I seriously doubt that Stata is capable of distinguishing a bad serial
number (it will refuse to install) from a fake one. Think about this.
How do you tell a typo from a fake one. This is very difficult to do.
There was much discussion over the words of one guy who in my opinion
did not know what he was doing. Reinstalling Stata can be tricky.
Without going into detail, there's something about optimal level of
software protection, and I always thought this was accidientally
caused by improper copying but the Stata Corp is not in a position to
confirm or deny this without hurting themselves either way.
I used to hear from people about -outreg2- mysteriously dropping
variables but the complaints suddenly stopped coming about a year ago.
So my guess is that this behavior is on its way out.
Roy
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