Creative Backs Down on Vista Driver Debacle

In the wake of last week's driver debacle, Creative has finally decided to back down for PR purposes. Modder Daniel_K, author of the offending Vista drivers, has had his posts on the Creative forums reinstated. According to Creative the move was to avoid infringing on other company's IP. "Daniel_K is incensed by Creative. 'They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance,' he told El Reg by email. He told us that Creative contacted him on a chat session. 'They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them, as if I were expecting something,' he wrote. 'It was my protest against them and would like to see how far it would go.'"

Comments

first post!

[Anonymous Coward]

modded illegally by the community!

Re:first post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, lord... A First Post joke that actually IS funny for a change. Did Lucifer skate to work this morning and I miss it?

Good for him

[Megaweapon]

The way Creative publically handled the situation was so stupid they deserve the continued bad publicity.

Re:Good for him

[Shados]

Seriously. It is so close to the corportate equivalent of "dumb suicide" that it should deserve a Darwin Award

Re:Good for him

[dgatwood]

I kind of wish they would die, if only so we wouldn't have to let down so many disappointed people who bought Creative's X-Fi and Audigy hardware thinking it would be a good card for home recording only to find out that it utterly sucks at it. Between the high latency and all the post-processing it does to make the sound "better" (much of which is apparently hard to turn off), it's about the worst possible choice for that use, yet Creative seems to market it as though it would be good for that. Not to mention that the sound quality on the inputs just isn't up to snuff compared to even the cheapest M-Audio hardware.

At a minimum, the company deserves the corporate equivalent of life in prison without parole for the number of people the company has harmed with their product claims.

Re:Good for him

[neumayr]

Tech companies exagerate their product's capabilities for marketing reasons, more news at 11 or something.

Re:Good for him

[DaleGlass]

Some of those geeks work at places like universities and large companies and make purchase decisions. Others give advice to less knowledgeable people.

An important thing to note here is that a dedicated soundcard is no longer a necessary component of a computer due to onboard sound. A large part of Creative's market are going people who decide on their own to buy a soundcard for some reason, and which card they choose will depend quite heavily on some geek's opinion.

Re:Good for him

[bhima]

If you'll look I think you'll find that the downloads for his work number in the many 10's of thousands.

So I doubt it's just a few angry kids.

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who bought one of Creative's cards for home recording deserves what they get. If you know enough to actually do a decent job recording, you'll know that just about anything out there is better for recording than gaming cards, which is what all of Creative's cards are. Turtle Beach, M-Audio, Digidesign, MOTU - all are better than Creative. The only thing they had going for them once upon a time was Ensoniq's IP, which they proceeded to flush down the crapper.

Re:Good for him

[plague3106]

Well apparently there were enough geeks on enough forums that they thought it was a big deal. They said it was because of bad PR that they reversed their decision.

Re:Good for him

[plague3106]

Your assertion that dedicated sound cards aren't needed anymore is plain silly. Unless the only sounds your computer will play are the Windows ones, you're going to want a dedicated card because of all the noise the onboard cards introduce.. especially if you're recording any audio, which is part of editing videos on your computer.. which a growing number of people are doing.

Re:Good for him

[Bombula]

It would definitely be nice if Creative died - or at least got some decent competition. It's a good example of a market totally dominated by one company that churns out crappy stuff. I know a fair bit about their EAX technology from personal experience, as I tried to patent a 3D positional audio technology in the mid 90s. Aureal beat me to it, but they folded. I think their IP ended up with another company called Sensaura. They're gone now too, and their site directs to ... Creative.

Still no true 3D positional audio through EAX either, just some hackneyed binaural cues. It's a shame, but I guess that's just how the stone rolls.

Re:Good for him

[Shados]

The assertion from the previous poster basically meant "You can have a working, full featured computer without having to care about buying a sound card, a bit like you can do the same with network cards".

Last time this subject came up, I said that onboard sound was more than good enough: multiple people proved me wrong, and indeed, i was, so I'm not going to try and argue that. However, point is, for 90% of people, the computer will be functional as is. Games will run fine, their MP3s will play fine (and I can't hear any noise introduced by the board during playback, and its quite limited and hard to notice during recording... of course, not viable for professional work), everything will be "good enough" to the average joe (as opposed to videocards, where even Joe will realise really quickly that his onboard video isn't good enough when he can't even run a 3 years old game on his machine).

So that means that ALMOST EVERYONE who buys a sound card, knows what they want. Low noise, professional features, instrument ports, specific encoder/decoders support, and they'll want quality (and the tone of your post is quite in line with this statement).

So Creative cannot sell shitty feature-less cards easily. They have to have a LOT over an onboard card for someone to want it.

Re:Good for him

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

An important thing to note here is that a dedicated soundcard is no longer a necessary component of a computer due to onboard sound That's true, if you do not care about things like framerate or noise. It'll work just fine for youtube, the news, and torrents of your favorite legal tv shows and movies.

Throw in Hi def gaming, or a real media center, and a soundcard isn't just an enthusiasts upgrade, it's a necessity.

Re:Good for him

[DigitAl56K]

They didn't have any real competition, until recently. Now the ASUS XONAR, and the slightly lower spec'd Razer Barracuda are direct competitors for the X-Fi, minus the later revisions of EAX. However, I could not be happier if EAX died on it's ass, because it's one of the few things locking consumers into Creative boards these days, and the sooner we can wave goodbye to Creative's monopoly the better.

Re:Good for him

[mcmonkey]

Throw in Hi def gaming, or a real media center, and a soundcard isn't just an enthusiasts upgrade, it's a necessity.

IOW, it is just an enthusiasts upgrade.

Re:Good for him

[ShieldW0lf]

Is this the same Daniel from Brazil that did the Promise RAID BIOS/Driver hacks for the A7V/A7V133 boards from Asus?

Re:Good for him

[Fozzyuw]

Thanks,

Since reading this incredible arrogance from Creative...

Phil O'Shaughnessy, ultimately asked him to stop [modding their drivers], and accused him of "stealing their goods." O'Shaughnessy also wrote that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a "business decision that only we have the right to make."

I don't want to buy another sound card from them again. I was just wondering what might be some good competitors to which it seems you've answered.

Re:Good for him

[AnomaliesAndrew]

This geek's opinion:

Buy M-Audio instead of Creative. Creative is entirely obsolete.

(No, I'm not on their payroll... I just have 2x Delta 1010s teamed up and working spectacularly in my home studio, and have heard nothing but good reviews from friends who have bought their lower end products. I too have previously owned other products from M-Audio to great satisfaction.)

Re:Good for him

[Bassman59]

The only thing they had going for them once upon a time was Ensoniq's IP, which they proceeded to flush down the crapper.

The thing is, at the time of Ensoniq's implosion, they were eating Creative for breakfast in the soundcard biz. Ensoniq was first with PCI soundcards which were "Soundblaster compatible" (meaning they worked with old DOS games that talked directly to the SB16's ISA-bus register space; that's completely irrelevant now but a big deal back then) and Creative couldn't get their own stuff to work. And Gateway was buying Ensoniq's cards by the boatload, and other PC vendors were looking at doing the same.

It really is too bad that Ensoniq had issues that lead to Creative buying them. Basically, Creative didn't care about the musical instrument side of Ensoniq; Creative just bought Ensoniq to shut down their better competitor.

Re:Good for him

[ATMD]

What company would you recommend then for good quality music playback?

I can't say that I've ever really followed developments in sound hardware, so I'd always assumed that Creative must be pretty good, given their market dominance. Stupid mistake, now I think of it.

Someone else in this thread said something about Ensoniq - I think I have an ES1371 based card lying around somewhere...

Re:Good for him

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Haha, after re-reading that, it appears you are correct. In a slashdot 1st... I conceede I stand corrected!

Re:Good for him

[Selivanow]

I wish I had mod points.....this is so not a troll...unless that was your intention :)

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

100$ motherboards (e.g. gigabyte P35-DS3L) nowadays have perfectly fine Intel HDA/Realtek high def audio onboard. My gigabyte P35-DS3R (Realtek ALC 889A codec) has 7.1 + 2 channel audio (7.1 and stereo, playing independently, at the same time), supports all the latest HD audio codecs used by Blu-Ray, does 192 kHz / 24 bit audio, has a spdif (coax) and toslink (optical) outputs, as well as GREAT (and very loud) headphone output via the onboard jumper block. Same SNR as a Audigy 2 (106 db). Works fine with windows and linux too (great drivers too, unlike creative). No forced internal resampling like SB live, no phony processing (e.g. the x-fi's crystallizer), it can do bit-perfect playback too, etc. Great set of inputs/outputs too (6 analog, toslink, spdif, plus the ones in front of my case) -- much better than the basic creative cards (e.g. the X-Fi's spdif out is also the mic in!) The only thing I can think of that could be nice to have over that, is dolby digital live, and some even have it (e.g. ALC888 DD).

The amount of ppl doing recording on their home PC is likely below 1%. Those might need multichannel low-latency ASIO, but for the rest of us, onboard auio is more than good enough. It's not like the crappy AC97 of 10 years ago anymore.

Re:Good for him

[d3ac0n]

Well, there's always these guys: http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/mtgoddl/home.aspx

They've been making fantastic audiophile-grade cards for Win machines for years.

Word of warning though, their older stuff (Santa Cruz in particular) does NOT play nice with Linux, despite being generally fantastic on Windows machines.

Best audio setup I ever had was back when on my old AMD XP1900+ box running Windows XP with my Santa Cruz card hooked to my Monsoon 5.1 flat panel surround sound speakers. Not uber powerful, but INCREDIBLE sound imagery if you were in the "sweet spot". I remember sitting and listening to CDs on my PC because the sound was just so damn much better than even on my stereo.

Unfortunately, that entire setup is long gone. The motherboard burst it's caps, which sent a surge to the audio card, killing it and down to the Monsoon subwoofer (which held all the critical electronics) killing it too. I held onto the Monsoon speakers, but the company went under shortly afterward, and I haven't been able to get replacement parts for it.

