In some cases, it's not about getting it for free. It's because the pirated version is superior. I used to go buy the real game from the store, and then go and install the pirate version so I don't have to deal with the headaches that come with the legit version. After awhile though, who the hell wants to keep going to the store to buy a box you take home with you and throw out?
I just got sick of the DRM honestly. I used to buy a ton of games but then crap like Doom III started ordering me to delete legitmate software like clone CD etc from my computer. It's a video game, and being told what other software I can or cannot have on my machine by a bloody game is quite frankly, uppity.
Not only that but all this garbage where companies kept hopping into bed with stuff like securom which has this overly complicated and in alot of cases technical show stopping problems made me never want to put legitimate copies onto my machine. I just got really tired of these DRM things telling me what to do, or trying to take control from me to do their own thing and being a pain in the ass.
I don't want to pay money for a viral infection on my machine, which is exactly how some of the DRM out there acts. Plus the pirated versions have a tendacy to run alittle faster, and not require cd's. It's 2008, everyone knows that popping the cd in and out of the machine is just a ruse and the only reason for it is that the developer left in chunks of code telling the game to ask for a cd it doesn't actually need to function which just slows things down for no reason. I figure if all I'm going to do when I buy a game is go download and run the pirated version since it's superior, then why the hell go through the hassle and cost of plunking down the money just to go get the pirate version anyways?
It wasn't always like that though, it's been more of a slide into never paying. After I got tired of running the legit copies and the crap that came with it, I started to crack the games after buying them. Then I started to clean up all those stupid DRM files or render them inert everytime I'd buy a game and install it after cracking it. Then I'd start to just ditch the game version because the DRM couldn't be removed so while I'd buy the game, I'd install a pirated version. Soon I just got completely fed up as going legit was such a complete pain in the ass for abunch of useless cd's I never even would touch. As more and more companies have clamped down harder and harder on piracy, it's made it really obnoxious to just buy something as fickle as a time wasting video game.
I think game companies have over estimated exactly how much we care about their product, it's something to kill time after work, it should NEVER be telling me what to do or trying to take over my computer. If the game industry would pull it's head out of it's behind and throw the gears in reverse and treat their customers properly and professionally, they might find more customers again.
Oye:(
Well, just FYI, I'd have sent out a tech with some fans on a system like that, especially if you can blatantly see fans not turning. Was that a home system or a buisness system? I know with the home support they have a TON of checks and balances before they send a part. For the buisness systems though we've got a new support model where instead of relying on a set pathway that we have to prove we followed we can just decide ourselves if a part is warranted so that it saves time and improves customer experience.
They'll cave allright...and send you the wrong part. If those diags freeze up and hang it's going to be the motherboard or processor, which isn't going to help you every much if you've got a software issue or if your hard drive is dead. Then you'll be sitting around waiting another day while the machine you paid 2000 $'s for to make you money and work on is down and you have to call in again and actually run the diags to get an error code that properly identifies a specific peice of hardware.
Dells already got a full deck of diagnostics for the hardware. The problem is when someone calls in with the equivelant of a windows blue screen, the hardware all checks out, but something is wrong. In this case on a windows machine I'd go ahead and help the customer out with a windows issue until it was fixed. I love ubuntu linux to death but I'm not trained on it and I'd be scrounging around like a noob trying to help people. It's going to take alil while to get all us agents off the phones and trained in a new OS. I'm planning on signing up for the training and moving over to XPS to support the ubuntu machines but it takes time. Everyone that's going to support linux is working on the phones right now, they have to plan for us to take time off the phones while balancing out the call volumes and then go through the growing pains as we start supporting the OS and make lil gaffs etc here and there. Hardware warranty support doesn't mean that we can point blank tell the customers software isn't supported and hang up on them, that'd be bad buisness and a bad customer experience and we're all highly trained that customer satisfaction is what counts above all else at the end of the day.
