On 2005-01-27 18:44, Spirit wrote:
That's because some people dislike the company or feel it's products aren't value for money ?
What would you say to a Cubase SX3 user with this same argument ?
If you want to know, the company in question isn't exactly white as snow either, if that's a discussion you want to get into =P.
I for one could care less about the company if the product worked well, but given how much tinkering and poking around is needed to get the product to a minimum functional setup that doesn't completely kill my CPU cycles, and given that it's completely flawed on a architectural/design basis that makes trying to eliminate all "vulnerabilities" almost useless, and given all the nagging and useless authorization stuff and little funny processes that try to ship all sorts of information to Microsoft without my consent (packet filters are fun =P,) and given that they push incomplete beta software onto their customers as complete software, and given that there's no alternative for PC (supported by commercial sotware I mean,) I'm not to hot about giving them my money, especially given how much they charge for it.
I bought an XBox about a year ago, with Halo, and recently Halo 2 and 12 months XBox Live thingy and whatever. Well, the XBox stopped working, it boots up, can't open/close the DVD tray, and prints a "your XBox needs technical support" message thingy. Cost for repair? 120$CDN or something sick. So they can completely die alone and suffering in a puddle of mud if they think I'm going to pay for Windows. That is my choice as a consumer =P. And as a company operating in countries that adhere to international copyright laws, it is their choice and their freedom to use (or not) the legislative mechanisms in place to try and attempt to pry that money from my cold, dead hands (just kidding, just a clone to fake my death and become invisible =P.)
They have $50 billions CASH (well, "electronic" cash =P), plus almost all the best software engineers on the planet, they sure as heck can afford (and have the technical main-d'oeuvre and knowledge and infrastructure) to put out a better product than this.
And I'm not even going to get into their business practice, which are highly similar to the Rockefeller approach that led to the establishement of anti-trust laws in the United States (which, are, as demonstrated by M$ themselves, pretty useless), lack of respecting for standards, high amount of propaganda to try and destroy Linux snd everything else that might threathen them, complete disrespect for standards, and so on, because honestly it would be way too long. Remember the NSAKEY in the NT4 Service Pack that was unfortunately (for them
) released with all the debug symbols compiled in? Probably not. =P
Suffice to say, Microsoft knows that it has limited time with Windows, so it's going to try and milk as much money as they can from it, because Operating Systems are all moving pretty fast toward Open Source, simply because of the nature of a computer, and their incredibly different and varied use. An Operating System simply cannot be considered complete anymore if you are completely tied to a vendor and can't even modify it for your own needs, hence why Linux is steadily eating at Windows's market. Microsoft knows this, and has already started the propaganda machine in that direction with some source-sharing programs and whatnot.
Anyway, since I now have my engineering's degree, I am but a few months away from ditching Windows FOREVER!!! except for coding, and cleaning spyware and viruses from people's computer for extra-income =P.
Also, if you were to ask me, I'd say SX3 is a bit overpriced too (as are most high end audio software of the sequencer sort, except maybe stuff like fruityloops, tracktion and orion) =P I wouldn't say it's alright to pirate it at all. If you use it, like it, and can afford it, you'd be pretty stupid not to get it, especially if you derive income from it. On the other hand, and even tho I win my income from writing software (and actually enjoy it,) I consider that there is *nothing wrong* with a 18-19 year old student pirating a copy of Cubase/Logic/Whatever to thinker around with it, quite the oppposite in fact, I consider someone developing skills in a software to be an advantage for the company in the long run, especially if it's a student that is going to net a good income and a good salary (and thus be able to afford the software when they graduate.) It's all a matter of perspective and common sense.
I'm a bit tired about the whole piracy thing, having it hailed as a purely negative thing, because it at least has the huge sociological advantage of *putting the tools in the hands of those the most apt to use it, not only those who can afford it*. Not to mention that there is *NO LOSS OF REVENUE* if someone uses illegally a software that they haven't paid for but wouldn't have bought/couldn't afford otherwise (which I suspect, after lots and lots of times sitting on both sides of the computer/software univese, is the majority of cases, in the non-commercial world.)
As a software developer, I consider that the key to a successful and lucrative software product is 1) CREATING A QUALITY PRODUCT and 1) RESPECTING YOUR CUSTOMERS AND BUILDING A MARKET BASED ON RESPECT AND COMMON SENSE, not whining like a baby about piracy, and building COMPLETELY USELESS, and I mean really COMPLETELY USELESS "protection" systems (except for Creamware, props =P but they're doing a hardware/software hybrid, not plain software) that ONLY end up making the software more expensive (and ALOT MORE ANNOYING, HI WAVES AND PACE ILOK, SEE MY MONEY HERE?? NO YOU DONT!!! HAHAHA) for the customers, and breeding ever more motivated generations of crackers, who are fueled alot more by glory and peer recognition and pure challenge-beating. And also, as you might have noticed, the amount of poor people in the world is going UP, the amount of hardware in the world is going UP, and it's going to be really, really, really hard to stop a bunch of bored, penny-less children and teenagers (and adults) who have nothing to lose, everything to gain, and access to electricity and discared hardware.
As a software developer (and hardware developer, as soon as I can afford the capital =P,) I'd rather work with these realities and build a product that people will want to use, buy, invest in and support, than waste time and money building useless protection systems and lobbying clueless (and a few odd clueful ones) legislative/government employees/entities to cook laws that will end up destroying any shred of innovation left.
All that being said, and to close this rant, I would still like to point out that there is Free/Open Software that is quite nice, quite stable, and quite usable at this point in time, for just about any task at end, except fairly specialized stuff. I would also like to point out that, even tho I've actually said *gasp* positive things about "piracy", it's really, really important to buy and support the software you use.
And no, Open Source operating systems and software won't kill remunerated programming jobs, QUITE the opposite, the software and hardware infrastructure won't be tied up to a single (or few odd) closed commercial companies and products, so anyone can start a business doing support, custom software tweaks, and so on, and the formation will be alot less expensive, IE you can just pickup the Operating System and learn how it works by yourself, proove youself with a few open products/things that you can show customers, and be able to offer services supporting just about anything, instead of having to pay 5000$ for a stupid certification/formation that might be useless in 2 years and that you'll have to renew. THAT is why Microsoft is all hyper-propanganda against Open Source and the whole model and the whole "oooh it produces lower quality software cuz of the chaotic dev process!" FUD. Even with 50 billions in the bank, they're afraid =P.
When Jesus did it with the bread, it was called a miracle. Now we can do it with software, but it's called piracy. Go figure =P.
), the only thing they will succeed in doing is making the virus/trojan/security problem *worse*, as there will be far more PCs out there which are unprotected.
. Finding pirated XP is not about spending energy.