@cm said:
counterquestion: what if your 48 channel digital mixer is lost in a break.in - would you then have to buy it again?
...well, we would have **bought** our mixer in the first place - we literally *cannot* buy the Vienna Instruments, only license them. If our dongle were lost or stolen, and we contacted VSL to get it replaced, I would have thought that they could simply deactivate the licenses on the previous key. The apparent fact that such a lovely, bloated system as Syncrosoft can't make a quick "phone home" - perhaps some sort of first-run on a new system - is a bit sad. I'm sure VSL is paying a fortune for licensing (let alone maintaining) this protection scheme... It wouldn't take much to store (for example) the hardware address of the machine on the key, along with the license, and phone home whenever the hardware address changes. If you have multiple machines, as long as the licenses are valid, they'll pass the phone home without issue. If a key gets broken, lost, or stolen, the licenses are deactivated, and the phone home fails. No dice for the "thief" trying to launch the VIs. Yeah, it means all machines in a studio need network access, but that can be managed pretty easily, and with VE 3 it's kind of essential anyway.
Sorry to cranky about this, but there's no reason this should be compared to ANY piece of hardware, from a mixing desk to a car. It's software. We don't even own it - we license it. To make comparisons to hardware is ignoring everything that computers and software make possible. Could you imagine a **mechanical** VSL? ...Well, yes... I suppose. It's called an orchestra. If Syncrosoft can't invalidate a license on a stolen key, in a way which is effective for BOTH the software company, AND the end user, then their service is sub-standard. Pathetic. Surely it's not only VSL that's paying for Syncrosoft's service, but the end-user as well, as the price of Syncrosoft is more than likely figured into the cost of the VIs.
(You may have noticed that the very mention of Syncrosoft makes my blood boil...)
J.