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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 01:23:57
Message: <MPG.225a3139b1ec29f598a135@news.povray.org>
OK. I am all for IP. I am less for some moron telling me that I, or 
someone else, can't alter it to make it work right. Mind you, his 
mistake may have basically been suggesting donations, but the rest of 
just 100% total and complete BS.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?
board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=
1

Basically, one guy figured out that Creative Labs has been lying about 
incompatibility between some cards and Vista, that they could fix it 
over night, if they wanted to, and that they haven't even attempted to 
put out drivers that work right for the latest cards, all with the 
apparent purpose of forcing people to upgrade to the next card, which 
*will* be full Vista supported. The guy that figured this out patched 
the existing drivers so they do work, but since it still required 
"their" unpatched, otherwise incompatible, and defective drivers, and 
because he made the stupid mistake of giving people the option to donate 
to him for his trouble, Creative deleted all forum threads and told him 
to cease and desist. Pretty much *everyone* that was dumb enough to 
install Vista, and has a Creative card, is.. less than amused. Can't say 
I am either. I might have thought about getting a better card at some 
point, if I wanted to push my gaming capabilities, but I am not sure at 
this point that I would want one from the company that *used to be* the 
best on the market (and if the damn things still had functional drivers 
for them, might still be).

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 01:40:23
Message: <47f08756@news.povray.org>
Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?
> board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

  It seem dubious to me what kind of intellectual property was "stolen"
here.

  Copyright applies to actual software source code. It does not apply to
algorithms nor functionality. If you create a program which behaves in the
same way as another program you are not infringing copyright, as long as
your code is original.

  Claiming that making a program which interfaces with a piece of hardware
is IP theft is absolutely ludicrous. Imagine if, for example, Intel suddenly
claimed that every piece of program (especially commercial ones) ever
written to run on Intel processors was an IP theft and threatened to sue.
They would be laughed off. It would never pass on any court.

  But of course in the US you can sue for anything. Just threatening to
sue is enough for most people. It's a rather effective means to scare
people.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 01:42:00
Message: <47f087b8@news.povray.org>
> Basically, one guy figured out that Creative Labs has been lying about
> incompatibility between some cards and Vista, that they could fix it
> over night, if they wanted to, and that they haven't even attempted to
> put out drivers that work right for the latest cards, all with the
> apparent purpose of forcing people to upgrade to the next card, which
> *will* be full Vista supported. The guy that figured this out patched
> the existing drivers so they do work,

Number 1 rule of making artificial differences between your products: make 
sure it's impossible or very difficult for anyone to "upgrade" by 
themselves.


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From: Gail Shaw
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 02:07:27
Message: <47f08daf@news.povray.org>
"Patrick Elliott" <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote in message
news:MPG.225a3139b1ec29f598a135@news.povray.org...

> Basically, one guy figured out that Creative Labs has been lying about
> incompatibility between some cards and Vista, that they could fix it
> over night, if they wanted to

I'm really not happy with creative at the Moment.

I have an X-fi card and am running Windows 2000. According to Creative, the
X-Fi drivers don't work on 2000. Actually, they do, perfectly. The only
problem is that there's an explicit check for XP somewhere in the installer.

I have the X-Fi working on 2000, because someone found out how to disable
that check.

Now, is there any way to get working drivers for the X-Fi in Vista?


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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 02:43:44
Message: <MPG.225a43759661a80898a136@news.povray.org>
In article <47f08daf@news.povray.org>, initialsurname@sentech says...
> 
> "Patrick Elliott" <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote in message
> news:MPG.225a3139b1ec29f598a135@news.povray.org...
> 
> > Basically, one guy figured out that Creative Labs has been lying about
> > incompatibility between some cards and Vista, that they could fix it
> > over night, if they wanted to
> 
> I'm really not happy with creative at the Moment.
> 
> I have an X-fi card and am running Windows 2000. According to Creative, t
he
> X-Fi drivers don't work on 2000. Actually, they do, perfectly. The only
> problem is that there's an explicit check for XP somewhere in the install
er.
> 
> I have the X-Fi working on 2000, because someone found out how to disable
> that check.
> 
> Now, is there any way to get working drivers for the X-Fi in Vista?
> 
After about the first 900+ posts from people telling them they have 
destroyed and/or thrown away their cards, and would never buy anything 
from them again, they reinstated the threads specific to *some* of the 
cards. The X-Fi is probably not one of them, since its newer. So, the 
answer would be, "Not until Creative gets their heads out of their asses 
and fixes the bugs themselves, which they clearly don't intend to so, 
since one of their comments was *specifically* that if they 'chose not 
to release features with one card that come with another, its our right 
to do so'." In other words, your X-Fi is a brick on Vista, because they 
***wanted*** it to be a brick, and you will have to buy their 
"patch/fix/addon" to fix it. Maybe the drivers that are not available 
again also cover it too, but.. who knows.

