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Creative Vista Driver Modder Speaks Out
hol writes sends a followup on Creative Labs shutting down the modder who made their drivers work with Vista. Wired is running daniel_k's response to the contretemps."
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what is everybody busy reading the article or something?
I never know whether to bother with /. on April 1. The fact that TFA is on Wired is no help. April fools is no longer funny.
The CB App. What's your 20?
He should make out a cashier's check for the total amount of donations he's received, mail it to Creative Labs
must be the new 'american way'; to reward companies for bad behavior (multiple times over) with a CASHIER'S CHECK.
(sigh).
no, he should NOT send money to the company that caused the problem. good grief, man, what are you thinking?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Thats the solution. You have it from Creative's mouth. They purposefully are positioning themselves to cripple your hardware to make the actual cost of your card higher if you have Vista.
This is not a problem with Vista, it is a problem with Creative if they do that.
So, do not buy Creative sound cards and let them go out of business.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
The guy tried to fix the drivers for Creative products, that worked in XP, but didn't work in Fista.
:-)
Creative censored & censured him.
Shame on Creative.
Shame on Daniel for making Fista work
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
mailing it to a charity (for the deaf?) would be a better solution IMHO
I doubt $146 is really going to make Creative any richer. I think it's more of an insult than a profit.
Hardware makers, especially those that make drivers for their gear, don't understand a hacker's mentality, or even the rebuke they get from not listening to customers. I applaud the guy; did what he needed to get the Vista Not Ready gear working. They should hire him after they throw out their software contractor and their VP of whoever thought that killing the driver was a good idea.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
So while I understand Creative's beef about messing with their software, the reason this is a firestorm issue is that since the software in question is a driver the hardware becomes an inseparable part of the equation.
And this leaves aside the whole other issue of crippling.
A-Bomb
Well, since it's pretty obvious that what he was doing was un-crippling software that they had intentionally broken, I think it's understandable that they're pissed.
Normally I'd agree. But why should I lose features in Vista because Creative decided that the card I already bought shouldn't work in a new OS? I can only think it is to encourage people to buy new cards. That's slimey.
Except for that the drivers appear to be broken on purpose. The installer checks to see if it is on Vista, and if so it turns off certain features or replaced working drivers with buggy ones. All he did was disable the checks and replace the Vista drivers with the XP ones. According to TFA, the company has said "that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a 'business decision that only we have the right to make.'"
Looks to me like they are trying to cash in on the Wintel upgrade cycle for no good technical reason: "Oh, if you want to enable all of Vista's advanced features, you need to buy this card over here."
Bastards, but probably bastards who will make lots of money.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
So the real moral of the story is stay away from Creative.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Windows are very difficult to write. If this guy modded someone else's, they should hire him.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Well, as much as I despise Vista and Microsoft in general, they can't be faulted for some greedy hardware manufacturer trying to scam more money out of people that have already bought their stuff. It's part of the good faith agreement between consumer and manufacturer that the hardware, for a reasonable amount of time, will work on modern common operating systems.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's way at the bottom of TFA but
"Alchemy: My last ALchemy release (1.00.08) was completely unlocked and could be used with any sound device from any vendor."
So the reason why they shut him down was he released a version of their software that would enable advanced creative only (software) features to say, work on an integrated sound driver. His bad, and he did that as a result of creative 'removing' all links on their support forms to his (working) vista drivers.
According to his words in TFA he's still modding but 'not the forbidden mods' that creative really was upset at him for doing.
He's lucky he's in Brazil, I guess.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The person "modding" the driver has a license to use that driver. The person receiving the driver must have a license because they have a creative labs card.
So, there is no "infringement" here.
Daniel should phrase what he does better, he isn't getting donations for the "driver," as this is a free download and already licensed by creative. He is getting donations for the "work" of modding. In other words, he is being paid for support not the driver.
Thus he is not running afoul of any IP laws. He is lawfully applying his expertise to private customers running third party hardware and and software, which they have the right to use.
No, the real moral of the story is that knowledge is power and thinking for yourself is freedom.
