watch out!!

[Kenneth Potter]

Beave

Not trying to pick on ya but thats really not

fair to those who paid for the software.I get bootleg talk all the time & get a sick feeling knowing that its going to hurt thr bussiness. The software industtry should looby for triple fines & penaltys beyond what exist today.

[This message has been edited by Kenneth Potter (edited 06-02-2001).]

[Luther_Heggs]

How about reporting the companies that "make" the crack? Why doesn't the BSA go after them? Are they over in China somewhere?

[gcode]

I believe most of the pirate companies are in Canada. Thats also where the companies

that make bootleg sattilite TV stuff are.

Due to differences between Canadian law and US law legal efforts to shut these thieves

down have failed. I may be wrong, but I heard

that Mastercam gave up fighting one Canadian company. They ended up buying it out just to shut it down.

Any good hacker can break these dongles. An internet search will pull up a half dozen

pirate crews. Many of the web pages have a

Russian flavor to them these days.

[Kenneth Potter]

There in China & Taiwain i bet. I hope CNC software comes up with something quick to deal with this! Companys using crack is one thing but individuals are worse! If someone gets caught with crack they sould also be sued for loss of business from banded together legal users if possible . Make examples of them publicly by hurting them in the pocket so hard that it scare the ba-jesus out of others that have crack!

 

Just My Humble Opinion

[Tony]

Here is what I HAVE done in the past when I run across a "Free "seat of mastercam Running somewhere...I tell my local re seller

Let him chase it down ,It's money coming out of his pocket on the sale, Go after it.

The report piracy people, Well like someone else said here already.. When A friend of mine was let go a while back a few years ago at another shop. He Turned them in the next day ,They were running 3 Bogus Key's!

On another note Did you ever start building

a model airplane, and you didnt want to stop till it was done?My _________ says its kind of the same thing (Cracking), The challange to get it open,but sadly never even thinking who and how it will affect others.Right now _____ is

Building a satalite card Emulator program

that way it cant get Zapped.

It goes on and on...

Stiffer penalties for the USER ?

[This message has been edited by Tony (edited 06-01-2001).]

[Webby]

Although the US has the lowest piracy rate in the world, it also has extremely large PC and software markets. The BSA estimates the 1999 US overall software market losses at $3.2 billion.

[This message has been edited by Webmaster (edited 06-01-2001).]

[cadcam]

OUCHHHHHHHH

------------------

jay/ aka cadcam

Precision Programming

cnc programming &

Predator reseller

email: [email protected]

web: www.ppcadcam.com

Mastercam forum FTP free file support

ftp://www.ppcadcam.com

User: mastercam

Pass: forum

[ronengineer]

To the Mastercam Police.

So why not start up a phoney warez site promising cracked mastercam products and manuals in exchange for an e-mail address. Set your site up written in broken (russian) english and then see how many hits you get and thus how widespread the problem.

Hell, if you wanted too you could even write a small piece of dialler software that when downloaded would connect with the PC details of the recipient of your file and send the details out. This could even be embedded in the Mastercam demo disks and thus if activated could dial out.

You may even get traceable e-mail addresses from it and James can sue them for lost buisness!!!!!

ron - 2 fully paid up seats honest - engineer.

James,

To be a salesman takes a certain type of person, and it certainly would'nt suit me. Stick with the tech stuff as it leads to a more interesting life and keep the posts coming. And as an aside when we started the 5 Axis post up (what a runner!) we were looking at a seat of D***** as an alternative. Instead we have come to a deal upgrading our basic Mcam seat to a full seat and incorporating the 5 axis post and a translator with our UK dealer. Mcam is the better bet and we are sticking with it. I still think that 5ax posts should be cheaper but at least this way I can get value for money.

[Rekd™]

Ron, that's an invasion of privacy, which is ALSO ILEGAL!! You can't resort to those means to catch these fools. When you do that, you're bringing yourself down to their level, and they'll beat you with experience!

And as for the 'lost sales' of $3.2 billion dollars, if you're talking about just Mastercam, it's just not true... Do you think that every person that uses a bootleg copy would have actually BOUGHT it had they not been able to get a pirated copy? Absolutely NOT!! In fact, I'm estimating that CNC Software has not even GROSSED more than $1.5 billion dollars from mastercam. (Considering $15,000.00 per seat, times, say, 55,000 seats, is less than $1,000,000,000.00.) $3.2 Billion in losses is an absurd number when they haven't even grossed 1/2 of that.

