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End of the Cakewalk Road for me?


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12 hours ago, mdiemer said:

One quick question: when I log into the forum, does that count as logging into Bandlab? I'm still on the older method of activation as I am using an older version of Cakewalk.

No when we refer to logging in we mean using the signin prompt within Cakewalk (where you enter your BandLab user id and password).  Different apps have their own sign in so the data isn’t shared. For example signing in from BandLab assistant is different from signing in via the web vs signing in within Cakewalk. Though the credentials are the same there is no sharing between the apps today. 

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12 hours ago, MisterX said:

No, I didn't. It's pretty normal that software disappears from the market, and that's exactly why periodical activation scheme is so dangerous.  Once such an app is gone users can't work on their projects anymore, even if they still have suitable OS and hardware. And that's a good reason to consider introducing permanent Cakewalk licenses (be it paid ones), at least for those, who don't like the vision  of waking up with an empty bottle on the desert someday.

Lets say that If there ever comes a time that this is needed permanent licenses will be made available. For now there is absolutely no need for this.

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12 hours ago, RBH said:

I'm a bit of a outlier when it comes to privacy online. I have zero social media accounts outside of a few choice music software related forums such as this. No facebook - never have....... no insta gram - twitter, google accounts and emails are non existant  etc. I find CbB to be one of the best updates routines there are. Unobtrusive and no- non sense. I think maybe the OP mis- interpreted the messaging about re- authorization. I interpret it as a need to get basic analytics about who is trying it a and flying somewhere else - or sticking with the program for extended periods of time. The last update was one of the best. I've been a loyal user since the day of DOS.

@RBH The activation actually is completely independent of analytics. It doesn’t report any significant data back to Cakewalk. Its a one way street - all it does is make a request to activate the software for that machine and provide a new lease for the software whenever it is needed. We just improved it so that the user is not caught be surprise needing to activate when they are busy at an inopportune time. Now every update of the software will auto renew itself. I’ve installed on 3 of my PC’s and oneof them hadn’t been updated in months. It instantly was renewed for a new lease so I wouldnt be greeted with a timeout the next time I tried to use it. 

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3 hours ago, marled said:

Yes I am aware, and I am very thankful for it! That's why my studio pc is 99.9% offline! 👍

But it does not solve the thing on my laptop that is mostly online. I don't want software to do stealthy online connections at all (it's enough with Windows 10 alone! 😆).

Okay, we trust in Noel that he is not doing something bad with the connection! But do we know who else has access to the code that makes online requests? Do we know how secure online access is coded in any music software (e.g. Melodyne)? Do we know how are the rules of law in the countries of the software production?

Thus even if I can trust in a company there maybe holes in online stuff! This is the reason why I prefer not to do permanent logins into user software and why I prefer explicitly to call an installation process if online connections are required at all (I think it's even better if I can do offline autorisation on my online computer, too)! And the newer Cakewalk versions are a bit nebulous in this respect IMHO!

If you are that paranoid and mistrustful of software its on you to enforce your requirements, not the companies making the software.
Its simple to set up a firewall block that prevents internet access to a specific program. Learn how to do that.

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1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If you are that paranoid and mistrustful of software ...

the NSA was responsible for: Banking encryption, Google Search, Verisign PKI, Telephone monitoring, and perhaps BitCoin. EVERYTHING you do via phone, Internet, etc is being monitored. anywhere there are street cameras (including those stop-light camera 🙂 are all monitoring people all the time. satellites bigger than Hubble have been in space pointed at Earth for 30+ years watching in multi-spectral ranges, picking up all radio signals, and likely all human heat signatures and thus related activity. none of silly TV re-tasking, there's a whole other set for zooming in... lol.

you just have to ask yourself  - since JFK, did we get better or worse at conspiracy?

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OP and some other worries mentioned in this thread have made my choice of the DAW to use. One DAW with true offline (no Internet required on any device) activation still exists. I don't trust dongles... Special dongles are not cheap (for home users) and license recovery in case of lost/broken is nightmare.

To be on safe side, I have also written project converter. It is not perfect, but served the purpose reasonably well for many users.

-------------

At the same time, it is really great Cakewalk has implemented activation inside the DAW. I am starting CbB periodically to support my surface plug-in (and sometimes for other reasons ;) ), and dealing with Assistant (which could never update itself and so I had to reinstall it) was annoying. And so I think related changes are 👍

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2 hours ago, bdickens said:

How can we be sure  Word Perfect will continue development so we can continue to work on our projects in the future?

WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, dBASE, all once had what were considered to be strangleholds on their markets.

Perhaps someday we'll be using Microsoft DAW or Google Sounds which will be able to import all of the historical formats.

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"Security Paranoia", Chapter One:


- You'd better switch to Win 10 as it is much safer than previous systems. It receives constant security updates, whereas others do not. You know, those bad, bad hackers never sleep. They can break almost any protection including NASA ones, so we need to have eyes around our heads all the time.

