plaingrain
Senior Member
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2025
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Dear Lord or Whom It May Concern,
More than two decades ago when I was still an undergraduate student, there was a huge community of software pirates and there were all kinds of software piracy going on in the market. I still remember as a student we would go to Sim Lim Square with my buddies and at levels 4 and 5 everyone would get out of the elevator and we would go around hunting for cheap pirated software. I recall buying pirated Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Windows XP, as well as Adobe and Macromedia software notwithstanding computer games and music mp3 CDRs and DVDRs.
Not just that, back then there were also Peer-to-Peer filesharing software such as Kazaalite and Audiogalaxy as well as Napster, just to name a few that come to mind. I would download movies and dramas such as Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers from P2P sources and those were the heydays of software piracy.
As I graduate from university and joined the workforce, I also became religious and that was when I started to tinker with the idea of taking on religious commandments as a Christian or spiritual precepts as a Buddhist. Basically that was when right and wrong started to appear in my mind. I resolved to abandon software piracy in order to become a God fearing person, and I threw away all my pirated software and started advocating for original, proprietary software. I also became an hobbyist open-source software developer, I contributed to Linux communities and became a fan of Debian and Ubuntu Linux while having fun with the 'enlightened' Bodhi Linux Operating System which became somewhat of a ricebowl for me as I transited from being a corporate engineer to becoming a self-employed computer scientist.
20 years have since passed since I graduated, and now I am working for my family business as a Computer Aided Design (CAD) technician working on construction drawings. Just this week, my aunt approached me for help because she needed a particular structural analysis software known as Prokon (https://prokon.com/) and the demo version that she downloaded from the internet simply wasn't enough for her business needs. So she asked me for help to bypass the software activation mechanism.
I told my aunt that it's very difficult for me to crack software these days, and I am being very honest. In order not to disappoint her (because she's paying my monthly salary), I went to do a quick Google search for cracks for Prokon, the latest versions being 5.3 and 5.4, and Google's immediate response was "I cannot provide torrent links or instructions for downloading cracked versions of PROKON structural analysis software." I did a little more digging, and I simply couldn't find any cracks for the Prokon software via any search engines.
Gone are the days when there were dark websites on the internet offering software cracks and keygens. These days not only is Microsoft Windows 11 free, there are so many free and open softwares on the internet, nobody bothers to crack software anymore. The original Prokon software costs around SGD $8k, my aunt is reluctant to buy it so she is trying to see if she can fall back on a much older version 3 of the Prokon software which she has previously some success in cracking. But Microsoft Windows 11 detects the trojan in the keygen and activation crack for Prokon 3, and blocks my aunt from using the crack. So she comes to me for help.
I took a look at the system message, my advice was simple: It's a trojan, it's risky, and I really don't advise turning off the antivirus software just to use the cracked software. So I went to Bing for help, I asked Bing to help me recommend an alternative instead of using a cracked structural analysis tool which may come with malicious threats. Bing's Copilot told me why not use an open-source structural analysis software instead. So Bing recommended me to try this new type of open-source software known as Stabileo (https://stabileo.com/). I told my aunt about it, but because the software is still in its infancy stages, there are a lot of features missing in comparison with Prokon.
I feel stuck. Yet, I took a look at Prokon and with some clarity of mind I feel that it's simply not feasible for me to crack software any more. My aunt wants to use Prokon 3 when Prokon is now in version 5, Windows 11 blocks her from using it, and I can't help her much. I am not an expert in Structural Engineering since I was primarily trained as a Computer Scientist, but as a computing geek times have changed so much, nobody's using torrents and cracks any more. I also don't know how to crack software any more too. All the crack websites have disappeared from my radar and I really am clueless how to entertain my aunt's plea for help.
Who on earth still use pirated software these days?????
More than two decades ago when I was still an undergraduate student, there was a huge community of software pirates and there were all kinds of software piracy going on in the market. I still remember as a student we would go to Sim Lim Square with my buddies and at levels 4 and 5 everyone would get out of the elevator and we would go around hunting for cheap pirated software. I recall buying pirated Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Windows XP, as well as Adobe and Macromedia software notwithstanding computer games and music mp3 CDRs and DVDRs.
Not just that, back then there were also Peer-to-Peer filesharing software such as Kazaalite and Audiogalaxy as well as Napster, just to name a few that come to mind. I would download movies and dramas such as Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers from P2P sources and those were the heydays of software piracy.
As I graduate from university and joined the workforce, I also became religious and that was when I started to tinker with the idea of taking on religious commandments as a Christian or spiritual precepts as a Buddhist. Basically that was when right and wrong started to appear in my mind. I resolved to abandon software piracy in order to become a God fearing person, and I threw away all my pirated software and started advocating for original, proprietary software. I also became an hobbyist open-source software developer, I contributed to Linux communities and became a fan of Debian and Ubuntu Linux while having fun with the 'enlightened' Bodhi Linux Operating System which became somewhat of a ricebowl for me as I transited from being a corporate engineer to becoming a self-employed computer scientist.
20 years have since passed since I graduated, and now I am working for my family business as a Computer Aided Design (CAD) technician working on construction drawings. Just this week, my aunt approached me for help because she needed a particular structural analysis software known as Prokon (https://prokon.com/) and the demo version that she downloaded from the internet simply wasn't enough for her business needs. So she asked me for help to bypass the software activation mechanism.
I told my aunt that it's very difficult for me to crack software these days, and I am being very honest. In order not to disappoint her (because she's paying my monthly salary), I went to do a quick Google search for cracks for Prokon, the latest versions being 5.3 and 5.4, and Google's immediate response was "I cannot provide torrent links or instructions for downloading cracked versions of PROKON structural analysis software." I did a little more digging, and I simply couldn't find any cracks for the Prokon software via any search engines.
Gone are the days when there were dark websites on the internet offering software cracks and keygens. These days not only is Microsoft Windows 11 free, there are so many free and open softwares on the internet, nobody bothers to crack software anymore. The original Prokon software costs around SGD $8k, my aunt is reluctant to buy it so she is trying to see if she can fall back on a much older version 3 of the Prokon software which she has previously some success in cracking. But Microsoft Windows 11 detects the trojan in the keygen and activation crack for Prokon 3, and blocks my aunt from using the crack. So she comes to me for help.
I took a look at the system message, my advice was simple: It's a trojan, it's risky, and I really don't advise turning off the antivirus software just to use the cracked software. So I went to Bing for help, I asked Bing to help me recommend an alternative instead of using a cracked structural analysis tool which may come with malicious threats. Bing's Copilot told me why not use an open-source structural analysis software instead. So Bing recommended me to try this new type of open-source software known as Stabileo (https://stabileo.com/). I told my aunt about it, but because the software is still in its infancy stages, there are a lot of features missing in comparison with Prokon.
I feel stuck. Yet, I took a look at Prokon and with some clarity of mind I feel that it's simply not feasible for me to crack software any more. My aunt wants to use Prokon 3 when Prokon is now in version 5, Windows 11 blocks her from using it, and I can't help her much. I am not an expert in Structural Engineering since I was primarily trained as a Computer Scientist, but as a computing geek times have changed so much, nobody's using torrents and cracks any more. I also don't know how to crack software any more too. All the crack websites have disappeared from my radar and I really am clueless how to entertain my aunt's plea for help.
Who on earth still use pirated software these days?????