I do not condone using pirated software to make money. But on the same token, I do not think that someone using pirated software to educate themselves should be delt with as severly as people/companies making money off it.

Autocad is a prime example; they have, in my opinion, one of the worst user-friendly cad systems going, (for the big guns, anyway), and yet they have an extremely large "legitimate" market share! Why? cuz it's 'known' software. Everyone has it, and everyone knows how to use it, so that's what companies buy! (Yes, many companies do not base their purchases on performance, they base it on usability)

Micro$oft is another prime example, in a different field. Their software is EVERYWHERE! Why? Because it's good software? Hell no! It's some of the worst BLOAT-WARE/CRASH-WARE I've seen! It's because they're not concerned with the 'little people' stealing it, they're worried about the big boys! But the big boys won't buy it if no one knows how to use it, so they let people learn from it.

In short, pirated software does 2 things, it takes money away from the owners cuz people don't buy it when they can steal it, and it gives money to the owners cuz people buy it cuz they know how to use it. I don't think it all evens out in the end, but it's not a lose-lose situation.

(hmm, this is prolly gonna ruffle some feathers... sorry it turned into a book, but it's a very touchy subject with both BAD sides, and GOOD sides.)

[Tony]

O.K.

I cant take it!!

I myself made a copy of Dreamweaver 4.0 and Photoshop 6.0 and sent them to some fat kid in Iowa,....For Free!

just as GUILTY

 

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Ron,

I'd agree. Tech is more fun, and mire interesting. (To me at least)

------------------

James M.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Hey Dave,

I'd like my Alaska Airlines Frequent flier program credited please!

 

------------------

James M.

[Webby]

Rekd - The $3.2 billion figure is of course for the entire US software market.

[Rekd™]

any idea how much CNC is losing?

just cruious

[Smit]

Ok...here's my two cents...Mastercam has several different learning tools...the demo version is what the people use here. Good to practice with at home. Create geometry, run toolpaths. No saving geometry, no posting toolpaths. But an excellent way to learn. We got it for free from our Mastercam dealer. This is what the people in my company take home with them to practice and learn. To me the argument that it's permissible to use a cracked version of software as a learning tool is pretty weak when there are other good (and legal) options available.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Rekd,

In my area alone there are about 1500-2000 Machine Shops. I believe that about 60-70% of those shops are running Mastercam in one way shape or form. I have approximately 1/4 of the number above or so Legitimate Customers in my area so do the math. Also, EVERY single Bootleg Seat I've ever seen has Mill Level 3, Lathe, Design, and Solids(V8 only). I'll refrain from quoting a price due to the nature of currency fluctuations in countries other than ours, but just in my area alone would constitute well in excess of the 7 figure range. Multiply that by a factor of 100 or so and you're getting close the amount of money CNC SOftware is loosing.

Just my thoughts.

------------------

James M.

[Toby]

vs8 must have given the bootleggers a real high. I have never seen a major release of m/c get cracked so fast in all my years. Most people didn't even upgrade yet and the crack was in circulation. I'm sure there is a better way of encrypting the code but with that comes higher cost for the end user and just another challenge for the "gophers" that will spend the time and find a way around the dongle. It's a real bummer for all those it effects.

------------------

Toby Baughman

Programming Supervisor

Saint Gobain Semicon Group Inc.

Vs8.1.1 LvL3 Mill + solids

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

There is only one way (that gstephens pointed out to me) that Mastercam (or any other software for that matter) could protect their software that could not be broken and that woudl be to have a PCI/ISA card in your PC that actually performed Mastercam functions. Then there would be no way to duplicate that. Doing this would be a MAJOR pain in the tookus. It would upset off our legitimate customers IN A BIG WAY and possibly cause them to seek other software packages.

Personally, I think they (CNC Software) should embed some code in the software that if it encounters a certain condition(s) in the software, it automatically formats the Hard Drive or some other malicious activity with no way to stop it. That would be cool. This would be relatively easy to do and could not harm legitimate users because there are certain conditions that exist in bootleg software that cannot and do not exist in legitimate software.

JMHO

------------------

James M.

[This message has been edited by James Meyette (edited 06-06-2001).]

