The nice thing about forums is it gives you a chance to rant......and maybe change a few people's minds.
I am amazed with how much we have put up with software "you are a criminal" EULA @(#$."
It starts with: "I bought a new copy of Windows" (yes, Windows will be the main focal point on this rant). " I think I will install it on all my computers. You quickly find out that you can only put it on one machine. You would think that the software is licensed to you, the owner, but no, the software makers can make more money if they license it to the machine. Besides the point that you, the customer, is a criminal. If they do not keep track of t he software usage by computer, you will give it to all your friends and spread it to the world.
OK, the copy of Windows you just bought only goes to one computer at a time right? wrong. If your computer's motherboard fries and you buy a new motherboard (even if ever other component in the machine stays the same) you have to buy a new copy of windows. This is crap. With almost any other software package, you can legally transfer the license to a new computer if the old one is no longer in use. Not Windows.
Sometimes even that falls awry when the license for Windows refuses to activate, even thought it is legit. This happened to a customer, and it was going to cost 50$ to get it resolved. I ended up buying a really nice HP with a monitor from the customer for 35$ and installing Ubuntu on it to play movies on my TV.
Even if you abide by all the rules, you constantly get bombarded by "you are a criminal" issues. If having to enter a cd key 25 digits long that is usually located at the back of the computer isn't bad enough. Seriosly, I have to wipe and reload windows at least 1 out of every 8 computers that I work on. I usually have to pull up the computer on my lap to see the damn key. If it is a laptop, I have to put it on it's side so I can read the key and type it at the same time. Even then, I usually have to try 3 times to get the key right.
And then, of course, there is activation. If you are lucky, you can just click activate by internet and it will activate. I have had it activate this easy even when I had illegally taken a key from a dead mobo computer and transferred it to another. This is clearly a no-no, but it activated without a hitch. This is opposed to the customer who was going to have to pay 50$ to HP because her legit key refused to activate. However, if you are really lucky *sarcasm* you will get automated activation lady. After spending 5 minutes with her on a busy day of computer repair, I get asked if this is the only computer this key has been used on. Then another 5 minutes to put in the code it gives you. I find that, regardless of reality, if you say this is the only computer the key has been used on it will always activate. Therefore, the only use automated activation lady has is wasting 10 minutes of your time. I have had to do this so often, I can go through the process in half the time because I know all the responses by number on keypad.
If you thought this was the end of it, there is activating after a repair install. When you do run a repair install all the way through, the first thing you get greeted with is a "you must activate this computer before logging in". Since you are running the repair install on a buggy computer in an attempt to repair it, often the activation window won't come up properly. At this point, you are screwed. You cannot log in because the activation window will not come up. Nice.
Then there is Vista's, "You have tampered with the OS.....criminal". I added the last part. Basically, if you modify files in the system directory you run the risk of getting this and having to activate Vista again. Why would you ever tamper with system files? Maybe you booted from Knoppix to remove malware infected files....you criminal. I have never gotten stuck at the "you have tampered...you must reactivate..." message, but since it happens during a virus removal, I can only imagine.
There is probably a lot more I can talk about on Windows. I could mention how Vista seems to have been made crappy just so they can sell a lot of Windows 7 licenses when it comes out. People will do it. If you buy a crappy Chevy truck, and it is very unsatisfactory, you don't go and buy another Chevy, do you? You are more likely to buy a Ford or somethin. I can't see why people constantly complain about Windows yet still buy Microsoft's products.
There is, of course, video game anti-criminal measures. As Penny Arcade put it, there will always be a fight between people who want to pirate software and the publishers. The publishers, of course, see 5,000 copies bought + 1,000 copies pirates = 6,000 copies of profits they should have gotten. They don't see (or choose not to see) that most of the pirates would not have bought the games even if they could not pirate them. They can, by the way, pirate the software no matter what the publishers do. Putting in more anti-piracy measures just makes it more interesting to crack.
The only thing anti-piracy measures do is punish the customers who buy the product. We have long ago accepted that most games are going to have cd-keys. Now they are installing rootkits on our machines that may or may not break something in our system and may or may not allow us to play the game. Also they make you activate like Windows does. They claim that if they go out of business that they are going to release a no-activation patch for the game. I wonder who is going to take time to do that when the company is falling apart. By the way, you can only install the game on a certain number of machines, even if you do activate it. I have heard that this is more of an attempt to keep gamers from selling games over ebay than anything else. That makes sense, and should not be legal.
I have bought 1 copy of powerISO and have legally used it on many of MY computers for quite a while now. The knowledge of that is one of the main reasons I bought that. Stardock releases their games with absolutely no DRM, yet makes a respectible profit on (what I have heard to be) high quality games. If just the customers would not put up with the anti-piracy measures many companies are trying to force down our throats than we would have more companies like Stardock and software like powerISO. [end of rant]
