You guessed it, product activation. It wasn't so bad when it was just in Windows... mainly due to the fact it would just aid in steering fools away from Microsoft's products. But now, it has come into a more ominous form.
It has now begun spreading to all of the major software manufacturers including Macromedia who has now placed it in ALL of their MX 2004 applications, Adobe who is putting it in Photoshop 8 and potentially many more products to follow, and Symantec who has already begun implimenting it in their 2004 home products.
The danger here? First, it's going to effectivly cheat all legitimate users out of their software after a given time (usually two or three years) and it is also going to limit the number of installs per said product. Macromedia for example only allows two activations, so, when Windows croaks and you reinstall, that's one activation down and when it happens two more times, your product is now invalid, and you get to give the fine folks at Macromedia another $500-$1000... while you're on the phone trying to get another key from Microsoft for Windows, since you blew two activations there too.
When is this crap going to stop? It's gotten to the point where the damn pirates have it better than paying users! They can bypass this garbage since they already threw the EULA out the window (no pun intended) while users with some sense of decency can't re-use their legitimate software after two installs!
They said it would die 1 to 3 months after XP's release... Here we are 2 years later, and it's only getting bigger as Lemmings line up at the counter to buy new activation-bound software without even the slightest clue of the evil within.