I didn't recognize the name but "Braziliantech" did ring a bell. He did some pretty good mods for Asus's A7V BIOSes.
Software crippling is standard practice. I am a professional embedded software engineer and I guarantee that the majority of model sperated features are all only a few bits of cleverly coded SW to tell them apart. Hell most of the jobs I have ever had in consumer electronics or industrial applications are implemented this way - ie. one standard set of HW and a configuration file and different stickers to tell the top of the range from the basic model.
...BUT...
This is really all Creative were doing, attempting to force enough of a difference between bottem end products and older products and the new top of the range technologies to ensure sales stay up. You cannot really blame them this this commercial decision.
what I take exception to is the fact that they have made none of this clear to the consumers. and worse, they have actively degraded the functionality of hardware people have already paid for by means of drivers for a new operation system.
In other words it is as though you purchased a car hifi and used it for a year in your Ford. Then you purchased an Mercedes and fitted the same car hifi and found the audio output was at half the resolution in your new car. If you have wanted to spend the money and pay for double the resolution then nobody would of batted an eyelid - but you would reasonably expect that the original performace would of been preserved. At the very least you would of expected some notification or warning.
And thats why Creative are in hot water - apart from their shockingly rude and arrogant behaviour that is.
Creative has replaced the original threatening post on the forum with a very defensive one http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332 Chunks of the original post are still available on the Wired.com article. Here's a smart guy who archive the original post http://www.woyano.com/view/7839/Archive-of-Creative-Labs-Letter-To-Community-Modder .
I thought they must be under some sort of contract restrictions with Microsoft (who is under restrictions from the media companies) that has harsh legal fines for enabling things like that. That's the only sane reason I can think of that Creative would do something like sue a guy who was pretty much fixing their drivers for free. Likely part of the contract is that they're not allowed to speak publicly about the restrictions in it, nor are they allowed to let third parties bypass them.
Or they are just lawsuit happy jerks. That is a nonzero possibility as well. I thought it was funny that the Creative exec was basically saying "It's our right to release broken drivers if we want to". Clearly Creative knows a lot about broken drivers.
I read the internet for the articles.
Terratec and M-Audio both make quality sound cards, and I much, much prefer those companies to Creative.
I went through SB live and incompatibilities with very popular VIA chip sets.
I bought a Audigy (1) and never got the firewire port working or any drivers to work since XP SP2.
For years I had been annoyed at the rubbish that installs with the drive CD's and how the GUI is totally at odds with Windows.
I switched to Diamond (with DDL optical output) and Via sound cards (24bit / 96kHz) for a fraction of the price. I haven't looked back, updates are available for vista and they work just fine.
Due to my bad experiences with Creative and driver support I actively steer clear of *any* product they make for over 5 years and advise family and friends to do the same.
I believe the situation is that Creative licensed certain technologies from Dolby for use in Windows XP, but they haven't ponied up for the licenses for use in Windows Vista. Since the guy is posting the drivers in Creative's forums, Dolby could go after Creative. Creative took the steps necessary to stop a possible lawsuit.
None of this would be an issue though if Creative would just pay for the licensing though. Jerks.
Dear Phil O'Shaunessy, We, the public, have heard your comments and belief that 'whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a "business decision that only we have the right to make." ' and we would just like to say we fully agree with and support your belief: any company has the complete and total right to be an absolute asshat and fuck over it's customers. The public, on the other hand, has the complete right to do anything and everything to put your sorry ass out of business, and to tar and feather your sorry ass and run it out of town on a rail. Now that you and your company has shown its colors, it is up to us, the public, to cut off your balls and run with them. Therefore, we have decided to not buy your lousy products, ever. We will do everything in our power to spread the word to our customers, friends, family, strangers on the street, on what a sad, pathetic bunch of fucktards you really are, and anything else imaginable to steal your sales and lessen your profit margin. Oh, and Phil, be careful when you are crossing the street, because none of us will bother braking for your evil, moneygrubbing, worthless ass, and will claim a temporary overwhelming need to do the world a solid after running it over. We don't need you, Phil, or your bullshit products. What you need, dickless, is our money, and we're putting an end to your shit now. Fuck you, and have a great day. There you have it, folks. This should be copied by each and every computer owner in the country, put into practice, and copies mailed to our friend Phil at Creative Labs. All it takes is ONE SHOW OF STRENGTH BY THE BUYING PUBLIC. LET'S SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE OF 'FUCK YOU FOR TRYING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT' TO THESE BASTARDS! Or you can sit on your asses and get what you deserve. Your choice.
