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Best Buy 'Geek Squad' Accused of Pirating Software
Alien54 writes "Texas software company Winternals Software LP has sued Best Buy Co. Inc. in federal court, alleging that the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer was using unlicensed versions of its diagnostic equipment. Best Buy's Geek Squad, is alleged to be using pirated versions of the software since talks on a commercial licensing agreement broke off. A restraining order has been granted."
"...format and reload as their way tp fix any problem the computer has." I won't try to defend Geek Squad. However, I will defend the format and reload scenario. If you look at it, in some situations, format and reload is generally QUICKER than spending hours on a problem. I grant that it's only applicable in situations that: A) I've never seen; and B) I don't have the interest to learn to fix. It's the "guaranteed done in 2 hours" vs. "dig around for an hour or so, troubleshoot, diagnose, find fixes, pick a suitable fix, apply fix, test, etc., etc." I just don't have the time, for example, to spend a long time trying to extract a piece of spyware that loads before the system kernel when I can just reload the system quicker... and have a fresh install that hasn't been filled with crap yet.
I could be wrong about this because I worked in the computer dept not on the Geek Squad, but Best Buy employees are not commision based.
The software wasn't withdrawn by its owner, read the article. Best Buy withdrew their offer.
I have read on a few forums/commentboards/etc on reaction to this story.
Many people who do work/claim to work/used to work for GeekSquad seem to be claiming on those venues that pirated software is basically part of working for GeekSquad, that they are not given the tools they need by management.
Some are even saying that they were encouraged by managers to use pirated software in place of buying it.
Obviously this is hearsay, but.... I think when an actual investigation is done, we're going to see a lot more than just one company in on this.
-- There's only one replacement for displacement.....
Hey,
I used to work at the Best Buy in Miamisburg Ohio about a year ago, and I can tell you that the majority of the time, no one in the 'squad' ever used the so-called MRI disc (This is the tool disk that came from the corporate office for our use) because the tools on it were so poor that we would not be able to actually do the job.
About half of us used a variety of bootable Linux distros such as Knoppix and SLAX to perform diagnosis and recovery. Sometimes, the best way is the traditional way - the command line.
I personally used to use this bootable distros to prove points to customers who sometimes had a clue about what was wrong, and this would make an excellent way to show the ineffectiveness of various products and utilities designed to protect users from malware, spyware, etc.
After enough time, I myself started to create my own set of utilities (some nothing more than fancy perl scripts that I could run off a thumb drive) to do my dirty work for me.
Most of the time, Best Buy was totally committed to the idea of sell, sell, sell, while trying to improve their image. The ironic part of this was that our own store manager never could seemingly comprend the simple fact that good service sells and will generate more repeat customers and new customers via word-of-mouth than the stupid service plans, the countless harassment of customers that the geek squad personnel is supposed to be doing to buy plans, etc.
Sometimes, a true geek has to take whatever job that they can get. In this part of Ohio, for the longest time, gigs like Best Buy paid the bills or gave someone something to do while they went off and pursued the next software development contract for instance, or go to school.
Please remember Slashdot readers, that not all the techs that work for Best Buy are compelte idiots. Just most of them. And for myself, I must have been lucky, because I found a store with some guys that were actually competent and able to go on to better careers just like I did.
That computer was worked on by an egotistical maniac with a revenge demon on his shoulder!
I've worked on the Geek Squad for about 8 months, and most of these comments are totally false. 1.)NO employee of bestbuy, including the geek squad, works on commission. 2.)There is a geek squad forum at www.geeksquadforums.com, however it is moderated by a corporate manager and pirated software isn't allowed. 3.)I can't speak for any other stores, but I'm positive that our store stopped using Winternals products 6 months ago. 4.)Again, I can't speak for otehr stores, but my store doesn't simply reformat machines. In my 8 months, working on hundreds of machines, I can count the number of machines I've reformatted on my fingers. Most of these comments are simply people speculating about what they *think* it *might* be like - please don't comment without any backing to it.
Not that i'm going to try to defend Best Buy but I can pretty much tell you exactly what happened since I do work for them.
Best Buy/Geek Squad is strictly against using non-licensed tools. Pirating is a big no no and I have written people up for it and they were eventually fired for using pirated software. We only use OEM discs if a key is provided on the side of the machine or a valid license is presented. We will refuse work unless the customer can present a valid XP license or a set of recovery discs specific to that machine. Most stores have a large collection of discs already, if they need a model we have a system in place to order them directly from the manufacturer.
When Best Buy purchased Geek Squad, this was made EXTREMELY CLEAR. Every piece of software that is approved to use, we have a valid license agreement with that comopany. We have a list that specifically states what's licensed and what's not. We don't have a "forum' of illegal software so I have no idea where that idea came from.
Here's what happened with Winterals. All stores were given evaluation version to test out ERD Commander and when the trial expired Best Buy decided not to license this software and they developed their own disc based on Bart's PE which is completely different from ERD Commander. All on-site agents were told to evalute this software and state why we should license it and what features we wanted. In the end, we told that licensing was off and we have to discontinue all use of Winternals products immediately. All stores were sent a paper communication, a mass email and it was generally posted in all stores. We were told to destroy all discs since they were useless anyone without a valid license file.