Now I just make do with crappy 2.1 onboard audio and elcheapo logitec speakers. The sound is passable for low level listening to background music, but little else. Ahh for the days of yore...

Re:Good for him

[Ethanol-fueled]

Partially true. I think that the best way for mid-level sound is to use an external interface like this one or this one. Anybody who's at least semi-serious about computer-based recording isn't going to shoehorn their XLR mic into some tiny jack on the back of their computer.

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to heartily disagree with the last statement you made, that there has to be a huge benefit to buy a dedicated soundcard.

most of Creative's customers are what I like to call the "dumb gamer"(not to say all gamers are dumb). They go to fry's or walmart looking for something to make their computer better for games and a salesperson will sell them a Creative product (snazzy box, designed and built for clueless installers).

add to that a generation of people that were raised on "if it isn't creative it just won't work" back from the days when Creative were the only ones making decent drivers for their products, and you have a good customer base that keeps Creative afloat no matter what color of crap they sell to people.

I do agree with your point that onboard sound is good enough for most people, and a sound pro is probably going to know what he needs and skip Creative's products. you hit the nail on the head on both of those accounts.

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

on-board sound is "good enough" for most users. most people think mp3 is a high-quality format, and those people will never be able to hear a difference in sound quality anyway. if you have a few tb's of .flac flies, on-board sound isn't for you. but then again if you were the type to prefer flac over mp3, you'd already know that. i guess my point is that anyone who asks "is on-board sound good enough?" is probably going to be just happy with it. many of the on-board options exceed the quality of dedicated mp3 players, so if you listen to an ipod constantly, you'd probably think the on-board sound on many mobos is fabulous.

Re:Good for him

[macdaddy]

What would you suggest as a better alternative to Creative's soundcards for high-end home systems? Not defending Creative or their products; I'm laying out my plan for my next system...

Re:Good for him

[Xtravar]

If you're really serious about recording, you're going to buy an external audio unit, not some dainty sound card. Most people who buy external sound "cards" don't buy whatever crap Creative makes.

Also, from personal experience and what I've read, the on-board sound built into nForce boards has always been good enough or better than auxiliary sound cards.

Moral of the story:
If you're going to use a computer for recording, you're going to spend at least $200 on an external audio unit.
If you're going to play games, you're fine with high-end motherboard sound.
If you're going to play solitaire, you're fine with on-board sound.

There's really no case where you should ever buy a "sound card" unless you want some exxxxxtreme gaming "features" (like a free temporary tattoo in the box).

And so that's why the original poster implied that Creative's commodity sound card market is drying up.

The thing I don't understand is why Creative doesn't own the on-board market. But then again, I'm not crying because I still hate them for crappy drivers from the year 2000.

Re:Good for him

[Mex]

Ha ha, wow, are they really marketing it as a home recording solution?

Because I have one (X-Fi, got it included in my PC) and while it's an acceptable sound card(How hard is that, really), it would be absolutely useless for recording.

I used Guitar Rig just for giggles on it, and the latency is so bad (even with the rather good Asio4all drivers) that it's useless for serious use.

I think it would be criminal if they advertised it as something serious for recording.

Re:Good for him

[Z34107]

I've been looking at the whole Creative situation for a little while now - I used to be a big fan of their hardware. My first SB16 kicked so much ass during the Glory Days of Microprose and Windows 3.11...

So, naturally, I was disenheartened to hear how poorly this was handled. But, angry lawyer-speak aside, my understanding is that Creative had a few (legitimate) problems:

• ALchemy. My understanding is that Microsoft removed DirectSound, or some part of DirectSound, from Vista because their new driver model or DirectX model or something ruined things. Create rewrote a DirectSound emulator for their new X-Fi cards, and later ported it to their older ones. Presumably because of how many man-hours go into designing something like this, they wanted to charge money for older cards to use it. This guy took the free X-Fi version and removed hardware checks so it would run on any card. This is the "stealing their goods" complaint.
• Crippling Vista drivers is a "business decision that only we have the right to make"? That's true, but they're not being selfish assholes. (Well, only a little.) They licensed a bunch of technologies from other companies, but licensed it only for XP. D'oh. Now, here's a guy, on their own forums nonetheless, enabling these technologies on Vista. Can you say "lawsuit?"

I built my current rig over the summer, and I have yet to put a proper sound card in it. The onboard audio is fairly good - my Striker Extreme motherboard comes with a riser card, which seems to have taken care of most of the motherboard noise. (Or, maybe it's just to trick people into thinking they're getting a real sound card.) I have a dual core processor, so a little audio work isn't going to hurt it much. (And then there are games like Doom 3 that process all sound, in software, in a separate thread, and completely ignore hardware acceleration.) I'm not going to get a sound card and use up a precious expansion slot until I get better speakers - and living in a dorm, that won't be for quite some time.

It's a shame they're having problems like this, though. They had good, solid products, and I've been quite happy with them and their drivers up through the Audigy. (I haven't purchased one since.)

Maybe AMD will surprise the world by including kick-ass audio equipment in its spider-monkey platform or whatever...

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with you in a general sense.

A dedicated soundcard is no longer necessary for about 90% of home users; the people who will care are uber-geeks, hardcore gamers, and professional sound developers... who tend to do a lot of research.

Back in 'the day', their cards were cheap and 'good enough'... and on-board sound was rare.
Their cards are still pretty cheap, but the quality really isn't much better than onboard sound. You'd be better off spending the money on a better motherboard than adding on a Creative card.
The lack of full featured input/output and EMI shielding sends the professionals running into the night.

They are staying alive by catering to the high-end gaming market, who want good quality for gaming and home apps, but don't need the heavy-duty models the pros use. It won't be much longer before they either die completely, or drop the end-user retail market and start building the on-board soundcards that the generic MB's use.

To sum it all up in two words : Good Riddance.

Re:Good for him

[Handlarn]

I think it's damn hilarious to see you don't even have the balls to show your username when you write such a thing to another user. :)

Re:Good for him

[dgatwood]

They use the word recording in marketing for at least for some of those cards... maybe that was Audigy, I forget.... And yeah, your experience is consistent with what most folks I've heard from have experienced. :-)

Re:Good for him

[bulliver]

I have had good luck with my M-Audio Revolution 5.1 card. Probably a little old now but sounds _way_ nicer than the Audigy I used to use.

Re:Good for him

[xclr8r]

I used to work at a theme park that used multiple turtle beach cards for recording as well as sending signal to the soundboard and SMPTE timecode to projectors and Fire Works control box (Manned by a lic. safety person to stop fireing if an issue arose). This was way back in the mid 90s and we were replaceing a cart track audio system with computers. We never received a faulty card and never had to send one back for repair the five years I worked there.

Re:Good for him

[gfody]

The thing I don't understand is why Creative doesn't own the on-board market. They can't compete with Taiwan and their 5 cent 7.1+2-channel-good-enough-for-most-anyone chips. And doesn't NVidia's northbridge just have audio integrated?

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh... he might come "kill you".

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's damn hilarious too. Considering the training I have, the violence I've seen and vigilantism I've committed. I don't get into those sorts of specifics on public forums because I prefer to stay out of jail.

Re:Good for him

[Mattsson]

Of the top of my head:
CME
TC-electronic
M-Audio
and at the more average sound quality level
Behringer

Re:Good for him

[PingXao]

People have been wishing that for many, many years. I'm personally not a Creative fan because way back when they refused to produce decent drivers for OS/2 and no amount of cajoling or whining could make them do it. They turned a deaf ear to the public then, 15 years ago, and have continued to do so ever since. It's important to realize Creative is a Marketing company first and an audio technology company second.

ATI was the same way. They may still be that way for all I know. Since those days of OS/2 driver debacles I have never bought a product from Creative or ATI.

Re:Good for him

[Anonymous Coward]

...many 10's of thousands

That implies multiple dozens of users running Vista!

Re:Good for him

[bigpicture]

Back in the days, I used to buy sound cards, the ones with the gold connectors, that came from Creative. The drivers used to suck, and back then the BIOS or Windows didn't recognize the hardware, then you had all that IRQ priority crap to work with.

So when the separately purchased MBs started coming out with acceptable or good sound capability, and that "just works" feature that everyone likes, no more sound cards for me. But I bet the drivers still probably suck, and are in need of some help.

Re:Good for him

[mcpkaaos]

Kobra Kai!

Re:Good for him

[sco08y]

In a follow on story, tech company employees behave rudely and unprofessionally in an Internet chat. The employees defended their actions stating that "what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet."

Re:Good for him

[macdaddy]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a try on my next build.

Re:Good for him

[plague3106]

$100 MBs aren't found in most machines that people buy. Also, while the onboard card claims the same SNR, onboard chips suffer from added noise due to poor shielding of some kind. Power supplies, mice, and a host of other devices for some reason seem to interfer with these chips quite easily.

As far as your guess on numbers go, I think you're way off. I'm not claiming everyone is trying to do professional audio, but there is something in between a pure listener and a professional audio mixer that a lot of people fall into.

Re:Good for him

[plague3106]

Where did I say "serious about recording?" There are home users that won't want the extra noise that onboard chips seem to introduce that an addon card doesn't. It's foolish to think those that are doing amature audio are going to spend $200 on an external unit, when a good enough $40 internal card can be bought that's still a step above the crap that passes for onboard.

Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[scubamage]

Given that NVidia is getting nailed with a class action lawsuit because of handicapped drivers, I have to wonder if Creative's withdrawal is less a product of PR and more of fear that they could be put in a similar court situation. I mean, punishing someone because they release un-crippled versions of your drivers kind of spotlights your company for having crippled drivers in the first place - the basis of the nvidia case.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[zappepcs]

does it really matter whether they were trying to save face, or trying to save their asses in court?

Either way, the Internet has yet again handily shown another large corporate entity that 'do no evil' is a pretty damned good motto.

That once letter to the local paper editor gets millions of reads these days. Despite their efforts, many businesses and their practices are transparent to the public whether they like it or not. The "blowback" from that is what some like to call 'market forces' at work :)

Google was rather bright to call everything beta, and only put a line through the word when everyone was happy with how it works. When you produce products and make claims of a general nature and have no clear plan with how to deal with those inevitable questions from reviewers and users... well, blowback is the natural response.

