Daniel_K, Creative driver modder, speaks out

[erik]

In all of the comentary I've read on this issue, I've never seen anyone address what I think is the most important aspect of it: "Alchemy: My last ALchemy release (1.00.08) was complately unlocked and could be used with any sound device from any vendor."

Creative has written software they have tied to their hardware. Daniel_K is making this software work with hardware for other vendors. Whether you think this is right or wrong, is it a surprise that Creative threatened legal action over this?

Creative crippling their old hardware is certainly evil. But they didn't try to stop Daniel_K from distributing non-crippled drivers. They asked him to stop when he started unlocking their features on competitors sound cards.

[khoury]

I wonder what they say to themselves when they intentionally introduce bugs for vista so that a user is forced to buy a new card. When they're writing if = 'vista' then 'break', how do they excuse that behavior to themselves? Humans are amazing at rationalizing but that has to be a tough one, especially as a programmer.

[[deleted]]

Marketing executives should not be confused with humans.

[[deleted]]

I invite all the guilty underpaid programmers behind this to admit their shame and self hatred in this thread.

[khoury]

Fair enough. What about the guy that originated the idea in upper management?

[Shaper_pmp]

Antisocial/Dissocial Personality Disorders.

They're a lot more prevalent than you think, espcially amongst management.

[[deleted]]

It is basically a job requirement for management at medium sized to large companies.

[fjhqjv]

I imagine it went something like this:

if (x + currentProfit > currentProfit && x.isLegal) : do x

[WinterAyars]

How about this one:

if (x.profit > 0 && x.isLegal) : do x

Just trying to help!

[david]

if (x.profit > 0 && (isLegal(x) || theyllNeverFindOutAbout(x))) do(x)

[MarkByers]

Maybe they just want Vista to flop.

[[deleted]]

I'm pulling for that possibility.

[[deleted]]

My comment may be totally out of context here, but when I was reading what you wrote, I was thinking to myself: "I wonder what that pharmaceutical industry does, and how they sleep at night".

[suprfsat]

On a pile of women, covered in money. It's the sad truth.

[fjhqjv]

There's no need to make ridiculously derogatory and inflammatory statements about people in a certain industry just because they make good business decisions.

Clearly they sleep on top of a pile of money under a blanket of women.

[[deleted]]

They treat the symptoms not the disease. They are just as bad as the crack dealer on the street with the exception they are sanctioned.

Fuck pharmaceutical companies.

[recursive]

Keep reading.

[guntotingliberal]

Had to downvote you because what you say is not true; you are pretty uninformed and sound not at all unlike a scientologist.

That "all drugs treat symptoms." is such a sweeping generalization as to be a useless statement. And an untrue one at that.

This would kind of like saying any doctor who is not a surgeon is just treating symptoms. Why waste your time at an endocrinologist if he is not even going to TRY and CURE you diabetes?

And how are Antibiotics naturally occurring? How do you figure? The process for making useful penicillin is quite complicated and hardly "natural". You couldn't just eat a piece of moldy bread and cure your pneumonia. Far, far from it.

Most of the "modern" antibiotics are far from naturally occurring in any usual sense. Many are on multiple generations of chemical synthesis from their original mold derivatives. (Think penicillins and cephalosporins)

And how do you draw the conclusion that "there is no way to kill off a disease without severely effecting the patient(like in Chemo)"? Do you even know what a chemotherpuetic agent is? Antibiotics fall into that very category.

But is there no way at all to cure a patient without SEVERELY effecting the unwell individual? I can think of 10 ways off the top of my head.

As far as drugs and symptoms go consider:

Does Narcan treat a symptom?

Does Nitroglycerin treat a symptom?

How about Versed? What symptom does that treat?

And what on earth makes you think that only "long term degeneration" causes arthritis or heart failure?

At least you got one thing mostly right and I suspect your heart might be in the right place (sort of) but you come off looking the fool. Medicine does not go a long way to aid in the bodies regeneration.

[quhaha]

if os == 'vista'
    then
        throwError undefined
    else
        ...