Basically, Winternals is pissed because they lost an 850 store contract with Best Buy, not including all field agents and stand-alone locations. This suit happened pretty much exactly after Best Buy stopped our trial with Winternals and decided to go with our own disc. It would have been a lot of money for Winternals so i'd be pretty pissed off too.
Again, not saying everyone is perfect. There are always a few idiots that use pirated software in any business and mom and pop shops are famous for this. It was either one rogue store breaking the rules like idiots or a completely baseless lawsuit like everything else in America.
Someone please mod this AC further into the abyss.
For the last time...again:
Using the word piracy to describe copying software against copyright did NOT originate with lawyers. It is NOT a concept invented by the *AA to smear P2P filesharing.
It's been used since before I got my first Apple II in the very early '80s, and the pirate moniker was fully embraced by the earliest practioners of software cracking and copying. They even inserted their own signature boot splashscreens into cracked binaries with cartoon Jolly Rogers, ships, treasure chests, parrots etc.
Bear in mind, these folks were likely huge D&D nerds (so described affectionately) who derived satisfaction and joy from identifying themselves as nasty, rebelious buccaneers in this narrow context.
The entimology of the definition probably goes back to "pirating" of licensed radio frequencies back in radio's early days.
So please, *ENOUGH* already with the useless, ingorant rants about this definition. It is not a battle worth the time and attention you devote to it. And yes, I recognize the same is true about this post...
All good points.
I used to keep a hidden partition on my PC's boot drive. That partition contained a clean, perfect copy of the OS and the applications I needed to get up and running.
Computer too hosed to continue?
Well, my data was on another drive anyway sooo.
Boot to Partition Magic, delete the live partition, and copy the "Known Good" partition over.
Every few weeks I'd boot to the restore partition and install OS updates and AV definition files.
I haven't bothered setting that up again, largely because I now go so long before reformat and reinstalls that by the time I need to do it, I might as well install all the drivers and applications from scratch anyway.
But the scenario you describe is the general idea behind imaging a hard drive. Why go to all the fuss when you can just wipe it clean and restart?
Besides, in the corporate environment, you often do what's faster.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
That was a simplistic way of describing it, to be sure, but it isn't entirely wrong. I was working in the DRAM industry when mass production shifted from plain SDRAM (PC-100/133) to DDR SDRAM. For some time, the prices of PC-100/133 exceeded the prices of DDR, simply because manufacturers were shifting huge portions of their capacity to DDR. Supply and demand...
FWIW, memory companies that still make EDO and FPM memory can make pretty good money on those, supporting legacy machines (lots of old Sun boxes of that vintage still run fine, for example).
None of this is to defend Best Buy--I don't like shopping there either, and I won't be in one anytime soon.
hehe, actually the first Geek Squad person I met was a pretty hot chick, putting on a 'got root' baseball cap from thinkgeek ...
I was a repair tech for about 8 monthes at one of the big chain stores and had a totally different experience. All our four techs were incredibly smart, and only one held any form of certification. We never installed pirated software, though we did keep a copy of XP in the office so we could use the recovery console or copy needed files. Over 8 monthes, and about 20-30 repairs I only ever did 2 clean installs, and both times recovered the majority of the customers files. I think its a bit unfair to say that all the people working in these positions are idiots many are highschool students and the experience is very enlightening, though usually takes you one step closer to becoming a hermit.
If the machine is any kind of functional before you get started, you can run Belarc Advisor to fish the Windows and Office product codes out of the registry. I don't care what was there before, those are the numbers I type back into the boxes when I have to reinstall. I see numbers from Belarc that match the ones on the sticker maybe 2/3s of the time. I'm not sure what happens the other third, and to be honest it's none of my business.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I used to work as a computer salesperson and in the Geek Squad department.
This is not the only thing that Best Buy does illegally when it comes to its Geek Squad department. If you buy a computer that has a recovery disc off of the floor, chances are you will not get its recovery disc, or a legitimate copy of it, because they have already took the copy out of the contents stored and have incorporated it into the Geek Squad's disc collection.
What does that mean?
Well, when you buy a computer, most stores will push for their "ultimate" package, which includes recovery discs, anti-virus, and system optimizations. The copy of the anti-virus will be legitimate, but half of the time, they'll encourage you to go with this because they'll fear you into thinking if your hard drive goes that the recovery partition will not be there. Half of the time, there were discs already in the box, so the extra copy of the recovery discs were pointless. If you bought an open box computer that originally had discs, you would not get the originals because the Geek Squad had already acquired them.
Most of the guys who work as technicians in Geek Squad are working as technicians when there is work to do. Unfortunately, when there is little or no work to do, they go on the sales floor to push their products and basically fear-monger customers into their services. I will admit, most of the time, they are trying to be helpful when the manager/supervisor-types are not pushing for things.