Trying to hush up the competition is ... er... illegal. Trying to hush those that would expose you to the competition is essentially the same thing, and quite the example of not 'don't be evil'.

It's just a shame that the folks at Creative had to fsck it up like this when they could have created a PR positive experience of it.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Kandenshi]

I'm pretty sure that the lesson is "don't do evil in ways where you stand a good chance of getting caught. Do lots and lots of evil (if it's profitable) in areas where you're not likely to get bad publicity/legal action out of it.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Enderandrew]

You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil".

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[timster]

You're forgetting that some Slashdotters have been taught that there's some law requiring corporations to be evil as long as there is profit in it. After all, if it's in a documentary it must be true.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[agent_no.82]

IIRC, corporations are required to maximize shareholder revenue by a legal precedent. Obviously that could include morally reprehensible actions, but only if they are legal.

Of course, if the appropriate group if people own all the shares of a corporation, they will not require this and the corporation would not be vulnerable to such a case ("You're wasting my money!") in court. Likewise, the board of directors could argue that evil actions will cause horrible PR should they ever get out, and thus be more damaging to the company, but I don't think lawsuits over this usually happen as long as the company's not having other serious issues.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[garett_spencley]

I prefer a "always do evil" philosophy. Sure some people may get mad at you and you may get bad PR etc. but "do no evil" is boring. "Do evil" is a great way to ensure that things stay interesting.

Think about it...

Where would Slashdot be if Microsoft was not an evil monopolistic corporation ?

Where would Slashdot be if the RIAA were not suing grandmothers and college students ?

Where would Slashdot be if Jack Thompson was not suing video game manufacturers ?

Where would Slashdot be if Creative released Vista drivers that work ?

You see, by being evil you effectively bring life to the Internet. Without evilness no one would have anything to bitch about and everyone would be too busy watching porn and looking up peach cobbler recipes. FUCK THAT!

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[DigDuality]

No corporation is evil or good. It's just a matter of how much harm they do or do not inflict of the path to their goal, intentionally or not (which they should be held liable for). Now, there's individuals in companies that can be evil. But a corporation isn't a person. It's neutral.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Vellmont]

You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil"

Right, because Microsoft has never been caught being evil and been able to get out of any repercussions for doing so. We all know their aggressive anti-competitive strategy has made them billions of dollars.

The real lesson is "figure out what you can get away with for how long and how much it'll make you, then do that". The only difference here is that Creative thought they could get away with a little more than they actually did.

Companies aren't going to stop "being evil". They might figure out what they can get away with a bit more in the changing landscape of internet reporting.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[geekboy642]

It's not a law. It's the fact that corporations are beholden, essentially, to only their shareholders. The shareholders, by and large, want only one thing: more profit. Corporations thus function like an entity at Pre-Conventional Stage 2 morality, or the "what's in it for me?" stage (refc. Kohlberg). This does not mean they have an emphasis on doing evil, this means they don't care whether what they do is evil or not.

They only care about not getting caught when they do evil. Creative was caught, and now they are back-peddling to try to avoid the consequences of their actions.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Dr_Barnowl]

watching porn and looking up peach cobbler recipes. FUCK THAT! Is peach cobbler as good as apple pie?

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Anonymous Coward]

You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil".

And how many files have you shared illegally? Oh, I forgot, this is Slashdot. Everyone here actually buys the same stuff after we illegally download it, just to make things right again.

Funny how that lesson only applies to corporations, and not consumers.

Yarrrrr, matey!!!!

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[JustShootMe]

Some would say watching porn is evil.

I say it depends on the kind of porn. :-)

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Deadstick]

It's called seeing the light when you feel the heat.

rj

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[BenoitRen]

Google was rather bright to call everything beta, and only put a line through the word when everyone was happy with how it works.

Have they ever done this? I can't think of an example, but then again, I only use their search engine and hear GMail is still in beta.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[scubamage]

Gmail is in beta, so is google scholar, I'm pretty sure froogle is along with gcal and google apps.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting that some Slashdotters have been taught that there's some law requiring corporations to be evil as long as there is profit in it.

You say this to be funny, but it is true - a corporation has a legal obligation to its shareholders to ignore morality in place of profit, and if the CEO, chairman, and BoD of a corp do not do this, you will end up with the stockholders of the company suing that corporation for not engaging in acts which emphasize profitability over morality.

(Note: I'm not saying illegal acts - plenty of things can be evil while still being legal.)

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[HiThere]

You are, I believe, describing yourself.

Personally, while I ceased buying CDs, I did not then begin downloading music or videos. Actually, I haven't even bothered to figure out how to play a MP3, though I'm rather certain that it would be easy.

I also stopped going to movies. (TV I gave up years ago, because the ads were too irritating.)

And yes, I still consider those who commit copyright infringement on the member companies of the RIAA or MPAA to be relatively innocent. It's not something I would do, but it a much less significant crime than bribing congress. If I thought that it actually injured the aforementioned companies, then I'd not only support it, but actually participate. Unfortunately, it does them no harm, so I'm just boycotting (which doesn't do them much harm, but it's legal, to the extent that that matters).

Of course, possibly I'm giving you too much credit. You may be an astroturfer or a troll. But some people do seem to actually believe as you do, and really do justify themselves by saying "everybody does it", irrational as that may be. Unethical action doesn't become ethical just because "everybody does it". OTOH, if, indeed, "everybody does it", it might be wise to examine carefully the grounds upon which you have decided that it's unethical. Usually, however, the ground that really need questioning are those that cause you to conclude that "everybody does it". And occasionally you may find that your ethics are flawed. Also frequently, unfortunately, you find that people just do what's convenient for them, even if it really is unethical. In such cases for YOU to participate remains unethical.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[oldhack]

It's called seeing the light when you feel the heat.

Creative found Jesus?

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[oldhack]

Even illegal things are "illegal" only if you bring a court case, make fuss, and convince judges/jury it is illegal.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[r_jensen11]

You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil". How about "don't be evil" because it's the right thing to do?

Kind of like in Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken "corrects" a person who says something along the lines of "I wouldn't lie because I would get sued" with something along the lines of "No, you mean you wouldn't lie because lieing's bad, and telling the truth is good and the right thing to do."

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[SlickNic]

Either way, the Internet has yet again handily shown another large corporate entity that 'do no evil' is a pretty damned good motto. That puts it perfectly, a lot of companies are realizing that the internet has a lot of power and if they ignore even a few users in a very negative way they can suffer from the tech savvy portion of the internet knowing and responding very quickly.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[UncleTogie]

You see, by being evil you effectively bring life to the Internet. Without evilness no one would have anything to bitch about and everyone would be too busy watching porn and looking up peach cobbler recipes.

Looks like someone's been listening to Mr. Zorg more than he should have...

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that NVidia is getting nailed with a class action lawsuit because of handicapped drivers, I have to wonder if Creative's withdrawal is less a product of PR and more of fear that they could be put in a similar court situation. I don't know what the nvidia lawsuit is about, maybe not enough parking spaces or ramps? You'd think though in this day and age people would take this stuff more seriously.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[TheLink]

"But a corporation isn't a person. It's neutral"

In theory yes.
In practice, it's not neutral. It's as evil as the people that control it. It is an extension of those people's will.

Making a fine distinction between a machine and the invisible people controlling it as the machine goes about crushing people, is correct in theory.

But in practice, if the same people keep controlling it, you might as well associate their brand with "Evil". After all those invisible people in control are often so interested in Brand consciousness.

And Brand consciousness is currently the main reason why anyone would buy Creative sound cards.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[schon]

the corporation would not be vulnerable to such a case ("You're wasting my money!") in court. I thought that in the US, anyone could sue anyone else (even a corporation) for anything anyway.

So what, exactly, are they being protected from again?

Sounds like they're just using the "oh, we could be sued by our shareholders if we don't throw these kittens into this woodchipper" as an excuse.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[The Yuckinator]

We really need a +1 Awesome around here.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[agent_no.82]

The idea was to protect the shareholders from the company executives just giving assets away, or making entirely unsound business decisions. For example, you invest in my company and I run it completely into the ground. This should garuntee some recourse.
I'm sure it's possible to create a similar ruling that protects both shareholders and the general public.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Anonymous Coward]

a corporation has a legal obligation to its shareholders to ignore morality in place of profit Bullshit. Quote the law that says the above, or the obvious equivalent of it.

While you're at it, also point out where in the law(s) it's spelled out that nobody can found a company with a corporate charter specifying its purpose to be the opposite, i.e. to make a profit only as long as it does it while adhering to a specified moral conduct, and then make this company public.

Good luck.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[toddestan]

Why should the share holders be protected from bad business decisions? Nowadays, it seems that people have totally forgotten the risk part of investing money.

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[sco08y]

If it weren't for all the evil, /. would actually deliver "News for Nerds" instead of "News that Irritates the Shit out of Nerds."

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are, I believe, describing yourself. ** Great detective work!! So, some guy posts AC on Slashdot to the effect that illegal p2p'ers are evil, and you deduce that he's guilty of it, himself!! How'd you come to that conclusion, Sherlock? **

Personally, while I ceased buying CDs, I did not then begin downloading music or videos. Actually, I haven't even bothered to figure out how to play a MP3, though I'm rather certain that it would be easy. ** It's easier than you think - you just push PLAY **

I also stopped going to movies. (TV I gave up years ago, because the ads were too irritating.)