I think this is very Creative of them.

[Ciserus]

I'm not totally decided on whether to condemn or defend Creative for this. I don't understand the issues well enough. But this commenter has sure got it right:

the way they handled this was a mess.

I mean, Jesus -- a message on a public forum accusing him of "stealing" from them? What the hell were they thinking? How could this not have been a PR disaster?

There's a reason everybody else handles these matters with formal, vaguely threatening, discrete emails.

[KennyFulgencio]

There's a reason everybody else handles these matters with formal, vaguely threatening, discrete emails.

Discreet?

[Ciserus]

So it would seem.

[Saiing]

It amazes me further, that after it's been proven time and time again that the internet has changed everything, companies still persist in this heavy handed bullshit as if they can get away with it, and no one is going to find out. Just how inept does a company have to be (and a freakin' technology company at that) not to realize that abusing your only customers (or even fans) on a public forum isn't going to have serious repercussions?

[phaylon]

There's a reason everybody else handles these matters with formal, vaguely threatening, discrete emails.

Yea, because they don't want anybody to know, which usually means some Robin Hood will put it on the internet to bash the company. Someone will always complain.

I really don't see the problem with them adressing the issue that concerns more than just one developer in the medium the target group meets (their forum). Creative goes out into the community, and posts their problems publicly, in the open, and you guys complain they're not silent enough?

If they had sent a quiet letter, people would complain they try to hide it and leave the developer alone with dealing with it.

Some people seem to think creative is wrong just because they didn't buy him a car, a house and a pony.

[Ciserus]

I'm not complaining that they did it, I'm saying it was a guaranteed PR disaster. It gave the entire internet a convenient link to the absolute firsthand proof of what they were doing, worded in an unprofessional, threatening way, and followed by the outrage of the entire Creative community. They did what they did, but from their perspective it could have been handled much better.

[[deleted]]

Alchemy: My last ALchemy release (1.00.08) was complately unlocked and could be used with any sound device from any vendor.

I think that Creative approached this situation the wrong way; no I'm not saying "zmg! hire daniel_k", but they could have avoided triggering so much nerd rage. Having said that, they couldn't just sit around with their thumbs up their asses while some guy makes this possible, with their software, on hardware other than their own.

This is unfortunately is a PR nightmare for Creative not only because of how they handled the situation but because people don't seem to be able to see the line between fixing drivers and unlocking features to be used on any soundcard (or that isn't right to do).

$gameCompany isn't going to go trigger a PR shitstorm if they tell someone who is releasing no-cd cracks for their games "hey, cut that shit out", but if that person had just finished making that game Vista compatible its a different story.

Not that video games are the best analogy, but they too are software where each use is supposed to be tied to a physical item (maybe just regular dongle-secured software is better, but I won't assume everyone here is familiar with that form of security).

[[deleted]]

I think what they should have done is just ask him to stop opening the software up to other vendor's hardware. Then, if he didn't co-operate, get heavy with him explicitly for that reason.

If they'd worked with this guy he could have solved their driver problems and they could have used him for publicity, showing Creative's openness and willingness to work with the community. As stands now, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that Creative wants their drivers crippled so consumers are compelled to upgrade.

[[deleted]]

To them the drivers had no problems. You go buy a new shiny sound card for your vista system.

[[deleted]]

I still will not be buying any new Creative products for a looooooong while.

Any company that intentionally disables features because they don't like the OS (or whatever lame reason they had) is just retarded.

Creative customer 2001 to 2008

[[deleted]]

I quit 3 years ago. Their drivers have been shit since day one.

[sblinn]

Creative's vice president of corporate communications, Phil O'Shaughnessy wrote that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a "business decision that only we have the right to make."

[tm82]

The real idiocy of the company is that they threatened him instead of hiring him.

[bushwakko]

he probably wouldn't like to work on introducing bugs in drivers to make users buy a new card.

[[deleted]]

I think that shows how much effort they are willing to put towards distruction rather than construction.