Right there, is EXACTLY why your going to see dell not supporting hardware on linux machines. Software errors and hardware errors bleed together and can look similar to one another. Dell has to pull a bunch of people off the phones and train them in linux before they'll be setup properly to support the hardware. Since I'm at my desk and working, what was your problem anyhow?
People often don't know the difference between the hardware causing issues and the software causing issues. They will insist that it's the hardware even if all of the diagnostics pass and the software isn't supported. It's more of an issue having to do with the experience that the customer has when they call up rather than the actual support. Dell has to pull a few thousand active agents off the phones, then they have to teach them a completely foreign operating system so they can support it. Hardware support always bleeds into the software realm, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Yea we've actually got alotta dudes who're east indian and they fucking love it when we get guys who call up and think their talking to a guy in india.
hahaha, that's creepy dude, you might have been talking to me on the phone, I'm one of the canadian tech support dudes in Dells corporate/government hardware warranty support.
So now the only reasonable option for the OS you purchased after you do something common like toss in a new video card, is to go out and get a pirate version? Well whatever, if MS wants to drive more people towards using superior pirated products, so be it. This seems to be part of a larger industry trend of artificially limiting products when there are uncrippled products out there if people look around, which just makes people want to look around. These sorts of tactics are going to bloat the pirate population, pass the rum me-hearty, y'aarrrrrrr.
I posted something similar to this on a thread about games. If pirates are going to put out a superior product, why is hollywood scratching their arses wondering why their losing their buisness? If I can cram on about 6 movies to a single disk, not have to worry about devices I can copy it too, play it on almost anything, and ontop of it all have the ability to skip anywhere in the movie (if it's an avi file etc) plus no unskipable advertising...why the hell would I bother paying them again for a movie after I see it in theatres and already damn near paid the same price as buying the dvd? They either need to lower their prices to make it worthwhile for all the hassle it takes with these disks, or make them more user friendly for the prices we're paying. Currently I'm not very interested in shelling out money for a crippled inferior product that I have already paid an exhorbitant price for, I don't think anyone really is if they know better.
It is done in public, go check out some of the game copying forums, they don't require registration and are entirely in the public, there are even fully created programs that will automate the process of cracking a game. Just because the legislative branch of the united states has lost its goddamn mind doesn't mean everyone else has.
Don't bitch out people who pirate games and buy them. Bitch about people who don't pay. This isn't a judge dredd comic book. Civil disobediance against stupid laws like the DMCA that don't let me put a no-cd crack on the games I own is entirely appropriate and necessary. If everyone simply goes "oh it's the law lets always obey" society would be in a rather sorry state. Publishers are being paid for their work, there is abit of piracy, bringing down the hammer on it will only make it stronger, infecting users systmes with malware for corporate penny pinching is wrong.
I think the main issue isn't the quality of the product. What you hate I might love (I'm a Peter Molyneaux fan so heh, that's where that comes from). However at issue is the crap they put into these games cannot be uninstalled in alot of cases, is installed silently, and ontop of that it can harm the functionality of a pristine system (I'm anal about haveing my system run as clean as possible). What they are doing is including spyware in some cases, and at the very least malware with these systems, giving no way to uninstall it, and putting no warning labels on the packaging. It's harmful to consumers and it's a piss off to their best clients who are the hardcore gamers.
First off, I pay for my games. However I don't install the games I buy. I chuck the disks in the trash, download the ripped copy, and then install a no-cd crack on it. I've got a rather impressive collection of games and I do it with every single one. Quite frankly, I completely see why people pirate games. The pirate copy is much more user friendly, installation goes quicker when it's from a HDD, and there's usually no DRM infection to potentially damage my machine. I truly think publishers are also going overboard and irking honest people, if I purchase DOOM III it tells me that I cannot have a legitimately purchased copy of clone cd running, when your video game tells me what software I can and cannot own it's trying to step WAY above it's station. While I still continue to support the industry, their tactics are not thwarting pirates, and they are pissing me off in a royal way. I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep buying their cd's to make landfill fodder and parting with my hard earned money.
