It should be treated with “utmost importance”, not with utmost importance. That ending is quite subversive!
not sure about the majority of the software but I’d recommend FreeCad as an alt to Solidworks
- I’ve heard they’re about to hit their 1.0 release sometime in the near future
As a mechanical engineer who spent multiple thousands of hours using SolidWorks, trying to use FreeCAD felt like flying a Cessna 172 after getting used to a Citation jet.
Shucks… Maybe if the college didn’t rob the students blind on tuition, and the publishers not rob the students blind on books, maybe they could afford to pay for software licenses. 🤷♂️
We also had expensive engineering software at university. Oftentimes it’s a major PITA for everyone. The PhD students have to get their work done and are met by the software refusing to start because all licenses are taken. Sometimes someone forgot to log off or the computer crashed and the software takes most of the day to recover that license. Or some people do like 5 simulations in parallel. Or lock the computer, go home and block a license. The IT department will get lots of calls and have to deal with it. Especially when the pool of licenses is small. And it takes additinal effort to coordinate practical courses and excercises where you teach a group of 24 people which then need half the license pool available at a fixed time each week, despite the daily routine of everyone else.
And I’m not even sure if the people responsible, care too much for pirated software. But they’re liable. Of course they write strongly worded mails when talking to everyone. It’s their IT infrastructure and they can’t have people do illegal things with it. Especially not while having an expensive contract with some supplyer. They can’t have anyone leak a mail where they endorse piracy. Or post screenshots or turn in assignments or papers with screenshots that say “unregistered copy” in the bottom corner. And once students do silly things and the piracy is on display publicly, they’ll have to do something. Usually that’s writing a strongly worded email first. Because that takes next to no effort. I think the usual IT department doesn’t care if things go smoothly, people do their various things and no one complains. They usually have other stuff to do. That makes me think in this story something must have happened that warranted some form of public reaction or at least show they addressed it and they have it in writing.
So thry’re saying they have plenty of licenses for the use case, but somehow people are still pirating?
Maybe their license management paradigm is just garbage. This could be the vendor, but also poor IT policy if the users can’t requisition what they need.
As usual, service problem.
So much licensing fuckery-- dealing with floating or reissuing licenses, users needing to move to different machines-- could be solved via affordable site licensing. But that might leave dollars on the table if users don’t overbuy.
That reminds me, I got a very threatening email from my college in 2000s about downloading movies and that they traced the IP to my laptop, and I could be paying $10k in fines, have this on my permanent record and/or expelled.
I loled and pirated a lot more safer.
Still waiting for them to follow up with that 20 years later.
I like to imagine you piggyback on their wifi just to pirate movies every weekend now, for old times sake.
Some people never learn. My Academy requires students to log in with their university account, so they know who does what.
Are there any opensource alternatives to these things? Could they save themselves this whole hassle, just get the alternative and cut their budget in half with a yearly donation?
Can’t speak for all of them, but for solidworks there is, but it is nowhere near the level of solidworks.
SolidWorks is probably the best CAD software in terms of capability and ease of use.
Either way, students learn SolidWorks because companies use solidworks
Well, Solidworks is the industry standard, but I think NX wins on capabilities, and Fusion has a much better workflow. Both are still corporate though.
I hope we get a good open source option, because Freecad is so far behind the rest that it’s basically unusable.
Forgot about NX, but you’re correct NX has more features and is way less buggy
Seems like you have to buy… a VPN so that they won’t see you using pirated software.
Pretty much every software crack says ‘Block this application in your firewall’. I guarantee most people don’t. Following these instructions would have prevented this entirely.
Imagine using pirated software and allowing it to go online. Loco 🤯
If it’s on a students personal device, they can suck my hullabaloo
Then you will be barred ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your system, your rules but their network and also their rules.MAC randomization to the rescue!
My college used to tie your account to a maximum number of MAC addresses per year and you had to request more over the limit. I think it was like 4 or 5
MAC address cloning to the rescue!
You just have to make sure you don’t get caught…
It says debarred. So, they will undo the barring?!
I would hope they’re not using static IPs and MAC address spoofing is a thing.
usually college networks have a Mac address whitelist, so you need to turn off Mac spoofing in order to connect
That is some next-level Minecraft you are playing over there
These mods have gotten ridiculous!
It looks like you pirated the image too, gives me a headache just trying to read it
they should have put dorm numbers on there so you could meet some cool people. sharing is caring.
