Oh, and with respect to TurboTax, that was the first year of their
implementation, and with all due respect, they had a long way to go to come
up to speed with activation. You don't just plug it into a product; you
have to integrate it with your entire back end systems as well, for
authorization. At Autodesk, we wrote our own entire registration system for
connecting to the back end. We also did a great deal of training for
support people around the world, and rolled it out slowly to build
experience and test for things like interaction with low level utilities.
There is detailed error logging and other built-in help to diagnose
intermittent or non-reproduceable problems.
The ExtremeTech article was riddled with errors, such as confusing SafeCast
with SafeDisc (both from Macrovision), and generally whipping up unfounded
hysteria. There was never a big outcry that Partition Magic or Symantec
utilities accessed the disk directly; why suddenly attack these products?
--Cy--