And yes, I still consider those who commit copyright infringement on the member companies of the RIAA or MPAA to be relatively innocent. ** Realatively innocent? Either you're innocent, or your not. I've never heard of a court finding anyone sorta guilty. But, then again, I don't know what goes on outside the U.S.A. ** It's not something I would do, but it a much less significant crime than bribing congress.** Funny, I don't remember bringing bribery of congress into it, so that's a complete strawman argument. Frankly, I don't think it is much worse than stealing a CD from the local music store. ** If I thought that it actually injured the aforementioned companies, then I'd not only support it, but actually participate. ** Why? You don't buy CD's, so those companies aren't hurting you. I guess you just proved my point - individuals can be evil, too.**. Unfortunately, it does them no harm,** we, at Slashdot, like to have sources referenced. Sorry, no offense, but I think you can understand why I simply can't take your word for it. ** so I'm just boycotting (which doesn't do them much harm, but it's legal, to the extent that that matters). ** I agree. It doesn't. **

Of course, possibly I'm giving you too much credit. You may be an astroturfer or a troll. ** A troll. ** But some people do seem to actually believe as you do, and really do justify themselves by saying "everybody does it", irrational as that may be. Unethical action doesn't become ethical just because "everybody does it". ** Wow, it's a good thing I never said anything remotely like that, otherwise you might have just ripped me a new asshole. But just for the record, let it be said that I think it is unethical, regardless of how many people do it. (I'll let you in on a little secret . . . that's why I'm here complaining about it . . . shhh, don't tell anyone.) Oh, wait . . . that was another strawman, wasn't it? ** OTOH, if, indeed, "everybody does it", it might be wise to examine carefully the grounds upon which you have decided that it's unethical. ** OK, humor me here - Let's assume everybody does it. So based on that, I'll now re-examine the grounds upon which I have decided that it's unethical. Ummm, how about this: these companies invested a lot of their money into marketing these bands, and expect a return on their investment, which is denied them when pirates steal (yeah, yeah, yeah, semantics) their product. Well, after careful re-examination, guess what? It's still unethical. ** Usually, however, the ground that really need questioning are those that cause you to conclude that "everybody does it". ** By stating "everybody does it", I think you know what I am getting at. Go read any article posted here about the **AA's. It's nothing but a bunch of non-lawyer, thieves trying to interpret law in their favor, in order to justify amongst themselves, why p2p is perfectly legal. One kinda gets the impression that everyone here does it. So I think we both know that when I say "everyone", it is not meant to me taken literally. It is meant to force the mods with the knee-jerk reactions from thinking about all the fucking hypocrites on this site who so readily mod a corporation==evil post up, while not looking at their own evil actions. ** And occasionally you may find that your ethics are fl

Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver?

[DigDuality]

The structure in which a corporation was designed by various court decisions, is what makes it psychopathic and sociopathic in nature. If regulations and punishments were setup to not make the "evil" decisions economically profitable you'd see a whole new world in how they'd behave, at least in said country where these magic laws were made. But fat chance of seeing that happen.

This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Creative is acting adversarial, but what you must understand is that

Daniel_k had no right to modify Creative's software. They did not grant

him the right and he was not using an OS that granted him any rights.

People need to start purchasing products which give them the freedom to

use the product. What I'm saying is that when you buy a product you

should especially look for one feature: freedom.

http://fsf.org/ For more information about software freedoms please see

the Free Software Foundation's homepage.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Khyber]

Umm, Creative's HQ was based in California. The EULA Creative had on those driver was NULL AND VOID by California. Daniel had EVERY right to modify the software as he saw fit. I pointed this out to Creative's Lawyers, and they capitulated VERY FAST.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[iamacat]

Daniel_k had no right to modify Creative's software. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Care to explain how constitution, or a constitutional law of Daniel_k's states prohibits him from distributing patches to Creative's drivers, provided that he neither distributes patched drivers directly nor do the patches contain Creative's copyrighted code in excess of fair use amount needed for interoperability.

Now, it's possible that Daniel did not release his work properly, but he sure has "powers" to modify Creative's code.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Martin Blank]

I'm curious as to the foundations of this. You state that he had the right to modify the drivers, but did this give him the right to distribute them? And since Daniel lives in Brazil, how does this affect the EULA?

Mind you, I think Creative was a complete asshat over this, but the legal basis still intrigues me.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Khyber]

The EULA is still null and void, and many courts have found an EULA to be unenforcable, especially in the state that Creative's headquarters were in - California. There's legal precedent all over.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is called copyright law. You're totally off-base in a typical slashdot style. It wasn't his IP, he was distributing derivative IP and even taking money for it. He was wrong. He had no right to do it, no right to distribute and no right to accept donations for it. If it was free software there wouldn't be this problem since permission would've been granted.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Timothy Brownawell]

I would assume that it has something to do with copyright giving control over making derivative works (ie, applying the patches), in addition to making copies. There are exceptions for software that you own, but I think this is part of the reason that EULAs tend to have "licensed, not sold" in there somewhere.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[hardburn]

That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work. It's only through a license agreement that you have any right to even use Creative's code. If the EULA is entirely null-and-void, then there's nothing else that gives you right to use it. Note that certain portions of an EULA wouldn't necessarily hold up in court (technically, they could say that you must sacrifice your firstborn on the Temple of Sho'ka'rei, but that doesn't mean it'd hold up in court), however there has to be something that gives you the right to use it.

Mind you, that all means nothing in the court of public opinion. While Creative might have had the legal right, their actions made them look like senseless bullies. It would have been far more productive to give the guy a job and release his changes officially.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Brummund]

Hey Richard, you need to turn off DOS mode in Emacs, we're getting double linefeeds here.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[plague3106]

Are you sure you understand copyright? You buy a book, you don't need a seperate license to read it. That's what you got by paying for the book. Software is no different, and when you buy a creative product you're buying hardware AND software.

Now, he doesn't have a right to distribute the software, but he probably has a right to distribute changes to it. If i tell my friends to read a book, and come up with a different ending, I'm allowed to tell them about it. I wouldn't be allowed to sell the book with one chapter replaced or anything.

What he should have done is release a program that changes a few bytes in the original file, not release a modified file. But your notion that you need a seperate license to use something you bought is obsurd, and I can modify the software all I like in the privacy of my home.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Hal_Porter]

twitter? Is that you?

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Ang31us]

Yes, Mr. Stallman.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Hal_Porter]

It's more complex than that.

From here
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make. Someone else put it like this -

1) The licence agreement which we all accept to says that we must not reverse engineer or tamper with the software as it is the property of Creative Labs.
2) I firmly believe that Daniel K has caught the flack because of the Dolby Digital feature As far as I am aware Auzentech paid a lot of money for an exclusive licence with Dolby to have their cards support this. Now, Creative would get into trouble if they allow a means for this to be "cracked" to run on non-Auzentech cards.
3) Accepting money (even in the form of donations) for someone elses copyrighted material is a big NO NO. Now let's suppose that he has a legal right to reverse engineer 1), and they are willing to ignore 3). There's still a problem with 2), that his drivers allow Dolby Digital on non Auzentech cards. It seems like Auzentech make cards based on the Creative chipset but they pay royalties to Dolby for some Dolby code/patents. The official Creative driver always has the code but only enables it on Auzentech cards.

Now Daniel_K comes along and enables the code on Creative cards. Dolby finds out and complains to Auzentech since they probably signed a contract that only allows them to use the technology on their cards. Auzentech complains to Creative who've signed a contract to enforce this in the driver. And things look bad for Creative, since they allowed him to post the crack on their forum.

So it's not the Vista driver he's in trouble for, it's unlocking Dolby on Creative cards.

That said, the traditional way to handle this is to negotiate in private not on some internet forum, offer the guy a job and so on. And release the missing Vista drivers.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

The constitutional bit of this was marked "insightful?" This is kind of like saying "hey, it runs on Windows, and Windows is an operating system, and computers need operating systems, and my car has an operating system, so it should run on my car! Sweet!" It's a prime category error.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to explain how constitution, or a constitutional law of Daniel_k's states prohibits him from distributing patches to Creative's drivers, provided that he neither distributes patched drivers directly nor do the patches contain Creative's copyrighted code in excess of fair use amount needed for interoperability. I would assume that it has something to do with copyright giving control over making derivative works Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the definition of derivative work before you respond any further.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Taelron]

Under under copyright laws Reverse Engineering a product to improve it or restore functionality has been ruled legal in the US Court system.

Even under California Copyright Law...

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, copyright isn't a good system for hardware manufacturers to use if they want to avoid people modifying their drivers to enable locked out features. Technically, if you make a modification to the driver that changes the way it functions, you can then claim that you have a fair use case. It would really depend on the courts, because you haven't negatively affected the value of the IP. If anything, you have improved the value of the hardware, which is the money making portion of the equation.

IANAL, though.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[mlwmohawk]

That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work.

This is, of course, complete nonsense and exactly what the media companies want to to think. The mere act of an entity "publishing" i.e. making something available to the public, gives "the public" certain rights to that material. These rights are embodied by "fair use."

If you want more rights than fair use provides, then you need an agreement.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Timothy Brownawell]

Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the definition of derivative work before you respond any further. You mean this part?

The owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to prepare derivative works based on that copyrighted item under 17 U.S.C.Â106(2).

Applying the patch modifies the drivers, which I'm pretty sure is preparing a derivative work. Only Creative is allowed to do this, unless there's an applicable exception.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a violation of copyright law to redistribute the modified drivers (or unmodified drivers). That has nothing to do with the EULA.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

References please. A simple Google searches turn up zero references supporting your claims. I believe you are making this up. Particularly about California in specific as they are the home of multiple large software companies that live and breath by software licenses.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[HiThere]

This would be more like distributing a diff file that corrected typos. Still legal under US copyright law, I believe. Other countries might have differing rules. (E.g., a diff file requires short quotes before and after the change, and Australian copyright law reportedly has no "fair use" provision.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[GameMaster]

Ah, but he's not the one applying the patch and, therefore, he's not the one creating the derivative work. The end user is the one creating the derivative work and as long as they don't distribute the software to anyone else once they've done this then they aren't violating copyright laws.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Hydian]

That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work. It's only through a license agreement that you have any right to even use Creative's code. Huh? Copyrights work the same with or without licensing agreements and have been around for much longer than EULAs in any case. What gives you the right to use the code is the fact that you purchased it and/or that it was given to you by the copyright owner. The license agreement may or may not place further restrictions beyond the copyright laws upon your usage and those restrictions may or may not hold up in court, but that agreement has nothing to do with copyright laws directly.