I'm pretty sure I spelled his name wrong, but oh well. I liked the open style of black and white it was insanely fun however only when I would cheat so that I could use all the spells and have my creature large so he could trop the enemy and use the really big explosion spells. B&W2 I kept winning while I was making giant cities for huge armies, not because I needed them to win the game but because I just like watching really cool epic battles...however those giant rathole cities would impress everyone and they'd join me before I was ready to attack:(
I don't know much about Fables, however I played the hell out of Fables the lost chapters and it was FANTASTIC. I was all of the RPG games were abit more like this. The graphics were good, the action was great there were a ton of little things to do and see along with some spice here and there ala the whore house as well as getting your wife to sleep with you. It was tons of fun! The personalized modifications you could make to how your character looked were great too, just too bad there wasn't a way to really play with how old they looked or how they looked after you maxed out their stats (always grey eyes/wrinkly, always large build). I'm hoping this next game is just as much fun because I've played through lost chapters about 10 times now and I still get a kick out of it.
Yes, I am abit of a fan boy of his games, I find that they might have some loose ends here or there, but they are a hell of alot more interesting than the usual doom clones that I've been seeing now for like a decade straight.
So exactly what are you saying here? You think commiting fraud and invading the privacy of countless individuals should be a slap on the wrist offense? White collar crime costs most money than every single robbery, looting, and arson combined. Yet you never see CEO's wearing prison orange jump suits. I think these people should be charged for exactly what they have done and sentanced appropriately. This whole buisness of calling it "pre-texting" is bullshit as well, this is flat out fruad. These people SHOULD be in jail, and they should have the book thrown at them for the absolutely brass balls extent to which they have ignored the laws and rights of the individuals that they walked all over to get what they wanted.
So just out of curiosity, were you as an employee of sony as offended as everyone else about the whole rootkit thing? Yea I know it's weird posting about your job on/. I work at Dell, thanks for those batteries BTW;D
Heh, I get Kudo's here in Dell if someone writes something nice to my manager with those summary e-mails I send out to people. Yay for Canadian tech support agents! Now all they need to do is get more diverse or cheaper caffeteria food here at the call center, and I'll pop with joy.
Yea, I think it's cause I'm actually happy there vs the rest of my jobs. I was doing security work in college and stuck without human contact for 12 hours a night with just me and my laptop for like 2 years on weekends, and studying my butt off on weekdays. It's sorta nice having a boss who'll come down and play foozeball with you on break.
Actually being one of Dell's employee's, I'm pretty glad we're doing the recall and doing it with a proper easy to use setup. It takes awhile to setup the recall process cause it has to actually be outsourced to a special company that creates the websites, handles the logistics etc. You can't just announce recalling 4.1 million batteries overnight without a plan. Ontop of that I do have to give abit of hats off to my employers since these batteries are in like a shite-load of other companies products, but Dell's the only one who's doing anything at all recall wise. Btw, does anyone remember a story about coating capacitors on the inside with carbon nano-tubes to increase surface area and have a sorta super batter...wtf happened to that idea (Please tell me those don't blow up too, I'm already annoyed enough with lithium ion technology since I have to feild some of these calls)?
For some weird reason my computer kept stalling everytime I'd start windows waiting for the floppy drive to read. I don't know why, I'd just hear it make that "grrr rrrr rrrtt" noise for a half second, then suddenly my desktop would come up. Found windows came up way faster after I just unplugged it.
-USB 1 gig key, eat it 1.44MB.
2 years actually, it was a diploma, and like I said, not alot of jobs around here. I tried taking off for awhile to see if I could get a job elsewhere, no dice.
