.

I did the whole XP shuffle recently and it wasn't annoying.. however this methods will probably be foiled anyway.. so I don't really know if they will be that effective.

[loop29]

cdilla is worst protection system ever, I wonder why you guys are not running a license server for your cdilla stuff, we had one of those for Inventor and worked better than this nightmare with checking out licenses on local workstation and move it to another, we always had a tool called cdilla_rewind, you maybe familiar with it if you played around with cdilla a lot. Inventor users in the US pressured Autodesk to drop cdilla license management and implement Flexlm for licensing, Autodesk moved that way and you can choose now between flexlm and cdilla if I remember correct, but I guess that most discs will come with flexlm in the US. Don´t get caught by using keygens, vendors are very sensitive in that particular field of using software. You should document all your attempts getting support and solving issues with your application and if it is clear from the documentation that every attempt from the software vendor didn´t solved the issue it would be comprehensible that you used a keygen in the end to get the application up working you paid your hard earned cash for.

regards

[dvornik]

The place I worked for switched to flexlm for all the autodesk/discreet stuff as soon as it became available. It works really well.

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