- So breaking into my firewalled system won't be much of a challenge for them?

- Eeehm...probalby not.

- But that's exactly why I prefer to go totally offline with my workstation!

- You're paranoid.

tbc.

Edited by MisterX
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39 minutes ago, Canopus said:

Is this the proper time and place to bring cow abduction to the agenda?

They're abducting them now? I thought it was just mutilation. Probably related to those grainy Navy videos with the Tic-Tac crafts that make impossible maneuvers that would kill a human being. But who knows? Maybe not a cow.

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4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

No when we refer to logging in we mean using the signin prompt within Cakewalk (where you enter your BandLab user id and password).  Different apps have their own sign in so the data isn’t shared. For example signing in from BandLab assistant is different from signing in via the web vs signing in within Cakewalk. Though the credentials are the same there is no sharing between the apps today. 

Okay, thanks. So I have to use Bandlab Assistant?

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3 hours ago, MisterX said:


"Security Paranoia", Chapter One:


- You'd better switch to Win 10 as it is much safer than previous systems. It receives constant security updates, whereas others do not. You know, those bad, bad hackers never sleep. They can break almost any protection including NASA ones, so we need to have eyes around our heads all the time.

- So breaking into my firewalled system won't be much of a challenge for them?

- Eeehm...probalby not.

- But that's ecaxtly why I prefer to go totally offline with my workstation!

- You're paranoid.

tbc.

Reductio ad absurdum

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Tonight I saw there was an additional update and installed. This was the first time I have been prompted to log in tp Bandlab internally to Cakewalk. So essentially, we'll be connected to Bandlab whenever we're using Cakewalk, and that's a good thing.  Studio One works much the same way. So if I understand this correctly, I could uninstall Bandlab assistant if I wanted to? Last question, someone mentioned that this started back last November, but I just now had my first instance of being asked to log in? just wondering if I missed something? (Yes, read the damn release notes!!!  😀)

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Yes in theory you can uninstall BA now. Although there is no harm leaving it since it is still used for a few things such as offline auth if needed.
The reason for the one time log in is because the new release tries to renew your activation state (as a courtesy). Since you had never connected CbB to your BandLab account it asked you to log in. It shoudn't prompt you again now that CbB saved your login so its a one time nag.
This is described better in the activation FAQ

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12 hours ago, Terry Kelley said:

To be fair, people are getting more and more sensitive to these privacy issues.

I have been using the WWW and email for 25 years and I have never expected more privacy from it than I would from sending a postcard.

People use Chrome and Firefox and GMail for banking, medical information, personal communication, storing passwords, personal correspondence, online purchases with credit cards, everything. They have mailboxes in front of their houses where all their bills (and maybe even still, some personal correspondence) are delivered and sit unprotected for hours.

And some of them are worried that a music loving businessman from a wealthy family in Singapore wants to rig an easily detectable trojan in the audio production software his company distributes to increase goodwill and awareness of his brand. One that pops up and lets you know it's connecting. Once detected (by readily available network traffic analyzers), this trojan would make industry pariahs (if not convicted criminals) of everyone involved in creating the software. What, really, is the likelihood of that scenario happening?

Perhaps more realistically, they have a problem with his company knowing how much or little or how often they use the software. I will say myself that just as I don't care that Google or Firefox know how much and how often I use their software (and best believe, that is tracked not only by them but every website we visit makes a note of what browser we use), I don't care that once every few months, the company that makes my 100% free DAW software wants to check to see whether I'm using the latest version.

Do people believe that paying for software magically grants them immunity from information gathering? Most of the payware programs I use phone home way more often than Cakewalk. The people that rely on making money from their users are quite interested in how they might get more money by selling them other products, or making their current products more desirable.

For anyone who thinks that just because it's not telling you that it's phoning home, it isn't, it's quite easy to check on what a program is doing when it starts up. Run Task Manager, click on the Performance tab, then down at the bottom click on Resource Monitor. In Resource Monitor, click on Network. Start your program and observe the connections it makes. I just tried it with Reason Lite and it has a constant connection nailed up. You can even tick the box next to the name of the executable and it will filter only traffic to and from that program. Reason phoned home when I closed it, too. I wonder what else we can learn.

Oh, fun, I just tried it with REAPER and guess what? Not one but two network connections appeared. Naughty naughty REAPER, you have them convinced that you don't do that sort of thing! WavesLocalServer is a chatty baby, too. Oh, Melodyne, you little tattletale, what are you saying to the servers back home? ACID Music Studio, I'm gonna have to drop you (ha ha) if you keep talking to the MAGIX server. 4 connections! iZotope RX7 Editor, say it ain't so. Now iZotope know that I was probably altering human speech with their program (which I got for free, so, figures). Vegas Movie Studio, you're showing me a pop-up ad for your next version.

I guess it's time to dust off the ol' Portastudio....

Edited by Starship Krupa
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