Slashdot Mirror
In some cases, it's not about getting it for free. It's because the pirated version is superior. I used to go buy the real game from the store, and then go and install the pirate version so I don't have to deal with the headaches that come with the legit version. After awhile though, who the hell wants to keep going to the store to buy a box you take home with you and throw out?
I just got sick of the DRM honestly. I used to buy a ton of games but then crap like Doom III started ordering me to delete legitmate software like clone CD etc from my computer. It's a video game, and being told what other software I can or cannot have on my machine by a bloody game is quite frankly, uppity. Not only that but all this garbage where companies kept hopping into bed with stuff like securom which has this overly complicated and in alot of cases technical show stopping problems made me never want to put legitimate copies onto my machine. I just got really tired of these DRM things telling me what to do, or trying to take control from me to do their own thing and being a pain in the ass. I don't want to pay money for a viral infection on my machine, which is exactly how some of the DRM out there acts. Plus the pirated versions have a tendacy to run alittle faster, and not require cd's. It's 2008, everyone knows that popping the cd in and out of the machine is just a ruse and the only reason for it is that the developer left in chunks of code telling the game to ask for a cd it doesn't actually need to function which just slows things down for no reason. I figure if all I'm going to do when I buy a game is go download and run the pirated version since it's superior, then why the hell go through the hassle and cost of plunking down the money just to go get the pirate version anyways? It wasn't always like that though, it's been more of a slide into never paying. After I got tired of running the legit copies and the crap that came with it, I started to crack the games after buying them. Then I started to clean up all those stupid DRM files or render them inert everytime I'd buy a game and install it after cracking it. Then I'd start to just ditch the game version because the DRM couldn't be removed so while I'd buy the game, I'd install a pirated version. Soon I just got completely fed up as going legit was such a complete pain in the ass for abunch of useless cd's I never even would touch. As more and more companies have clamped down harder and harder on piracy, it's made it really obnoxious to just buy something as fickle as a time wasting video game. I think game companies have over estimated exactly how much we care about their product, it's something to kill time after work, it should NEVER be telling me what to do or trying to take over my computer. If the game industry would pull it's head out of it's behind and throw the gears in reverse and treat their customers properly and professionally, they might find more customers again.
Oye :(
Well, just FYI, I'd have sent out a tech with some fans on a system like that, especially if you can blatantly see fans not turning. Was that a home system or a buisness system? I know with the home support they have a TON of checks and balances before they send a part. For the buisness systems though we've got a new support model where instead of relying on a set pathway that we have to prove we followed we can just decide ourselves if a part is warranted so that it saves time and improves customer experience.
They'll cave allright...and send you the wrong part. If those diags freeze up and hang it's going to be the motherboard or processor, which isn't going to help you every much if you've got a software issue or if your hard drive is dead. Then you'll be sitting around waiting another day while the machine you paid 2000 $'s for to make you money and work on is down and you have to call in again and actually run the diags to get an error code that properly identifies a specific peice of hardware.
Dells already got a full deck of diagnostics for the hardware. The problem is when someone calls in with the equivelant of a windows blue screen, the hardware all checks out, but something is wrong. In this case on a windows machine I'd go ahead and help the customer out with a windows issue until it was fixed. I love ubuntu linux to death but I'm not trained on it and I'd be scrounging around like a noob trying to help people. It's going to take alil while to get all us agents off the phones and trained in a new OS. I'm planning on signing up for the training and moving over to XPS to support the ubuntu machines but it takes time. Everyone that's going to support linux is working on the phones right now, they have to plan for us to take time off the phones while balancing out the call volumes and then go through the growing pains as we start supporting the OS and make lil gaffs etc here and there. Hardware warranty support doesn't mean that we can point blank tell the customers software isn't supported and hang up on them, that'd be bad buisness and a bad customer experience and we're all highly trained that customer satisfaction is what counts above all else at the end of the day.