It's a shame Creative bought E-mu. I sold my upgraded Proteus 2500 the day they sold out.
My experience with Creative (post-SoundBlaster 16) has been nothing but horrible. The Extigy was one of the worst abortions in computer hardware history. It was marketed as a pro-level 24-bit external sound card, but really was no better than the junk sound cards you can find sitting on a pile at a flea market. And while one version of the driver (also unofficial at the time) was capable of offering the 24-bit capabilitiy the box so boldly proclaimed... I believe the hardware secretly only ran at 16-bit. And it would have constant dropouts any time the host computer would do any disk or network activity... and it was a new computer. This was because there was basically no capabilties in the box -- it was all just host-based. There wasn't even a significant buffer onboard, so all it took was a tiny bit of lag on the USB bus and it was stutter-city.
A friend also had an Audigy back around this time, but didn't know where the driver disc was. Creative had only driver updates available online -- you had to purchase CD copies if you wanted at the original. I guess this makes sense considering their idea of a sound card driver is bloatware too big to download.
Don't get me wrong... they allowed me to hear speech for the first time on my 486 in Wing Commander III, but they haven't made a difference since then. I'm really glad they're getting all of this well-deserved negative publicity. They just plain suck. The only reason they're still around is because of brand recognition. Hopefully now they'll start to be recognized for what they really are... crap.
I guess if all you listen to is taco farts played through a kazoo, they're probably right for you.
Move all sig!
But why should I lose features in Vista because Creative decided that the card I already bought shouldn't work in a new OS?
Because you're Creative's bitch.
Remember how we used to buy and "own" things? Well, now apparently companies are claiming the right to tell us how we may, or may not, use their products after "buying" them, even with physical hardware. Since the number of people who care about things like this enough to stop buying shiny gadgets is minuscule, I see no reason why this tactic shouldn't work.
After all, it's their product, why shouldn't they have complete control over how you "consume" it - there's money to be made, after all.
sic transit gloria mundi
The real lesson is that tuna and mackarel should never be mixed.
But things have changed; the iPod has made Creative's portable music player largely irrelevant - and on-board sound is a standard feature of motherboards these days.
So what is poor Creative to do? They could take the honorable path; see that their market has dried up and either innovate in another market or close down their business. But no; they're used to getting those dollars coming in on a regular basis and decided to try something less-than-honorable.
But they got caught at it. Too bad; Creative is in a worse position now. Not only are they still faced with sharply declining revenues, they've also got a public relations nightmare to deal with too.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch; here's payback for all those crappy drivers you dumped on your customers. Die in a fire, OK?
I have read all of the threads here: http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
/. account many years ago while sitting at my desk at Creative Labs Inc. 1523 Cimarron Plaza, Stillwater, OK 74075. 405-742-6655.
and here: http://creative.edited.us/
Creative summarily wiped their VP's Original posting from their forums that started this whole epic saga. Good thing somebody mirrored it all here: http://creative.edited.us/page.php?start=1
In summary, here are a few key points (in no particular order):
(1) Creative may have licensed some software for Windows XP and NOT licensed it for Windows Vista. Thus that is *in part* why they crippled it. (and it helps promote new hardware sales for Vista) It seems this is true for the Dolby portions of the code.
(2) Creative stated they cripple their hardware (depending on what model it is) in their drivers based on the Operating System version and what the item was sold as. They state they have the legal right to do so.
(3) Creative stated that anyone re-enabling features (however it is done) is "stealing" from Creative.