Mind you, Best Buy will do some good for its employees, but some of the sales tactics just appall me. For instance, shortly before I left to the current job I absolutely love, I got in trouble because I didn't use the clipboard to get the person's lifestyle choices over a bloody USB cable for a printer. The clipboard does serve a useful purpose, but do I need to ask if this cable is going to be used for a laser or inkjet printer? Hell, half of the time, I told the customer to get the cheapest cable because the markup was going to be 1000% regardless of what length.
Ah well. If you want to work at Best Buy, work in inventory or in merchandising, because there is no sales expectation there. I was a good salesman and always scored high marks with their sales scoring method, but I didn't like the job at all.
It's probably the same genius that came up with the wretched ODM in AIX.
Windows is very deterministic and easy to troubleshoot if you take the time to learn. It has distinct startup and shutdown procedures, driver installation, file system behavior, thread and process management, etc. These are all publicly documented, if you care to learn about them. Buy a copy of Windows Internals and you'll be amazed at what you didn't know. There are tools and utilities to automate all kinds of useful activities from the command-line, and if these tools don't exist, the APIs are very well documented on MSDN for how to create them.
Ever heard of that management console snap-in called Event Viewer? You might want to look into that. And as for debugging applications or even kernel-mode device drivers, Windows has some of the best freely available debugging facilities of any platform.
Read about Windows System File Protection. Run "sfc.exe /scannow" to validate your system files on XP/2k3. It uses hashes, not checksums.
Task manager? Tlist.exe?
It's pretty clear that you don't know much about Windows, which seems to be a common thread here on Slashdot. You'd rather trash Windows than spend the time to learn about what you don't know. It's easier to write off Windows as "unexplainable" just because you are too lazy to look behind the GUI.
Unlikely Hero: If you are an ex-Geek Squad employee and willing to help Winternals with its investigation, go to http://www.winternals.com/survey/ and fill out the survey.
The first place to look is often the event log (on any of the NT-derived OSes). The quickest way to get there is to right-click on My Computer and pick Manage.
The next things to check into are running processes, what starts with the system and what might be shimmed in elsewhere.
For running processes, SysInternals' Process Explorer is invaluable. Tweak the columns used to show the company, description, and executable path; be suspicious of things of things with no descriptions, things you don't recognize, or anything running from a funky location. You can open up detailed information on any process that includes TCP and UDP ports open for sending or receiving, security information and strings within the executable; you can also get a listing of files, registry keys, etc. that each process has open.
Process Explorer also does one other thing very useful - it lets you suspend a process without killing it. I've had to clean systems where that was the only thing that let me get stuff cleared because I wasn't able to kill the spyware processes off without triggering relaunches by a different process. Suspending processes on the other hand worked just fine.
Also from Sysinternals is Autoruns, which lists off everything that gets started automatically with Windows or at login from any of the many places such things can hide. HijackThis gives a similar set of information broken down a bit differently.
fencepost
just a little off
The security in the Registry is excellent. Each individual key has per-user ACLs. It's much better security than plain text files are, or could practically be.
The *problem* - as you say later - is that lazy/incompetent/ignorant application developers write their applications badly.
This should be locked down just like the rest of Program Files, so admin/root is the only one who can make changes. Put per-user settings in Documents and Settings/username/Application Data.
This is exactly how the Registry works - system-wide setting go in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and per-user settings go in HKEY_USERS\{SID}. Again, the problem is developers, not the Registry.
The only real problem with the Registry is that it is completely backed onto binary data files. Of course, when you consider it was specified and designed back in about 1990 when a 33Mhz 386 was a blazingly fast machine, that's an understandable design choice.
Confirm this way:
:-)" "Oh, OK, let's start with a 10hr/month support contract".
1st raise - $8hr -> $24hr (off the street placement with a major law firm...)
2nd raise - $28hr -> $70hr (recruiter calls me in 1999 from out of state... I am tired of recruiters, so I quote $70/hr to get rid of her...she asks when I can start!)
It is ridiculous what happens when you raise rates.
I bill $120hr now. I get clients who can afford it and who truly value their IT strategy, which I happen to write. Rates are going up again pretty soon with my larger customers. "So what do you charge?" "I bill $120/hr. No 2hr minimums
Look at it this way... if I cost some company $14,400 per year for 120 hours (generally 10 hours per month is sufficient), but but I am as productive as a full-time employee, they are paying me $7.20/hr on annualized basis.
What do I do? Same thing some people do for $8/hr, except in a matter of seconds.
Raise your rates and make it easier. It's just as difficult to close a $40/hr customer as it is to close a $120/hr customer. The amount of effort is the same, so get paid fairly. If you are needed for less than 40 hours per month, attorney's or doctor's pay scale is actually very appropriate.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
You may want to check http://www.winternals.com/legal/Plaintiff's%20App% 20for%20Temporary%20Restraining%20Order%20and%20In junction.pdf . It's a hilarious doc in itself, describing in details how exactly BB employers were caught using unlicensed software (on video included). And there are receipts for their service attached. Nowhere near $30/hour, nowhere near...