Right there, is EXACTLY why your going to see dell not supporting hardware on linux machines. Software errors and hardware errors bleed together and can look similar to one another. Dell has to pull a bunch of people off the phones and train them in linux before they'll be setup properly to support the hardware. Since I'm at my desk and working, what was your problem anyhow?
People often don't know the difference between the hardware causing issues and the software causing issues. They will insist that it's the hardware even if all of the diagnostics pass and the software isn't supported. It's more of an issue having to do with the experience that the customer has when they call up rather than the actual support. Dell has to pull a few thousand active agents off the phones, then they have to teach them a completely foreign operating system so they can support it. Hardware support always bleeds into the software realm, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Yea we've actually got alotta dudes who're east indian and they fucking love it when we get guys who call up and think their talking to a guy in india.
hahaha, that's creepy dude, you might have been talking to me on the phone, I'm one of the canadian tech support dudes in Dells corporate/government hardware warranty support.
So now the only reasonable option for the OS you purchased after you do something common like toss in a new video card, is to go out and get a pirate version? Well whatever, if MS wants to drive more people towards using superior pirated products, so be it. This seems to be part of a larger industry trend of artificially limiting products when there are uncrippled products out there if people look around, which just makes people want to look around. These sorts of tactics are going to bloat the pirate population, pass the rum me-hearty, y'aarrrrrrr.
I posted something similar to this on a thread about games. If pirates are going to put out a superior product, why is hollywood scratching their arses wondering why their losing their buisness? If I can cram on about 6 movies to a single disk, not have to worry about devices I can copy it too, play it on almost anything, and ontop of it all have the ability to skip anywhere in the movie (if it's an avi file etc) plus no unskipable advertising...why the hell would I bother paying them again for a movie after I see it in theatres and already damn near paid the same price as buying the dvd? They either need to lower their prices to make it worthwhile for all the hassle it takes with these disks, or make them more user friendly for the prices we're paying. Currently I'm not very interested in shelling out money for a crippled inferior product that I have already paid an exhorbitant price for, I don't think anyone really is if they know better.
It is done in public, go check out some of the game copying forums, they don't require registration and are entirely in the public, there are even fully created programs that will automate the process of cracking a game. Just because the legislative branch of the united states has lost its goddamn mind doesn't mean everyone else has.
Don't bitch out people who pirate games and buy them. Bitch about people who don't pay. This isn't a judge dredd comic book. Civil disobediance against stupid laws like the DMCA that don't let me put a no-cd crack on the games I own is entirely appropriate and necessary. If everyone simply goes "oh it's the law lets always obey" society would be in a rather sorry state. Publishers are being paid for their work, there is abit of piracy, bringing down the hammer on it will only make it stronger, infecting users systmes with malware for corporate penny pinching is wrong.
I think the main issue isn't the quality of the product. What you hate I might love (I'm a Peter Molyneaux fan so heh, that's where that comes from). However at issue is the crap they put into these games cannot be uninstalled in alot of cases, is installed silently, and ontop of that it can harm the functionality of a pristine system (I'm anal about haveing my system run as clean as possible). What they are doing is including spyware in some cases, and at the very least malware with these systems, giving no way to uninstall it, and putting no warning labels on the packaging. It's harmful to consumers and it's a piss off to their best clients who are the hardcore gamers.
First off, I pay for my games. However I don't install the games I buy. I chuck the disks in the trash, download the ripped copy, and then install a no-cd crack on it. I've got a rather impressive collection of games and I do it with every single one. Quite frankly, I completely see why people pirate games. The pirate copy is much more user friendly, installation goes quicker when it's from a HDD, and there's usually no DRM infection to potentially damage my machine. I truly think publishers are also going overboard and irking honest people, if I purchase DOOM III it tells me that I cannot have a legitimately purchased copy of clone cd running, when your video game tells me what software I can and cannot own it's trying to step WAY above it's station. While I still continue to support the industry, their tactics are not thwarting pirates, and they are pissing me off in a royal way. I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep buying their cd's to make landfill fodder and parting with my hard earned money.
