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DemoCrazy said
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.
This person quotes a Statalist posting from Alan Riley. If you read
that posting:
"The only time we have ever seen a problem like this has been with
(certain corrupt or modified executables)
or
(licenses which are sometimes available from unofficial sources on the
internet)"
punctuation added for clarity. If you apply the normal rules of
English grammar to the OR conditional, it suggests that a StataCorp
official is saying that either one of these circumstances could be
associated with this behavior. It does not claim that the executable
has to be hacked to provoke such behavior.
I have no inside knowledge on the workings of Stata's internals when
presented with a license code known to be bogus, but the statement
above IMHO is fair warning that those who use such licenses should
expect a less than satisfactory experience.
Should software vendors put up a big warning dialog and say "We know
you're a pirate: this program will now quit"? Or perhaps just shell
format C:? I suppose different vendors have different strategies to
deal with software piracy. But it doesn't surprise me that any
software vendor tries to ensure that the pirates don't get away with it.
Kit
Kit Baum | Boston College Economics & DIW Berlin | http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Stata Programming
| http://www.stata-press.com/books/isp.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata | http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html
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