Upgraded to Slickedit 2008 after fascism false alarm
Not long ago the makers of SlickEdit, my favorite programmer’s editor, released the new version, SlickEdit 2008. Since I have an active maintenance and support contract, I got the upgrade free (although it took a few days of support hell to figure out how to get my updated 2008 key).
As a long-time SlickEdit user (I first used Visual SlickEdit 2.x back in the late 90’s) I am used to the painless upgrade process, but this time was different. This time, when I launched Slickedit for the first time, it wanted to activate! As in, Microsoft WGA Fascism Lives DRM Bullshit! From Slickedit of all people! I unplugged my network cable and tried to proceed; sure enough, activation failed.
Through force of will I didn’t know I had, I resisted the urge to type a nuclear nastygram to Slickedit support, and instead came up with this fairly moderate missive:
Support:
I just upgraded to Slickedit 2008 under my Maintenance and Support
contract, only to discover that the new version of SlickEdit has the
same obnoxious phone-home activation feature we all know and love from
Microsoft products like Vista. In order to install SlickEdit on my
laptop I had to either use my Internet connection to get a node-locked
license, or download a node-locked license file.Before I uninstall SlickEdit and find another text editor, I would
just like to confirm this is indeed the new SlickEdit regime, with no
option to go back to the old Slickedit 2007 offline license key
verification scheme.I’m sure this new licensing scheme is not support’s doing, and I
apologize for the snarky tone of this email, but I suspect you’d be
grumpy too if you were facing the prospect of learning another editor
(God help me I might even have to use emacs!)Thanks,
I expected to get some canned MBA “for your safety” bullshit, but instead I got:
Hi Adam,
I copied the “nullpointer” email address because that is the email address used to register your SlickEdit licenses.
The new version of SlickEdit (SE2008) provides two options for licensing, the activation (or phone-home) and the file based which was used prior to SE2008. Obtaining the file based licensing is very easy. Here are the steps:
- Log into your SlickEdit web account and click the “Registered Products”. Once in the registered Products page…
- Click on the “Product Description” for your active license (ser#: WLxxxx)…in other words “SlickEdit 2008 Windows/Linux Bundle”…this will open the licensing window.
- In this window you will have your license key and product install file for the product(s)
- Click on the “License File (optional)”…this will take you through the process to obtain your file based license
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact myself or our tech support team at 919-473-0070.
Please confirm everything went smoothly.
Best regards,
Wow! So there is a non-node-locked option from Slickedit. Thank God!
Browsing their support forum, it seems I’m not alone. It seems the beta had FlexLM node locking, and users (like me) revolted. I still think Slickedit fucked up here; in the old version the FlexLM license server stuff was for site licenses and numbered users, and you had to seek it out in the installer. This one seems to come by default in that mode. I’m not the only one who missed the option to download the license file, as you can see for yourself in the support forum threads.
Anyway, I’m glad Slickedit listened to its loyal users rather than stubbornly clinging to the users-are-crooks-software-should-phone-home bandwagon. So far I’ve managed to fend off attempts to make AppAssure’s enterprise backup products node-locked and phone-home, and our stuff is alot more expensive than Slickedit. I just hope they can resist the siren’s song of fascist licensing schemes in the future, and that this kerfuffle is just a hiccup along the way.
If Slickedit goes the activation route, I will not continue to use it, just as I refuse to use Vista under the activation regime. Much like Windows, Slickedit is not the only game in town, but switching to another game is time-consuming and painful.
Some Music Piracy Tips from Iraq
Say what you will about the rampant crime, terrorism, and sectarian violence; Iraq is a hot place for computer hardware and pirated entertainment content.
The Iraqis I work with have used all the latest American software tools, which they can buy for around USD1 in the technology markets throughout Iraq. They’ve also seen all the major American movies, thanks to pirate DVDs which are equally affordable.
All this piracy (actually, it’s not technically piracy, as Iraq has no copyright laws) has put me in the mood to write about my..erm..friend’s investigations into sources of ‘evaluation’ music.
This…friend…is stuck w/ a high-latency relatively low-bandwidth satellite link, and thus is unable to saturate a 1.5MB/s pipe w/ BitTorrent traffic as was his custom. So, he’s had to find some alternative means to discover and obtain music and apps. My friend isn’t opposed to paying a reasonable amount for media, but he’s violently opposed to DRM.
First, he says a quality download manager is mandatory, particularly for his sat link. Since download managers break files down into multiple concurrently transferred streams, they can better take advantage of the multiple data channels available on satellite links, plus they can typically recover from the inevitable connectivity losses. He recommends FlashGot (TorrentSpy should have a torrent) and the FlashGet (no relation) add-in for Firefox.
Given that, EasyNews is still a good first source of music and software. Just use the download manager to bring home your loot.
When EasyNews fails, he still turns to TorrentSpy and PirateBay, both of which are torrent search engines. However, the twist is, he uses SSH to set up a tunnel back to his Stateside home network, and redirects local ports to the Remote Desktop port on his BitTorrent downloading box. Then he downloaded and installed the HTML Web UI plugin for Azureus, which allows him to control Azureaus (a Java BitTorrent client) from a web browser. Next he sets up another SSH tunnel to the port where the HTML Web UI plugin is listening, so he can initiate torrent downloads from his shitty high-latency link, and have them actually run on his high-speed stateside machine.
Once a torrent is downloaded, he uploads it from his stateside machine to a stateside server he maintains for this purpose, which is connected to a Tier 1 backbone. From there he uses his download manager to fetch the files over the satellite link overnight or several hours during the day, and voila.
If EasyNews and BT both fail to yield results, he’s discovered a couple more options.
First, AllOfMP3, the Russian site which sells ‘legal’ MP3s absent any DRM for bargain-basement prices (< $2 for a whole album; as little as $0.10 for a song). Of course, these are only ‘legal’ in Russia, but he won’t tell the RIAA if you don’t. The selection is pretty good, but he’s had some trouble w/ the site’s payment processor declining his credit cards.
If all those don’t work, he uses iTunes. ‘But wait’, you might ask, ‘I thought this friend was vehemently opposed to DRM? iTunes forces the Mussolini of DRM onto its hapless users; surely your friend finds this morally inconsistent?’ To which he would reply ‘Aha! You clearly know nothing of JHymn, the iTunes DRM cracking tool’. Having concluded the ridiculous mock dialog, let us proceed.
JHymn removes the DRM from iTunes downloads, optionally converting from AAC to MP3 in the process. There is a huge catch, however: it doesn’t (yet) work with the DRM in iTunes 6.0, so if you have iTunes 6.0, you need to uninstall it and install an older version (links are provided on the project site). If you’ve ever bought any music with iTunes 6.0, none of that music can be unprotected, and you must create a new account with and use iTunes 5 if you want to unprotect any future music purchases. Given the arms race that is DRM/counter-DRM technology, I’m sure iTunes 6.0 support will come along eventually.
So, there you have it; some additional options for ‘evaluating’ music, RIAA be damned.