I'm pretty sure I spelled his name wrong, but oh well. I liked the open style of black and white it was insanely fun however only when I would cheat so that I could use all the spells and have my creature large so he could trop the enemy and use the really big explosion spells. B&W2 I kept winning while I was making giant cities for huge armies, not because I needed them to win the game but because I just like watching really cool epic battles...however those giant rathole cities would impress everyone and they'd join me before I was ready to attack :(
I don't know much about Fables, however I played the hell out of Fables the lost chapters and it was FANTASTIC. I was all of the RPG games were abit more like this. The graphics were good, the action was great there were a ton of little things to do and see along with some spice here and there ala the whore house as well as getting your wife to sleep with you. It was tons of fun! The personalized modifications you could make to how your character looked were great too, just too bad there wasn't a way to really play with how old they looked or how they looked after you maxed out their stats (always grey eyes/wrinkly, always large build). I'm hoping this next game is just as much fun because I've played through lost chapters about 10 times now and I still get a kick out of it.
Yes, I am abit of a fan boy of his games, I find that they might have some loose ends here or there, but they are a hell of alot more interesting than the usual doom clones that I've been seeing now for like a decade straight.
So exactly what are you saying here? You think commiting fraud and invading the privacy of countless individuals should be a slap on the wrist offense? White collar crime costs most money than every single robbery, looting, and arson combined. Yet you never see CEO's wearing prison orange jump suits. I think these people should be charged for exactly what they have done and sentanced appropriately. This whole buisness of calling it "pre-texting" is bullshit as well, this is flat out fruad. These people SHOULD be in jail, and they should have the book thrown at them for the absolutely brass balls extent to which they have ignored the laws and rights of the individuals that they walked all over to get what they wanted.
So just out of curiosity, were you as an employee of sony as offended as everyone else about the whole rootkit thing? Yea I know it's weird posting about your job on /. I work at Dell, thanks for those batteries BTW ;D
Heh, I get Kudo's here in Dell if someone writes something nice to my manager with those summary e-mails I send out to people. Yay for Canadian tech support agents! Now all they need to do is get more diverse or cheaper caffeteria food here at the call center, and I'll pop with joy.
Yea, I think it's cause I'm actually happy there vs the rest of my jobs. I was doing security work in college and stuck without human contact for 12 hours a night with just me and my laptop for like 2 years on weekends, and studying my butt off on weekdays. It's sorta nice having a boss who'll come down and play foozeball with you on break.
That reminds me, I really gotta start posting about stuff other than Dell. It's my weekend, why am I thinking about work :p
Actually being one of Dell's employee's, I'm pretty glad we're doing the recall and doing it with a proper easy to use setup. It takes awhile to setup the recall process cause it has to actually be outsourced to a special company that creates the websites, handles the logistics etc. You can't just announce recalling 4.1 million batteries overnight without a plan. Ontop of that I do have to give abit of hats off to my employers since these batteries are in like a shite-load of other companies products, but Dell's the only one who's doing anything at all recall wise. Btw, does anyone remember a story about coating capacitors on the inside with carbon nano-tubes to increase surface area and have a sorta super batter...wtf happened to that idea (Please tell me those don't blow up too, I'm already annoyed enough with lithium ion technology since I have to feild some of these calls)?
For some weird reason my computer kept stalling everytime I'd start windows waiting for the floppy drive to read. I don't know why, I'd just hear it make that "grrr rrrr rrrtt" noise for a half second, then suddenly my desktop would come up. Found windows came up way faster after I just unplugged it. -USB 1 gig key, eat it 1.44MB.
Wait, if they use the n-series and run linux, are they hippie terrorists?
2 years actually, it was a diploma, and like I said, not alot of jobs around here. I tried taking off for awhile to see if I could get a job elsewhere, no dice.