I do this too. I pirate games, but I don't steal them. I pay for every game I download. The cracked version is just to ensure the product is usable and my rig stays usable too.
I used to work for a public school division and your post is a perfect description of every day I went to work. We used Deep Freeze to keep people from screwing things up. I didn't care much for Deep Freeze, it had its issues, but it got the job done. We were ordered by the superintendent of the school board to disable it after she was emailed by every school principal that Deep Freeze needed to be turned off on all teacher/faculty machines - we did. Next Monday we had virus alerts, BSoDs, and complaints of general sluggishness all over the district. Of course, it was entirely our fault, and the necessity of the IT department was called into question at the next board meeting.
A teacher who was known for drinking on the job (wasn't fired for five years because of tenure, but got canned one day when a special ed kid told the school cop she was acting funny and she failed a sobriety test) bellowed at me for a problem with her computer not turning on first thing in the morning. She shared the office with another teacher; turns out her roommate was turning off the power strip before she left in the evening. Again, my fault for not explaining that computers are electrical devices.
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If it's beige, it needs to go.
I do this too. I pirate games, but I don't steal them. I pay for every game I download. The cracked version is just to ensure the product is usable and my rig stays usable too.
I used to work for a public school division and your post is a perfect description of every day I went to work. We used Deep Freeze to keep people from screwing things up. I didn't care much for Deep Freeze, it had its issues, but it got the job done. We were ordered by the superintendent of the school board to disable it after she was emailed by every school principal that Deep Freeze needed to be turned off on all teacher/faculty machines - we did. Next Monday we had virus alerts, BSoDs, and complaints of general sluggishness all over the district. Of course, it was entirely our fault, and the necessity of the IT department was called into question at the next board meeting.
A teacher who was known for drinking on the job (wasn't fired for five years because of tenure, but got canned one day when a special ed kid told the school cop she was acting funny and she failed a sobriety test) bellowed at me for a problem with her computer not turning on first thing in the morning. She shared the office with another teacher; turns out her roommate was turning off the power strip before she left in the evening. Again, my fault for not explaining that computers are electrical devices.