If a license agreement was inherently required to use a copyrighted work, then you'd need one to listen to the radio, hang a piece of art on the wall, or read this post. It simply doesn't work that way.

Copyright law would pretty much only prevent him from distributing (which he did--no argument there) or publicly performing the work. What he does with it in the privacy of his own home is his business as long as he doesn't share the copyrighted work with others and he was granted those rights as soon as the copyright holder gave him a copy. The licensing agreement can restrict those rights (which is why licensing agreements exist) when he agrees to it, but that is a case of voluntarily giving up your rights and not one of being granted rights that you didn't already have.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[iamacat]

So what are you saying? Students making notes in their own textbooks are lawbreakers? Study guides that suggest where to place the notes should be banned?

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Hyppy]

Source?

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[GameMaster]

That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work.

Um, no. IANAL, but I'm pretty certain that this is how it works:

By default, I can do whatever I want with the copyrighted works I buy as long as I don't redistribute it later. This is part of the legal concept of "Fair Use". For example, If I buy a book I can modify the text in the book however I want and they can't do anything about it. Now, an additional legal concept called "right of first sale" says that I have the right to sell my copy of a book/software/etc. as long as I haven't kept a copy for myself. The "right of first sale" may be invalid if I made changes to the book due to the legal concept of "derivative works". Also, since (in this case) the software wasn't distributed on a physical media, the "right of first sale" may no longer apply.

The way for him to get around the "derivative works" issue would be to release code as a patch that modifies the drivers when run by the end-user. This means he isn't distributing any of Creative's copyrighted code himself and the modification of the code happens at a point where there is no need to further distribute it.

Now, I may be going out on a limb here but I think you're wrong about what happens when their EULA gets invalidated as well. My understanding is that were their EULA to get thrown out by the courts you would basically have free use of the software limited only by standard copyright laws. They are the ones that distributed the software; they don't just get to take that back because their EULA was illegal.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Hyppy]

With your reasoning, you have no right to read the latest issue of Maxim unless they include a clip-n-send card for you to sign and return.

To put it another way: If I sell you a CD with a couple of my band's songs on it, I cannot call you and tell you that you're not allowed to listen to it because I changed my mind.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Taelron]

Do simple google search and you will find tons of source material... No need for me to do your homework for you

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Plekto]

[quote]
That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work. It's only through a license agreement that you have any right to even use Creative's code.
[/quote]

Minor changes are required:
"By default, you have no right to RESELL OR REPRESENT AS YOUR OWN someone else's copyrighted work." You can for instance, always make a parody work of something as well as make in-house fixes and edits and so on. And, as pointed out elsewhere, the EULA is null and void because you physically own the hardware and aren't renting it. You can always alter code or programming for any device that you own if you have the ability to do so. Be it a sound card or something as simple as an electrical box that needs an extra hole drilled in it.

Technically he can't distribute it without their blessing, but it's insanely stupid to nerf someone who just solved a problem for you for free. Shoot, if I was running Creative, I'd have hired the guy or made a serious offer. He obviously was brighter than the waste of resources in development.

Compare:
Creative nerfs programmer. Creative gets egg on face and retracts threats.
Programmer fixes Creative's bad code. Creative hires programmer.

Sounds to me like someone at Creative has been taking cues from Apple's playbook.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Timothy Brownawell]

The end user is the one creating the derivative work and as long as they don't distribute the software to anyone else once they've done this then they aren't violating copyright laws. It has nothing to do with whether they distribute the result (It says "prepare" instead of "distribute", and also think why does the FSF like the AGPL instead of saying it's stupid and that kind of restriction can't work?), it has to do with whether the modification is covered by "fair use" or some other exception. Which as I understand it, tends to not always be very clear-cut.

Ah, but he's not the one applying the patch and, therefore, he's not the one creating the derivative work. But he is contributing to whatever the end users are doing with his patches, so if they can be sued he probably can too. I know I've heard of that happening before.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

By default, I can do whatever I want with the copyrighted works I buy as long as I don't redistribute it later. This is part of the legal concept of "Fair Use".

Is it even part of a "fair use" defense, or is it just plainly not copyright infringement? Private modifications, from what I understand, simply are not part of the monopoly granted by copyright law.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[scribblej]

The United States Constitution does not apply to Daniel.

Unless of course we annexed Brazil and I missed it.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Shutup Stallman.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Mryll]

Thanks for stating it. It seems there are others who still believe that (in at least U.S. plus others) constitutionally established notions of fair use that have existed for quite some time should ultimately trump recent attempts to abridge those rights. Things rapidly become absurd when measures are taken that prevent personal in-house reasonable editing etc. for completely reasonable and fair use of copyrighted material.

These efforts may be within the legal rights of the copyright holder - but it is sort of poor taste to assume that your paying customers, the people who give you money, are shady thieves. If a user is clever enough to recover the ability to use their fair use rights, I don't see where the provider has much to complain about. If the user then violates the rights of the holder, well, it's on... and expect a date in court some day. It sure seems to me that the DMCA clashes with established fair use. For the life of me I cannot understand how the Supreme Court has not stood up on this one.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, the GPL. Why the fuck would it exist if you could just put that in the EULA?

Methinks you're very confused. Usage licenses and distribution licenses are 2 very different things. Here's a hint: one involves copyright and the other doesn't.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Anonymous Coward]

By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work. It's only through a license agreement that you have any right to even use Creative's code. If you buy a copy of the code (as, for example, on a disc attached to a sound card), then you have the right to use that copy as you see fit.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Khyber]

No source needed - Clean-room reverse engineering has been ruled legal many times over. Daniel did exactly this.

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[Khyber]

You are an anonymous moron. Ever hear of Driverguide.com before?

Re:This doesn't happen with free software

[iamacat]

Unless of course we annexed Brazil and I missed it. Yes, it was called WTO. It makes supposedly sovereign countries pass intellectual property laws that are neither common sense nor in interest of their citizens. The least we can do is globalize the little individual protections we have together with restrictions.

Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

The card in my system will be the LAST Creative product I own, which is a shame since I use it's pitch-shifting capabilities for my guitar (no need to downtune) and the other effects came in handy for weird-sounding side projects.

Does anyone know of any other company that doesn't use Creative hardware or chipsets in their sound cards where I can plug my guitar in and have access to pitch-shifting, chorus, flange, auto-wah, like the old SBLive! 5.1 had in their EAX control panel?

Re:Too late for Creative

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, that is certainly innovative. I can't imagine it'd sound very good, though?

Why not just buy a multi-FX unit? I think some models by Zoom have a pitch shifter ability on the expression pedal. Or a whammy if you need really good pitch-shifting...that is what I'm going to get once I get better at guitar.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know for sure if all the features you're looking for are there, but I'd say first thing to look at would be M-Audio's cards. They're designed first and foremost for music.

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=PCIinterfaces

Re:Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

I never use an expression pedal, and every Zoom product I played with had a rather crappy pitch-shifter to begin with. The SBLive! allowed for absolute fine-tuning by semitones, no Zoom allows for such precise pitch-shifting. The only pedal I use is my BOSS Death Metal pedal and my Cry-baby Wah pedal. Anything else was handled by the sound card.

Re:Too late for Creative

[tarrantm]

Does the Razer Barracuda AC-1 Sound Card have Creative components in it? I just bought one a couple days ago on woot, and I'm gonna be real disappointed if it's somehow enriching Creative pockets.

Re:Too late for Creative

[neumayr]

Now you've shown them.

Seriously, they're a hardware shop, and their hardware seems to fit your needs.
Sure, they could have let socially less inept people handle the situation with this Daniel guy, but of course they're in their right to make sure people comply with their license.

Point is, I feel you're overreacting.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

Well, it supports EAX 2.0, so it might have Creative hardware (I think EAX 3 and higher is software and not hardware-based)

Re:Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

Sometimes it takes an overreaction to get the appropriate response from an adversary.

Re:Too late for Creative

[dgatwood]

Does anyone know of any other company that doesn't use Creative hardware or chipsets in their sound cards where I can plug my guitar in and have access to pitch-shifting, chorus, flange, auto-wah, like the old SBLive! 5.1 had in their EAX control panel?

It's called an effects chain. The SB probably does it all in software anyway, so you might as well use a recording app and a real, recording-quality audio interface and have access to much more powerful, much higher quality effects and much better sound in general.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

The routing is done in software (as shown by the kX drivers) but all the processing is done in hardware on the EMU10K1 processor. And I do use a real recording app - Cool Edit pre-adobe buyout. It's faster than any other thing I've tried, simple and quite flexible. As for a real audio interface, point me out to one. Just talking doesn't answer my question.

Re:Too late for Creative

[jpfed]

(This comment assumes you're using Windows.)

A possibility to consider- use software to do your effects. The key to realtime software effects is low latency. To achieve this, look for soundcards that have ASIO-capable drivers, and look for software that can take advantage of ASIO as well. With the right configuration, you can get your latency down to 5-10ms (maybe lower these days), which is essentially imperceptible.

On the software end, iirc FruityLoops can handle ASIO, and it can host a huge variety of effects that can be chained with great versatility. It's been too long since I've looked at getting a sound card for me to give you any hardware recommendations.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Ephemeriis]

The card in my system will be the LAST Creative product I own

I gave up on Creative a couple years ago. I've had tons of trouble with their drivers and eventually just decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

Does anyone know of any other company that doesn't use Creative hardware or chipsets in their sound cards where I can plug my guitar in and have access to pitch-shifting, chorus, flange, auto-wah, like the old SBLive! 5.1 had in their EAX control panel?

Since all I use my sound for is gaming, and I've just got some cheap desktop stereo speakers, I've been using the on-board sound for a while now.

Previously, however, I had a lot of luck with Turtle Beach sound cards. Very good sound quality and a lot less driver trouble. I've never done any professional sound work though, nor plugged a guitar into anything, so I have no idea if their cards would work for you.

