From: Jay Hennigan (jay@xxxxxxxx)
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 16:12:52 GMT-3
From: thomas larus [mailto:tlarus@mwc.edu]
>
> It looks like I'm just going to have to try to pass the Lab without using
> these famous, excellent labs.
>
>
> I will not spend a fortune to be treated that way.
>
> There was an article in the Washington Post business section yesterday about
> shareware piracy. I drew several important points from it:
>
> 1) Your intellectual property protection should not make the product less
> usable to the purchaser
>
> 2) (Similar to the first point) You should not treat your paying customers
> like criminals
>
> 3) One software industry person said he'd rather make sure two paying
> customers are happy than chasing down eight pirates.
>
> Now the economics of practice labs is different from many shareware
> products. The universe of potential CCIE-candidate customers is smaller
> with the CCIE practice products than for most shareware products, and a
> substantial practice lab set should sell for far more that, say, a shareware
> utilty that can be sold to 500,000 people worldwide, and perhaps used
> illegally by many more.
Small nit to pick here. True shareware isn't really used "illegally" by
those who choose not to register it. There are forms of "cripple-ware"
or "nag-ware" that cease functioning after a period of time or have very
limited capabilities without registration, or pop up annoying nag screens
until registered. These aren't true shareware, and reverse-engineering
the registration mechanisms to get full functionality from such programs
may be illegal.
True shareware is not so burdened, and while you may not get technical
support or upgrades should be fully functional without the need to pay
for it (although payment is of course the right thing to do.)
As to the practice labs, I agree that I would NEVER knowingly buy any
such material which is intentionally more annoying to use because the
author thinks I'm a thief. Similarly, we have a corporate policy of
never buying copy-protected software or anything that requires a "dongle",
etc. The hassles are just too great, and if the vendor doesn't trust me,
why should I trust the vendor?
> There has to be a better way to protect the valuable intellectual property
> produced through countless hours of work by highly trained Cisco experts
> than by making the product less usable. The protection may be less perfect,
> but I cannot be the only potential customer who will simply refuse to buy
> lab scenarios that stink or irritate my respiratory tract in any way.
The way to protect it is to vigorously pursue anyone caught pirating it,
not to cripple the product itself. I agree, vote with your feet.
> a bit more money now than I had a few moths ago, and I had recently decided
> that I would buy the labs once I had run through most of my book lab
> scenarios and free lab scenarios. I will now have to wait until they work
> out this problem, and I can't be the only one who feels this way.
Try the SolutionLabs scenarios. They're nicely printed in full color,
and they don't stink.
> In the case of the teenager, it's much better to tell them that you like
> that radio station. (a sure way of never hearing it played again).
> Smile.
Getting way OT here, a local convenience store had tried numerous things
to rid its parking lot of loitering teenagers. The final solution?
Muzak.
-- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323
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