Everyone, except some morons that fail to grasp the fact that Creative 
may be in violation of their *own* EULA by failing to provide the 
functionality, not to mention Warp's point, is saying, "Too little, too 
late.", and crying for Creative to be hoisted on a pittard for, "false 
advertising", since their own boxes "claim" all sorts of features that 
the cards are "supposed" to have, some of which Creative now admits it 
doesn't want working in Vista at this point, and a lot that just doesn't 
work.

All in all, I thought Microsoft shot itself in the foot a few times 
recently, including with the release of Vista, but they couldn't top 
this if Gates got drunk tomorrow some place and admitted in front of TV 
cameras that he intentionally broke the law and tried to screw his 
customers the entire time he was in charge.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 07:36:19
Message: <47f0dac3$1@news.povray.org>
Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Basically, one guy figured out that Creative Labs has been lying about 
> incompatibility between some cards and Vista, that they could fix it 
> over night, if they wanted to, and that they haven't even attempted to 
> put out drivers that work right for the latest cards, all with the 
> apparent purpose of forcing people to upgrade to the next card, which 
> *will* be full Vista supported.

Mmm, interesting.

Of course, technically it's Creative's product and if they don't want it 
to be able to do X, they can legally do that. But given that their 
game's been rumbled, I would say that's be rather stupid to try to stick 
to this stretagy now... But hey, what do I know about running a vast 
stunningly successful multinational conglomerate?

I'm not worried. My old soundcard is VIA, my new one is impronouncible, 
and I won't be installing Vista for a *very* long time. (Hopefully, mmm, 
*never*. But we'll see...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: John VanSickle
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 11:28:17
Message: <47f11121@news.povray.org>
Yes, some a**holes will exercise their rights in a way that is not as 
helpful to the lives of others as we may wish.

Looks like Creative Labs' competitors have an opportunity to capture 
some market share.

Regards,
John


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From: John VanSickle
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 11:34:17
Message: <47f11289$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:

>   But of course in the US you can sue for anything.

I have a question here for anyone having knowledge of the legal systems 
outside of the US.

Can a judge in your country be punished for allowing a frivolous suit to 
proceed?

Here in the US I have not seen any case where a judge was sanctioned for 
allowing a frivolous suit to be litigated.  There have been instances 
where the plaintiff or the plaintiff's counsel were disciplined in some 
way, but never the judge.

Regards,
John


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 11:42:10
Message: <47f11462$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
>   Copyright applies to actual software source code. It does not apply to
> algorithms nor functionality. If you create a program which behaves in the
> same way as another program you are not infringing copyright, as long as
> your code is original.

I think it's a little different in the USA.  You're infringing on the 
copyright if you copied the code. It doesn't even matter if it does 
something completely different. If you learn that Creative's driver for 
some reason will run your printer too, it's still copyright infringement 
to give it out for the purposes of running the printer.

>   Claiming that making a program which interfaces with a piece of hardware
> is IP theft is absolutely ludicrous. 

If it's 98% Creative's code, with 2% changes, then it's a derivative 
work. I don't know the whole story, but this doesn't sound like he 
created a driver from scratch.  (Indeed, the way I read it almost made 
it sound like he was making Creative's drivers work on non-Creative 
cards.)  But from comments, it sounds like he took Creative's drivers 
for cards that *do* work on Vista, and back-ported the changes to cards 
that don't work on Vista.

>   But of course in the US you can sue for anything. Just threatening to
> sue is enough for most people. It's a rather effective means to scare
> people.

I was wondering - what do other countries do about this? I couldn't come 
up with any good way of solving such a problem in the legal system. It 
would have to be cultural, that you don't sue simply to intimidate someone.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From:  
Subject: Re: Creative flub..
Date: 31 Mar 2008 12:11:40
Message: <47f11b4c@news.povray.org>
"Patrick Elliott" <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote

>OK. I am all for IP. I am less for some moron telling me that I, or
>someone else, can't alter it to make it work right. Mind you, his
>mistake may have basically been suggesting donations, but the rest of
>just 100% total and complete BS.

Almost every single hardware manufacturer (most visible are CPU/GPU
manufacturers) as well as almost every single software manufacturer sell
crippled versions of their goods under different SKUs. It's their wares,
they can not only chose to not develop certain lines for all markets, but
they can purposefully cripple equipment or software to sell to lower priced
markets. If reverse engineering is explicitly prohibited, third parties can
not re-market such goods by undoing the crippling or adding more
functionality. I don't exactly know what he is doing, if he's patching their
(Creative's) drivers, that's a no-no. If he's writing his own from scratch,
without using any of their protected code (very unlikely, I'd say), then
Creative has no leg to stand on, except that they are not of course
obligated to provide free advertising for him on their own forums. It's hard
to feel sympathy for the big guy, but how would you feel if someone was
reverse engineering the lower priced version of your software to enable its
advanced features and thus wreaking havoc with your pricing structure? How
would you feel if time limits on your shareware version were being patched
out? Business is not charity and businesses are not obligated to provide
everyone with everything technically possible, to their own detriment.


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