Re:Too late for Creative

[glavenoid]

As a fellow guitarist, I think you'd be much better off obtaining a dedicated unit. I've since quit using effects, so I'm not really familiar with the market these days, but I do know that the sonic qualities of some of the Zoom and Boss multi-units have gotten better in the last few years. Did the SBLive! allow to pitch shift in key, or just some arbitrary interval? The nice things about some of the dedicated pitch shifters is that they allow both diatonic interval pitch-shifting (which is of course important)and arbitrary. Maybe I'm thinking old Electro-Harmonics here?.

Re:Too late for Creative

[gEvil (beta)]

As for a real audio interface, point me out to one. Just talking doesn't answer my question.

Digidesign, M-Audio, Mark of the Unicorn, Tascam, etc. There's a huge range depending on your specific needs. Look them up on your own.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Anonymous Coward]

> (I think EAX 3 and higher is software and not hardware-based)

EAX has been software-based since the SB Live. The only distinction EAX 3.0 has is that it's locked up in all kinds of patents that Creative refuses to license on terms approaching reasonable. Most other cards support up to 2.x, as well as A3D. And games tend to do it themselves or use DirectAudio3D which works just as well.

Re:Too late for Creative

[errxn]

You could probably pick up a Line 6 POD or an old Johnson J-Station on [eBay|Craigslist|whatever] for less cost and hassle than it would take to replace your sound card. Plus, you can plug those into other stuff and jam away without being harnessed to your computer. Also, actual detuning > detuning via pitch shifting any day of the week.

Re:Too late for Creative

[chmod a x mojo]

Because most of the Zoom multi-effects SUCK NASTY DONKEY BALLS? seriously, I have one of their higher end midgrade pedal that has so much hiss in it that I have to use it BEHIND a Boss noise suppressor pedal.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

It's *REALLY* hard to actually detune and keep it reliable when I'm using .06 on the high end. Sorry, in this case, pitch shifting > detuning. Granted there's a little noise added but when I'm running it thru a maxed-out death metal pedal it all sounds the same.

Re:Too late for Creative

[antdude]

Ditto. And no software emulation for EAX! I want true hardware based for the newer versions like 4.0.

Re:Too late for Creative

[errxn]

What? I didn't even know they *made* a .06! Must be something like playing dental floss. I'm running .11-.54 in a drop-C tuning, works great.

Re:Too late for Creative

[Khyber]

It's more like playing a guitar using the thinnest monofilament fishing line you can possibly imagine. I have the strings custom-made by GHS. .06-.36

Re:Too late for Creative

[DarkProphet]

You could try a Line 6 UX1 or UX2. That may be what you are looking for. Reasonably priced for what they are, really. I;ve been thinking of picking one up myself ;-)

Re:Too late for Creative

[dgatwood]

As a Mac person, I'm rather partial to MOTU though sadly they don't offer anything in a "small" interface---I think their smallest interface has eight inputs.... :-)

That said, on the low end, M-Audio is decent---certainly an order of magnitude better than Creative. I wish they'd do something new in the midrange to high-end space (the 1010 and 1010LT are getting kind of long in the tooth, IMHO), but now that they're owned by Digi, I'd imagine there's no real possibility of that. Tascam is generally solid, from what I hear. Unless you plan to run Pro Tools, I wouldn't go with Digi, if only because the Pro Tools tax is built into the price of the hardware, and IMHO, there are better DAWs out there. That said, if you're setting up a professional studio and find yourself getting clients who insist on a Pro Tools studio... anybody know of a Pro Tools skin for Digital Performer? Logic? Reaper? :-D

Liars or idiots (or both)

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was true then they should have given him well paid job and allow him to work on official sources of those drivers, this would not have caused any 3rd party issues as he would have been their employee.

Re:Liars or idiots (or both)

[ArcticCelt]

Yeah but the point here is that they voluntarily cripple their drivers because they don't want their old product to be fully compatible with Vista in hope that the customer will buy new hardware from them. It's not incompetence here, it's only a shitty evil corporate strategy.

Re:Liars or idiots (or both)

[kesuki]

From what i understand he took working XP drivers, tried them on vista, maybe did a little hex editing when they crashed, figured out ways to get them working without crashing, without needing to compile any code, but it took him months of formatting and reinstalling vista to get all the drivers working.

BTW with the exception of creative reinstating the forum links, all of this information was in the first article... about how he got mad at creative and did stuff to really piss them off, and even how he decided to remove the offending software, and keep modding just the 'approved' mods.

But yeah, seriously, if he was able to make working vista drivers in a few months when their own guys couldn't manage it,(and without having access to the source code either) they really should have offered him a job.

Re:Liars or idiots (or both)

[Sciros]

He doesn't want a job from them. In TFA it says so. And in fact he seems to be at least as adversarial about all this as Creative was. If you ask me he might a competent driver writer, but he has the social skills of a hippopotamus. Creative was most certainly not the "good guy" in this, but Kawakami didn't exactly take the high road at any point, either. And frankly I wouldn't even offer a job to him if I were any company, given his attitude and lack of tact.

Re:Liars or idiots (or both)

[Dr Caleb]

"And frankly I wouldn't even offer a job to him if I were any company, given his attitude and lack of tact."

So, like the AC was saying - he'd fit in at Creative.

screw creative

[nuzak]

Fire the people who badgered him. No, not the legal folks, they're just doing their due diligence, but the PM's who decided it was okay to actually harrass and intimidate the guy.

An apology and an announcement of a policy change from here forward would also work.

Otherwise, all I see is that they got caught and decided they'd just try other means to shut down unauthorized, uh, "unbreaking". There's also the whole deliberate breakage to begin with.

As things stand right now, my only outstanding question for resolving the Creative debacle is "Turtle Beach or m-Audio?"

Re:screw creative

[Joe U]

As things stand right now, my only outstanding question for resolving the Creative debacle is "Turtle Beach or m-Audio?" I don't know about m-Audio, but Turtle Beach doesn't seem to be designing their own cards anymore, they havn't for a while. Last gen cards were all crystal based with some add-ons. The USB sound cards are pretty much a HK import with the turle beach logo stamped on it.

It's a shame actually, Turtle Beach was a pretty decent sound card company for a while, but the non-stop getting bought out and moving offices must have taken its toll on them.

Re:screw creative

[Xybre]

Do not buy M-Audio, it'll all end in tears. I've never used Turtle Beach, so I say try it and report back! EMU is also owned by Creative btw.
There's other brands out there though, like Audiotrak, Edirol, TerraTec, and others.

Also check the www.kvraudio.com forums for other options, it's mostly musicians there, but it's therefore a good place to find audio gear suggestions.

Re:screw creative

[nuzak]

I'm not so much looking for "audio gear" as I am for onboard sound that'll do at least 5.1 surround when I feel like plugging it into my rather cheap stereo, and one that otherwise doesn't click and pop like my onboard sound does when I'm playing games. Any features that enhance the gaming end would be gravy.

I'm sure even a Creative card would be fine for those purposes, but I just don't want to send them any money.

Too little, too late

[mrmeval]

Release uncrippled drivers now.

It's not just me that won't buy your products it's every computer I build, it's every person I talk to, it's every decision my company makes that I can sway against you, it's every law I can turn against you.

Re:Too little, too late

[Shados]

I see a lot of people saying things like that (in other situations), but it is rare that it is actually significant. Its hot air or isolated. But in this case (and even before this current event... but speaking about Creative's screw up in general), it is actually fairly visible... I've started boycotted these products, and got a lot of people to do the same (a -lot- of people), and I've seen an impressive amount of people doing the same, and not just online.

Seems like Creative is actually going to feel a hit on this one. Maybe not a very significant one, but they'll notice it.

Re:Too little, too late

[N1ck0]

Or even better, just publish some specs on your hardware and chipsets and say 'developers are welcome to implement their own unofficial drivers/software a) just don't expect creative labs support b) don't mod our intellectual property just go develop your own'

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one product from Creative was enough for me to decide never to buy Creative again, ever. I did not wait till the shit hit the fan. But I am glad it did, and more people are going to boycott those @$$holes.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Release uncrippled drivers now.

the fact you're still giving them a chance shows your threats are hollow. you should have stopped buying their shitty products years ago and then you wouldnt be in this mess right now

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you.

Miserable excuses by Creative

[TheHawke]

They just grate on my nerves, saying that their drivers are hung up in the Vista approval process. I'd say that they are just buying time to release new products so they can make more profit off of NEW product instead of spending cash on support for old. The pattern shows in the forums as well as their support pages.
I've seen more than a few companies simply bypass vista's certification process and release their updates, with instructions on how to circumvent Vista security checks. Good for them, bad for vista.

We need a

[Anonymous Coward]

"Take your meds" tag.

I say FT

[baggins2001]

I just ordered 4 whiteboxes and saw the quote had creative sound cards. Told them to pull the cards and find something else.
"But, these are the ones you always get."
"Not anymore".
We don't even use Vista. I read the messages yesterday just in time. The hell with them. Arrogant pricks, who do they think they are, MS.

An Excuse Breathes Its Last and Croaks

[hyades1]

Lord knows I'm no fan of Vista, but it seems to me that Creative was trying to lay their own incompetence or dishonest marketing plans off on Microsoft. They must have been pretty embarrassed when this guy came along with a set of working drivers to blow their alibi out of the water. I sincerely hope the people who made the decision to harass him are shown the door in a very public way. Proper damage control requires on less.

Not really

[Moraelin]

Not really. They had quite a bit of horsepower on their chips to add hardware acceleration to that processing. Now I'm not saying that they're necessarily a good company, or good drivers, and the latency is AFAIK more fit for games than for recording music in real time anyway. Just pointing out that the "The SB probably does it all in software anyway" assumption is false. Out of the games-oriented consumer-level cards, theirs actually do the least in software by far.

Re:Not really

[dgatwood]

I just assumed they'd moved to SW by now because HW acceleration is so pointless for audio effects given the massive speed of modern CPUs.

Re:Not really

[Moraelin]

Well, I guess it helps squeeze an extra fps out of some games.