[Kenneth Potter]

Heres a quote from someone in the Brand X

Forum . I thought it was interesting reading

Quote

----------------------------

Mastercams code architecture is very very old. The truth is, it's not much

> more than a i386 protected mode program that's been hacked into windows.

> I've been using it for 13 years, and i'm very dissapointed that they have

> been unwilling to modernize thier product. They're still of the mind that

> the machine that runs Mastercam, will not be running any other software.

> Mastercam grabs all of the processor rescources ( just like the old i386

> protected mode programs) and is supposed to release rescources when

> requested. This doesn't always work, especially if your also running a solid

> modelling program like Solidworks, or Pro-E. They told me they would have

> this fixed with version 7. Now they're saying version 10. So with and

> average 18 month release cycle, thats what 3 years down the road.

__________

Please Feel free to comment.confused:

 

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I'll give it a shot.

Statement:

"I've been using it(Mastercam) for 13 years, and I'm very dissapointed that they have been unwilling to modernize thier product."

Rebuttal:

Mastercam has consistantly improved(read added features, capability, and power) the product from one release to another. It may not be as frequent as we would like but CNC Software's committment to to a better, faster, more powerful Mastercam should be evident to anyone that has even looked at it.

Statement:

"They're(CNC Software) still of the mind that the machine that runs Mastercam, will not be running any other software. Mastercam grabs all of the processor rescources ( just like the old i386 protected mode programs) and is supposed to release rescources when requested. This doesn't always work, especially if your also running a solid

modelling program like Solidworks, or Pro-E. "

Rebuttal:

If SOMEBODY wants to run Pro/E, Solid Works, AND Mastercam on the same machine AND at the same time, SOMEBODY needs to have their head examined. Every single one of these programs are VERY system(Math and Graphics) intensive and can cause system instability if your system is not powerful enough. From what I have heard, Pro/E is fairly unstable all by itself, add to that running another CAD/CAM/CAE program running with it simultaneously, and that's just asking for trouble. As for me, I usually run Mastercam on my Dell Dimension 4100 PIII 800 with 512MB RAM on Windows 2000 Professional while MS Outlook 2000, Norton AV 2001 and sometimes I'll have my burner going too, as well as WinAmp. WinAmp is the only program that has caused crashes on my box(Waddya want for free ware). So in a nutshell, the statement "They're(CNC Software) still of the mind that the machine that runs Mastercam, will not be running any other software." is IMHO, HOGWASH

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

------------------

James M.

[Michael Reynolds]

What does IMHO mean???

Mike R.

[cadcam]

And on the same thought with James i run mastercam and Predator most of the time at the same time and they both are graghics intense.

not a probelm here, i forgote i usally have mail going and internet radio when at home working.

all on my PIII 1 gig 512ram oxdgen 32meg video and working from the server on top of it.

------------------

jay/ aka cadcam

Precision Programming

cnc programming &

Predator reseller

email: [email protected]

web: www.ppcadcam.com

Mastercam forum FTP free file support

ftp://www.ppcadcam.com

User: mastercam

Pass: forum

[Mark H]

Michael Reynolds,

IMHO = In My Humble Opinion

FYI, here are a few more...

LOL = Laughing Out Loud

ROFL = Rolling on the Floor Laughing

OK?

 

[Mike-T]

I often have both Mcam and Pro/e up @ the same time and have yet to have problems since switching over to Win2000. (hope that doesn't come back to haunt me !!) As far as the old code.....Yes Mcam does retain some of the "feel" of an older app, but i feel thats a Plus !! I think that as an app gets more and more of the windows "feel" you start to lose speed. Takes longer to use the mouse than it does to use the keyboard..(F keys and shortcuts...ect..)

[Charles Davis]

This is kind of a tangential issue, but regarding the interface, Mike-T is right.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that stated that the DOS looking interfaces were suprisingly efficient, and often more so than Windows interfaces.

I think it depends on how well the interface is executed. Some Windows interfaces look good, but are terribly inefficient to use.

However, some interfaces (Like Solidworks, Word, many others, etc) are very effective.

The bottom line is I'd rather have the existing interface than a poorly done Windows interface. This is mainly a sex appeal issue during sales demos. The DOS-like interface is beginning to look dated.

Of course, that's just the top level. Once you get underneath, I think most of the dialog boxes are quite well thought out.

New interface? Yes. But don't do it just to do it. Do it when it makes my job easier and faster.