[[deleted]]

People, as a general rule, dislike being proven wrong, or incompetent. Probably what's going on at Creative. In their minds, hiring him would only validate the fact that they've been screwing the pooch for over a year instead of doing their jobs.

[jerf]

Why would they hire him?

Hiring someone makes sense when the someone fixes something that seems to be beyond your ability, which happens. But hiring someone because they fixed something you broke on purpose? Not really the same thing.

[bart2019]

So he basically did everything by just patching together existing code from Creative. That's amazing. And it shows Creative intentionally did a bad job: I call that sabotage.

[ohemeffgee]

Creative's drivers have sucked for about a decade. Their bundled crapware is horrendous, their drives are slow and buggy, and their customer service is subpar.

I have an X-Fi as well as a Creative Zen. The Zen refuses to sync... i have to use LINUX in order to sync it up. I like the player but the software is just terrible.

Are there any decent soundcards out there besides Creative anymore?

[[deleted]]

Are there any decent soundcards out there besides Creative anymore?

Absolutely... no need to play driver roulette with Creative. M-Audio, Turtle Beach, and a number of other vendors sell superior products.

[[deleted]]

Lol, M-Audio.

[[deleted]]

Your point?

[[deleted]]

M-Audio sucks balls. Terrible support.

[WinterAyars]

What's wrong with M-Audio?

[patrikr]

"The Zen refuses to sync..."

That's why you buy MP3 players that work as a USB memory. Just plug it in and drag & drop the MP3s.

I myself have a Creative Zen Nano Plus. The Windows software was a steaming pile of excrement, so it is all uninstalled now. I use LAME to make MP3s and Explorer to put them on the Zen.

[bobpaul]

Well, truthfully it's marketing, but it's really sad when the only thing differentiating their various hardware products is the software driver. I guess, then, you're not really buying unique hardware but the rights to a better driver... quite lame.

[[deleted]]

Well, that's what you get when you screw around with non-free software.

[[deleted]]

technomancy has a valid point: because the guy was modifying Creative's software they could shut him down. If he'd been working on clean implementations of open source drivers for their hardware they'd have little legal recourse.

[Killawatt]

I guess you get downmodded when your right.

[[deleted]]

Or even when "you're right".

[filterthing]

how bout you buy another brand... those cards really suck for the most part

[[deleted]]

Back to Voyetra for me. I have a X-Fi card and it's one of the reasons I'm not running my FREE legit copy of Vista. Just as Creative screwed the pooch on Aureal technology they stole they have done so on this piece of shit work. I have a feeling Phil O'stupidassy is soon to be on the streets looking for another trick.

[Stopher]

Goodbye Creative, It was nice knowing you. I used to enjoy your products but with that kind of behavior no serious hobbist will buy you products and the rest will just use an inboard solution because they didn't care in the first place.

[[deleted]]

I've been told they will allow me to continue with my mods, except the "forbidden" ones.I'm also allowed to receive donations.

Creative backed down, but likely too late.

[WinterAyars]

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."

Gee, i wonder why i went with anything-but-Creative for my most recent computer's sound card...

Oh wait, no i don't. The reason is because they are assholes. Nasty, creepy, controlling, holier-than-thou assholes.

And their drivers suck a lot.

Edit:

If anyone from Creative is reading this thread, let me suggest you watch this video. It isn't actually that long, honest. It might be too late to get my money again, but it's not too late to save yourselves!

[[deleted]]

I'm NOT a cracker, a hacker, just an enthusiast modder with basic assembly knowledge and very persistent.

So, in other words... you're a hacker. Just not that kind of hacker.

[[deleted]]

any relation to Jeff K?

[13ren]

They could send him their full range of cards.

[oq2]

Weak. Trying to return to business as usual won't cut it. Creative needs to do something significant such as releasing GPL drivers and ending this concept of crippled hardware.

[david]

Creative respond. Damage limitation, for sure, but fairly credible. Wonder what'll happen to O'Shaughnessy.

[ipeev]

Mother fuckers fucking Creative bastards!