Re:Not really

[dgatwood]

As GPU-bound as most games are these days, squeezing a tenth of an fps out by freeing up CPU horsepower would be impressive/surprising. If anything, I'd expect the extra contention from the added PCI bus traffic to create a performance hit, both in terms of adding interrupt overhead and in terms of overall contention for limited I/O bandwidth in the northbridge. That said, I could easily be wrong, and if it mattered for a design decision, I'd certainly profile it first. :-)

Good response

[iminplaya]

"I'd say they are stealing [from] their own customers by disabling features based on technologies they own (so they did it on purpose) and by charging for a software that requires an improved driver that they refuse to provide."

It's time to realize that copyrights, patents, etc are theft. The alleged owners are the pirates.

Let's be clear here

[g051051]

While I respect his skills, Daniel_K didn't actually write replacement drivers that did things Creative couldn't...he reverse engineered the existing drivers and patched out the OS level checks, or he swapped parts of code from other drivers into play, to enable features that were specifically disabled by Creative. He then made those modified, repackaged drivers available, which is a big problem for Creative, and the reason why they tried to shut Daniel_K down.

Re:Let's be clear here

[Professor_UNIX]

If he was just taking drivers that worked in Windows XP, then why would Creative have purposefully disabled that functionality in their Vista drivers? If some guy can pretty easily reverse engineer the drivers for another OS and get them working on a newer version then I would think Creative, with the source code in hand, should easily be able to make that functionality work on Vista. Why is Creative disabling this functionality if the device and OS is capable of supporting it? Are they just trying to sell new cards? I doubt that's the answer since it seems like some of the cards he's talking about are relatively recent and claim Vista support.

Re:Let's be clear here

[gatzke]

Why should that be a big problem for Creative? They sell hardware and provide drivers. He made better drivers. If anything, Creative should have taken his drivers and repackaged them as their own. Maybe even compensated him for doing their work for them.

The actions of Creative may have been business motivated. Cripple the hardware so you have to buy new hardware. Bad idea.

Re:Let's be clear here

[TheGrapeApe]

/Creative(TM) PR Troll

Re:Let's be clear here

[TimboJones]

My takeaway from this has been that Creative cards on Vista are technically capable of supporting advanced, proprietary audio features, but not legally allowed to support these features without... licensing fees?

Re:Let's be clear here

[Todd Knarr]

It's a problem for Creative because often they use identical hardware for multiple sound cards, with the drivers determining which features are active. For instance, they may sell the UltiSound Basic with 5.1 surround for $150, and the UltiSound Extreme with 7.1 and Dolby output for $300. If you look carefully at the cards, they're absolutely 100% hardware-identical. Even the jacks are identical and wired up the same. In other words, the UltiSound Basic is quite capable of outputting 7.1 and Dolby just like the Extreme. The only difference is in a small EPROM chip with the model ID in it. The driver reads that and uses the model ID to decide which firmware to load into the card, and it won't load the 7.1/Dolby-capable firmware into a card with a Basic model ID. If someone hacks the drivers to change the check, then Creative finds their Extreme card not selling very well since everybody's buying the Basic and turning on the high-end features.

They also tend to deprecate their low-end cards on new versions of Windows, forcing people to buy upgraded hardware if they want to upgrade their OS. If hacked drivers allow people to keep using their older hardware, Creative loses sales.

Yes, both tactics are stupid. But to Creative hacked drivers are a threat to a business model based on those tactics. They just discovered here that the PR backlash may be a bigger threat.

Re:Let's be clear here

[Shados]

The point is that Creative could do it all along: what this guy did was remove OS checks from the drivers. That is, the drivers literally did: "IF OS == Vista, break the cool features so we can force people to upgrade hardware and other nasty things". He took that out, more or less, and thus the drivers worked.

Re:Let's be clear here

[g051051]

No, I'm not a Creative PR Troll. I think Creative really screwed up on this, by messing up their drivers and then with this PR debacle. But it's just not legal to patch and redistribute the drivers. Now, if Daniel_K had either published the exact methods for making the changes, or wrote a program that would automatically patch a copy of the drivers, Creative wouldn't have had a leg to stand on.

Re:Let's be clear here

[gatzke]

I did not realize they were using drivers to lock out capabilities on identical hardware. That is truly shady dealings, IMHO.

They would have to clean-room drivers for the cards if they want to be legal. Even then, it would be sketchy since they don't have specs. And the open source audio driver would never work in Vista I bet. Bad all around.

I have a SoundBlaster Pro somewhere, I bet it still works. If I can find a ISA slot on a mobo...

Re:Let's be clear here

[nuzak]

> I did not realize they were using drivers to lock out capabilities on identical hardware. That is truly shady dealings, IMHO.

Think of it like software. It costs a software company nothing extra to distribute the full Enterprise version of their product, but you pay less for the standard version. They developed a single hardware platform, but you need to pay extra for the features. They just made sure the protection was implemented in hardware.

Now their business of using updates to actually remove features from an existing product line, that crosses a line.

Re:Let's be clear here

[rastoboy29]

You're saying that as though it made some sort of sense.  Strange.

Re:Let's be clear here

[Todd Knarr]

This is normal for hardware makers. It's cheaper to set up one production line than two, and to produce one model of board instead of two. If you price the high-end models so that sales pay for the fixed cost of the production line plus the cost of producing those units then you can price the low-end models based only on the marginal cost of running off X more units on a paid-for line, sell them to the people who wouldn't pay the price of the high-end unit and make more profit than just selling the high-end units alone.

Sometimes it can work to the consumer's advantage too. Back before they were bought by 3Com, NetGear was the consumer label of Bay Networks. That NetGear consumer-grade switch you bought was really a full-on Bay Networks unmanaged professional-grade switch with a different silk-screen job on the case.

Drivers...

[Khuffie]

Where can one find these drivers or info about them? I have an Audigy 2

Re:Drivers...

[esocid]

right here

Now THAT's what i call arrogance

[Anonymous Coward]

I only now read the original article and i have to say, what cocks. I don't see what their problem is in the 1st place creating Vista drivers, it isn't a problem for every other hard/software manufacturer. I've always had Creative soundcards untill the PC i made a month ago. I just bought an OLD (im talking manual still refers to Win89 old) M-Audio soundcard. Download vista drivers right off the site. F-ing 8-year old soundcard.

Remove drivers a user made that they cant make themselfs deeming users worldwide to get screwed. THIS is what I call arrogance.

No leg to stand on anyway: Tortuous Interference

[mlwmohawk]

I wrote the last time this came up that Daniel did nothing wrong. All he did is phrase his donations plea poorly.

Since the drivers he made available were generally available anyway, he did not run afoul of copyright for making his changes available. (assuming he uses the words "for support work" and not "for the drivers") He could use "patch" just to be 100% sure.

As a consultant I can (and have done) modify third party hardware and software for the benefit of a customer who has proper ownership of the hardware and license to the software and I may change for that service and there's NOTHING the third party vendor can do about it.

The relationship Daniel has with the user of a driver with his modifications is of no business to Creative. In fact, Creative may be worried that they are interfering with Daniels business. If you are curious look up "Tortuous Interference."

Daniel *did* make money from his work. He could have a case against Creative's very public accusation.

Re:No leg to stand on anyway: Tortuous Interferenc

[Shados]

I didnt check, but it depends. Did he make modified drivers available, or did he make diff/patch availables that users can apply themselves? If the former, he played in dangerous territory.

I didn't even though these drivers existed

[goldcd]

until I saw all of this kick off. Downloaded them, installed them and my Audigy2 ZS behaves better. Also my ancient Audigy drivers (also Creative's latest version) were noted as being the reason Vista SP1 refused to install. Swapped out for the modded ones, and next day SP1 pops up for autoupdate. In all seriousness I'd never touch a Creative soundcard ever again. Had SB1, SB Pro, SB16, AWE32 etc etc - only breaking away for a brief flirtation with a Gravis Ultrasound (lovely lovely card, but software support was a pain in the arse). In this new age of 'sound being taken for granted' I'd initially just used onboard audio, but then realized it was a bit cheap and nasty (I don't need 7.1 - and the hiss is driving me insane). Anyhoo - I don't like onboard, creative take the piss out of their customers (ffs they insist on mailing me the most stupidly overpriced 'offers' after a mistakenly gave them my email). What're the alternatives? Xonar?

Re:I didn't even though these drivers existed

[joetainment]

As an alternative, Look into M-Audio. Their cards and external USB devices have great quality. I own several. In addition to excellent output, they provide better (balanced, low noise) input ports, since they are often used for recording.

Re:I didn't even though these drivers existed

[magus_melchior]

There's a pile of other manufacturers on Newegg (won't link spam that, but go to Newegg.com, select sound cards and pick "Power Search") like Asus, Turtle Beach, Diamond, Razer, and Zalman. I've never used any of these cards, so as always YMMV.

Re:I didn't even though these drivers existed

[skintigh2]

I'm thinking the same thing as you.

I owned a 8-bit SB, SB16, SBAWE64Gold (cost me $200 when I was a poor college student) then a SBLive (also about $200 at the time plus I spent like $250 on Cambridge Soundworks speakers for it) and now an X-Fi Platinum ($150 I think).

I don't plan on ever buying a creative product again.

This is just crap. I spent days setting up a media PC just to get stereo-only sound. I called Creative and they told me there is no 5.1 digital output possible. So I took everything apart and bought a shitty Divx DVD player. Now I learn that all along the card did support Dolby Digital Live and it was crippled in the drivers.

They wasted my time and my money.

Onboard sound = poor ASIO

[DigitAl56K]

Onboard sound is fine for most applications, but it is not suitable for audio enthusiasts such as musicians who need low latency ASIO. The ASIO implementation on most on-board chipsets (that I have used) is atrocious to the point of being unusable.

Re:Onboard sound = poor ASIO

[frank_adrian314159]

The ASIO implementation on most on-board chipsets (that I have used) is atrocious to the point of being unusable.

Well, to be fair, the ASIO implementation on most audio devices sucks pretty bad, in general. You have to go with relatively high-end stuff before you start getting reasonable latencies and response.

Re:Onboard sound = poor ASIO

[urbandude76]

The ASIO implementation on most on-board chipsets (that I have used) is atrocious to the point of being unusable.

If you're going to use ASIO then you a) usually know what you do, and b) will NOT use onboard sound unless you absolutely have to on a temporary basis (i.e. someone elses computer) and then the result will suck pretty bad.

Well, to be fair, the ASIO implementation on most audio devices sucks pretty bad, in general. You have to go with relatively high-end stuff before you start getting reasonable latencies and response.

And this is exactly why noone in their right mind will try to use ASIO with creative products. They may be upper mid-range, but they are certainly not high-end

Re:Onboard sound = poor ASIO

[dropadrop]

Onboard sound is fine for most applications, but it is not suitable for audio enthusiasts such as musicians who need low latency ASIO. The ASIO implementation on most on-board chipsets (that I have used) is atrocious to the point of being unusable. Well Creatives ASIO drivers have always sucked so it's not really related to this topic. ;)

I couldn't agree more.

[goldcd]

My first soundcards were based on what I could make work without gobbling too much memory. Now any half-decent motherboard I buy (server apart) has 7.1 onboard for 'free'. If I buy a discrete soundcard now it's for a definite reason. Creative really aren't helping themselves win my loyalty here.

I partially agree with you.

[goldcd]

I bought my Audigy2 ZS when I had XP - and I was happy. Then 'upgraded' to Vista after checking drivers were there and erm it all went to shit a bit. Now previously (and for every other Vista driver) my hardware did the same thing, but just used a different driver. Creative (and they seem to have partially admitted this) decided that forcing users onto a new driver was a perfect way to make people buy some new Creative hardware, by deliberately hobbling the post-upgrade driver to attempt to force a hardware upgrade. Legally Creative are right - no question. Morally they're scum. What really bugs me is that there's some poor tech guy trying to make a decent Vista driver and f'in marketing have waded in and forced him to screw it up. Creative used to have my loyalty and this whole mess and caused them to lose it. Interesting bit is to see how they respond to it all - hopefully somebody's getting a P45 over this and decent 'official' drivers may appear soon (current lastest driver is from March last year - so prior to all this, they seemingly saw no reason to do anything).

But what about Jill??

[Glowing-Wind]

But! BUT! Creative Labs gave "Jill of the Jungle" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_of_the_jungle reverb and chorus effects to the OPL3 FM-syn music, with their AWE64 Gold isa-bus sound card! I still give them props for that!!

Cheers.

Re:But what about Jill??

[Romwell]

Please mod parent up ! Oh, the sweet days of Jill of the Jungle! PS: Actually, I don't quite know, since I had an ESS board instead of Creative.

They ought to start by...

[cptdondo]

shitcanning the VP who approved this stuff. Publicly. Then issuing a public apology.

Anyone who gets this heavy-handed in today's internet society is far out of touch with his/her customer base, and has no reason to be employed by a company that makes computer equipment.

In other words, incompetent to the point of being actively harmful to the well-being and even survival of the company itself.

Re:No leg to stand on anyway: Tortuous Interferenc

[mlwmohawk]

Yes, distributing the driver itself is "dangerous" as "infringement" has been made intentionally ambiguous by the media companies to cast the broadest definitions. Just being sued by these behemoths is damaging, so its best to avoid it.

That being said, from a legal point of view, he should be in the clear, but big evil corp will use copyright ambiguity. It is best to use a patching strategy to avoid all risk.

All that being said, what Creative did is tortuous interference and that is grounds for a suit. He has certainly suffered emotional distress, how could he not, being threatened by a large corporation's lawyers?

Ironic

[byersjus]

"They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them..." Can someone supply an example of an individual being ironic in a chat session? Or is Alanis Morissette not the only one unaware of what it means to be ironic.

Re:Ironic

[argent]

Can someone supply an example of an individual being ironic in a chat session?

Inconceivable! That could never happen. That's just crazy talk.

Re:Ironic

[byersjus]

Although sarcasm, as you've just expressed, utilizes irony, I don't think it actually qualifies as ironic because irony is observed while sarcasm is created. Thus my question, how does a chat session participant act ironic when irony is something to be observed?

Re:Ironic

[argent]

Although sarcasm, as you've just expressed, utilizes irony, I don't think it actually qualifies as ironic because irony is observed while sarcasm is created.

I had no idea that there were so many possible definitions for the word "irony". How would you suggest I educate myself on the subject?

Collusion?

[Efialtis]

So, I am curious...we have talked about it before on Slash Dot, about how it is "Anti Trust" to collude in this way...force people to upgrade hardware that doesn't need upgrading...
Creative had disabled their drivers and software so they would not run the old hardware on Windows Vista.
Microsoft has been doing this for years, making their operating system so "bloated" that you had to upgrade the processor, memory, motherboard, and many other items just to get it to install...
Well, now, we have a very compelling case to prove collusion in the computer desktop market...
Shouldn't this prick the ears of the Anti-Trust hounds-
Shouldn't someone be looking into these practices and protecting the consumer?

Re:Collusion?

[shentino]

Remember that only signed drivers can be in the kernel.

And also that only MS can sign a driver.

3 cheers for creative!

[RecycledElectrons]

3 cheers for Creative!

When my GA-965P-S3 motherboard's Azalea sound chips refused to work in XP 64, a $7.99 Creative PCI card from Fry's fixed it.

When this guy started hacking around with drivers, Creative let him post on their forums.

When Creative screwed up and shut him down (and it very well could be someone else's IP) they fixed it!

Thanks, Creative!

Andy Out!

VIcious!

[aafiske]

He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.

Hey Creative...

[lantastik]

...you suckas got served!

I'd withdraw the patches if I were him

[rastoboy29]

It's the only thing Creative deserves--give them exactly what the want.

Ob. Python quote

[ozbird]

"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious." (The Piranha Brothers sketch.)

Lesson Learned

[MrCopilot]

I learned long ago that Creative is a decent Hardware company, unfortunately the software people there are almost as inept as their customer service dept.

For the uneducated, the offending product was the 3DBlaster Video card. Could work beautifully but only for about 10 minutes. 3 returns, finally wrote off the 350 bucks I paid for it.

The whole situation out me off them forever. All these years later you couldn't pay me to install a Creative Sound Card. Before that, it was the exclusive recomendation.

Re:Lesson Learned

[MrCopilot]

Did I mention the 3 card they returned was the card I sent the first time. I initialed the serial sticker.

I knew Creative was shit when..[I heard my gravis]

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the man say "SBS Installed"

Ever singe then I knew how 3'rd rate and piss poor creative cards where.... nearly 10 years later they had finally implemented features we had back in the early 90's.

Its a shame that the owners of companies would sell 50% of their stock through the back door and bankrupt their own company for some pocket-money.

Poor Gravis, carved up and sold to their competitors to make sure no-one else would ever make a good sound card.

Same goes for joysticks, it would also be another 5-6 years before the gravis joysticks of the early 90's era would ever be made as good again.

To the company that kicked MS, Logitech and Creative's collective asses we mourn you little Gravis. You did it on a shoe string budget..

Where, dude?

[LibertineR]

Got a link, dude? My Audigy 4 Pro has been crippled by Vista, and like you, I didnt know there was an option available.

Ah, he knows a doomed company...

[magus_melchior]

... when he sees one:

So The Register asked him if he would accept a job if offered by Creative.

"No."

Daniel knows that only sociopaths threaten before negotiating.

Frelling stressed out!

[meimeiriver]

The Daniel_k business, quite positively, has got to be the lamest, 'sore loser' response Creative ever came up with.

Vista driver support for the X-Fi Fidelity is, and has been, dismal, and so far below any acceptible standard, that even the joke that it is ain't funny any more. Pray-tell, where is my Dolby/DTS support? I'm still waiting for it. For frel's sake, I still can't even perform such a basic function as regulating the output of my bass speaker!!

And now what do they do?? They send 'cease and desist' letters to the one person who actually SOLVED their driver issues! Well, actually, those weren't even real problems: Creative just never even bothered to implement the features! Couldn't stand that Daniel_k made em look bad, eh? Yeah, and you think this is making them look good??

And the sad irony of it all is, they're only after Daniel_k because he put his drivers on the map -- a situation which wouldn't even exist if they hadn't remained so grossly derelict to their customers to begin with! And instead of finally picking up the ball, and do their own homework, as opposed to being humiliated by a guy whose stuff actually WORKS, they act like a sore loser, STILL not stepping up to the plate to fix their drivers, but determined nonetheless to remove the one person who actually did.

And don't give me this legalese crap about him effectively stealing profit from them. Who's the Yotz that came up with that brilliant marketing strategy?? Don't you get it? Daniel_k, and his superb driver support, have been vastly contributing to folks not giving up on Creative cards altogether! I'd be watching their sales in the coming months, if I were them!

What a load of dren this is! Shockingly, my next card won't be Creative.

STILL not satisfied

[unity100]

I had been a long time (since 1999) creative customer, never used any other brand sound card, but this shit they pulled out with the community that fixed their driver shortcoming is STILL going to affect my next purchasing decision.

Too Little Too Late

[Knight of Shadows]

I guess our friend Phil O'Shaunessy over at Creative is starting to feel the heat. Too bad. I'll be doing everything I can to see their company flushed down the crapper they've shit themselves into. We need to stand fast, and put this, and any other company, government, or organization that thinks it can play the public, out of business for good. I hope old Phil is reduced to giving head in a New Jersey bus station in order to survive, only to contract flesh eating bacteria and slowly rot to death. Let's all do our part to put this company our of our misery. Goodbye Creative, and I hope the door smacks your ass on the way out.

Fondness in my heart

[Anonymous Coward]

While I no longer use a Creative sound card because of driver problems with Linux, I still have a fondness in my heart for Creative Labs. Back when they had their 15th anniversary, they had a giveaway of gold coins celebrating their top of the line, AWE 64 Gold. I still have my 1 oz gold coin, and with the price of gold rising, it may finally be time to sell it.