(4) Apparently, the Windows XP drivers ignore the Vista "Protected Path" DRM killswitch flags and work quite well. (Recall that Vista is built on Windows XP technology and WinXP drivers *can be made* to WORK FINE in it. It is probably very likely that this violates some NDA from Microsoft to Creative as it likely bypasses their DRM mechanisms in Vista that were not included in WinXP (at least up to WinXP w/SP2).
(5) This is pissing people off in a major way. There are people planning on never doing business with Creative again: http://boycottcreative.com/BoycottCreative.html and http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/BoycottCreative
(6) Creative is not doing very well (at all) financially (Gee, I wonder why?): http://www.creative.com/corporate/investor/ and http://finance.google.com/finance?q=OTC%3ACREAF
(7) A Driver "Modder" known as Daniel Kawakami (AKA "Daniel_K") found ways to re-enable 'features' for certain product Creative lines under Windows Vista, notably restoring the Full functionality on the various Creative Hardware under Windows Vista.
(8) This modder also made their Alchemy software work on non-creative sound products too, likely pissing off Creative more.
(9) The modder asked for donations for his freely available work, he acknowledges that was dumb, and pretty much everybody dumps on him for it.
(10) Many Creative Forum posts have been deleted (redacted) and many are available here: http://creative.edited.us/deleted.html
Interestingly, I created my
Those of you whom also worked there probably knew me, you certainly know the above address and phone number all too well. You had the job while you were in college, learned skills, and happily left around graduation time.
I am not here to badmouth or flame, just to say that I was completely unsurprised when this came to light. I could not believe the VP's posting and how he is clearly so out of touch with the reality of Creative's die-hard customers, their motives, and their sense of loyalty and fairness. He has probably lost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars with that single post if not more!
IN some people's opinions, Creative has now firmly placed itself on the path to be considered as clost to "The customer is always right." as the likes of Microso
April fools day is confusing me.... are you pretending the Creative drivers for XP don't suck?
You're confusing me... are you saying that Creative hardware doesn't suck?
I used Windows XP when it came out, and the fact that most Windows 2000 drivers would work in XP helped quite a bit. Besides, there is little doubt that upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP was a truly worthwhile upgrade, even if you had to chuck your crappy ISA sound card.
I suppose that I am a little bitter because both my scanner and my expensive printer didn't come with workable Windows Vista drivers. I'm not the only one that feels this way. If you read the Microsoft email from the class action Vista lawsuit you'll see that several Microsoft VPs had similar experiences. We aren't talking about ISA sound cards either.
On the bright side my wife hated Vista so much that I was finally able to get her to switch to Ubuntu (where the printer works flawlessly). That's worth the price of Vista for me, right there.
What I find truly curious is that so many Windows users apparently don't mind if their hardware doesn't work with Microsoft's new operating system. You paid good money for this software and there basically is no good technical reason that this hardware shouldn't be supported. After all, Linux manages to support ridiculously old hardware.
Either way, it's more than somewhat hypocritical to dismiss Linux for hardware compatibility issues, and then fail to point out that Microsoft faces many of the same problems with new versions of its software.
Clickity
good article, short read. enjoy
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Actually, the sub-issue here is that Creative's Vista drivers for said hardware don't work properly at all. So this guy's drivers are the only useful Vista drivers for that hardware. The fact that he re-enabled Dolby is an interesting sideshow and the one Creative's using as a club here to beat him, but the real spotlight should be on what the hell is wrong with Creative that they can't have their team of day-job programmers make drivers that work in a year, but a lone hobbyist tinkerer can.
How is this insightful? You clearly didn't read the article at all.
Creative broke parts of their Vista drivers even though those parts would have worked fine. The modder re-enabled them and Creative threw a wobbly. This has nothing to do with DRM or media companies, and the only link to Microsoft is the OS the drivers were written for. It has everything to do with Creative forcing an upgrade path on their customers.
Good work on writing a comment with all the buzzwords necessary to look insightful, though.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien