Creative gets hammered - Vista users might win!

[Trooper110]

No, it was a random guy who reverse engineered the Creative drivers and programs. He then modified the code so that it would work with Vista...at least as far as can be seen. We don't know what the actual operation with the OS or hardware is doing as there hasn't been anything posted that I've noticed. As pointed out he lives in Brazil though where this is not illegal. Creative basically issued a takedown notice on his hacked drivers and annoyed a lot of people then.

[-IRC-MIKE]

Headline News:

Brazillian man found floating in canal just some 20 meters from his home. Apparently upon autopsy, a Sound Blaster sound card was removed from his rectum. Reporters stated "The soundcard in his rectum does not appear to be the cause of death. It appears he was smothered to death with an electrostatic bag." No further details will be released at this time.

[Hammy]

-IRC- Mike brings up a great point:

What are we talking about here.
It force me to re-read the title of this thread and consider this:

If Creative wants to operate drunk all the time....how is it that Visa users might win?

Also- What options are out there in the sound card market that arent already a production foundry knock off?

(FYI- some of the alternative cards are actually Creative cards manufactured in the same factory , but on different color/shape PCB boards and boxed seperately with limited functionality within "licensed " partnerships)

[Dead...Again]

Daniel_K probably went too far when he altered ALchemy to work with any sound card and released drivers that would turn a lesser card into a greater card, but it sounds to me like Creative is more at fault here. If they intentionally released gimped drivers for Vista for whatever reason, then they are defrauding their customers who use Vista. Initially, Daniel_K was just doing what they wouldn't: make the SB cards work in Vista as they do in XP. It sounds like the more he worked with the drivers the more he figured out.

[Trooper110]

He commited a crime. May not be so in Brazil, but he reverse engineered ALchemy and drivers and modified them. Then released them for use. You read any EULA and you find wording in there that makes it illegal for you to reverse engineer and modify a company's software. If he'd built his own drivers, there wouldn't have been any issues, other than may occur from usign third party uncertified drivers. We don't know what kind of issues Creative had with MS and Vista, getting things approved, and what kind of behind the scenes issues there were. Sure, it sounds like Creative intentionally gimped the Vista drivers, but I'd really like to see some full disclosure here about what was going on.

[Dead...Again]

He commited a crime. May not be so in Brazil

He lives in Brazil, where apparently what he did is legal. Hence, he did not commit a crime.

EDIT: Let me put it to you this way: in some middle-eastern countries it is illegal for women to go outside without a burka on. Does that mean that women in the US who don't wear a burka are breaking the law?

[Trooper110]

Does the fact that [some download website] located in a country (drawing a blank, ahhhhh) where they allow a website to host trackers for illegally created and downloaded content(movies, music, software, etc.) that would be shut down in most other countries in the world mean it is illegal there? No it does not. That doesn't stop many many many companies and corporations from sending Take Down Notices and threats of legal action though. It's what their lawyers are paid to do. In this case it was probably Creative's lawyers spotting this and just going....this is against our EULA...he must be stopped!! Without stopping to look at Brazilian laws. In this case he can't be prosecuted due to where he lives, but in most countries he could be if Creative so wished, and that's how they're looking at it, as they are a US based company. I think what really had them up in arms was that he was then accepting donations for a product they basically created to buy more of their products to "work" on.

[darth_nevus]

see, i fear this is indicitive of a far larger problem. Creative is just the latest brought into the lime light. it concerns both m$ and the hardware dev companies.

If Nvidia released its 8800 cards, touting DX10/9 capability in vista, and nerfed the drivers so that only 2d mode would work, what kind of outcry would it bring? it'd be the same thing on a much larger scale.

Creative is STILL sticking by its guns that the X-fi cards are "Vista Compatible". the thing is they are hiding behind the term "Compatible". you'll lose features, things won't work, but its still "compatible" because PART of it still works. maybe not completely, totally, or the way it was intended initially, but it works. thats all it needs to do to be "compatible".

M$ and other hardware devs are currently in court over the same thing. ALOT of people blindly purchased pc's labeled "Vista Compatible", however, once upgrading to vista found a majority of the features simply don't work. congratulations, you now have a 2k paperweight! Whose fault is that? M$'s? the hardware makers? marketing tactics?

M$'s biggest fault lies no doubt in their driver validation process. i managed to track down a copy of the WHQL requirements, been in use since server 2003. Creative is NOT the first to complain about this. the WHQL certification caused massive headaches on Nvidia's end initially if anyone remembers. more so than it did with XP.

Here is an excript from this document, regarding the fee schedule:

Note: The Windows Vista Premium logo also covers the logo for Windows Vista Basic. Logs for Windows Vista Basic do not need to be included if a Windows Vista Premium submission is made.
Submission type Testing fee
Windows Vista Premium $250.00
Windows Vista Basic $250.00
Windows XP $250.00
Windows Server 2003 $250.00
Cluster Submissions $250.00
Devices $250.00
Unclassified (1) $250.00
EQP (2) $100.00
Reseller program test submissions (2) $100.00

(1): Includes Windows Vista all operating systems, Windows XP all operating systems, Windows 2003 all operating systems. $250.00 fee per operating system family submitted for testing.
(2): $100.00 per submission regardless of the number of operating systems submitted.

This is JUST the testing fee. and, its for 1 part of the device at a time. if you produce say a DVD drive, you have to have it tested on every front the drive will be used for. this includes movie playback, sata connectivity, audio, etc. the document is 49 pages long, and quite an intresting read. AND, it MUST be tested with both X86 and X64 if required.

The entire vista logo program in general is wonky. stuff like this is delaying the process as well, making hardwar edev's just not want to do it:

Q. Previously, I was able to submit my x86 driver and test results for certification and still have 60 days to make x64 driver submission. Why can?t I do that anymore?
A. After the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft previously allowed partners 60 days to develop and submit x64 drivers and test results after the submission of x86 drivers and test results. This helped partners ramp up on x64 architecture. Currently, all partners must submit x64 drivers and test results at the same time as the x86 submissions. Failure to do so is considered noncompliance with the DEVFUND-0014 requirement, and such submissions are canceled immediately.

Little quirks like that irk me. i can understand to a point why devs are protesting it, in their own ways. But, it all falls back to the word "compatible". How do we really define compatible? i can understand if Daniel_K decided to make the drivers open to folks in an area not as strict on IP's, but if someone else decides to fix the driver, without going to his legths, would it not avail to the company to use it? the costs aren't nearly as bad, but the time required on M$'s part seems to take a bit. from what i've been able to tell, a driver cert takes ~60 days, beginning to end. Vista's been out for over a year now. and this driver "IP" problem started around the same time, before he even modified Alchemy. Where do we draw the line on how far we allow the makers of the hardware to slack before they fix what we need? the X-fi line is far from dead, yet they still do nothing....


Refs:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/VistaLogofaq.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/whql/p...s/default.mspx

[darth_nevus]

Does the fact that [some download website] located in a country (drawing a blank, ahhhhh) where they allow a website to host trackers for illegally created and downloaded content(movies, music, software, etc.)

Sweden if i remember correctly.

[WalkinTarget]

Creative's main beef was the fact that he altered the code for Alchemy to support the older Audigy line of cards. They are charging $10 for its use with that line of cards, whereas it is free for X-Fi owners, under the auspices that they have paid developers and programmers to work on that 'unsupported' EOL piece of hardware, hence they should be compensated for that development time.

Had he not released that to the general public, it'd be interesting to see whether Creative would have even cared at all.

[drunken_chef]

this is a large part of why I sold my x-fi card some time back. to this day I continue to use my m-audio sound card that was supposed to be replaced by the better creative card.

on Tuesday of this week. they released there second driver for the card that is two years old. the first driver never really needed updating. it worked, bug free, in every thing I used the card for. actually, as far as I can tell, the new driver simply unifies the old XP driver and the beta(now final) Vista driver. let's see Creative do that

in the ten plus years I've been working on PCs I've always known CL to be a company that makes good hardware and offers poor support for it.

[mapes]

Does the fact that [some download website] located in a country (drawing a blank, ahhhhh) where they allow a website to host trackers for illegally created and downloaded content(movies, music, software, etc.) that would be shut down in most other countries in the world mean it is illegal there? No it does not. That doesn't stop many many many companies and corporations from sending Take Down Notices and threats of legal action though. It's what their lawyers are paid to do. In this case it was probably Creative's lawyers spotting this and just going....this is against our EULA...he must be stopped!! Without stopping to look at Brazilian laws. In this case he can't be prosecuted due to where he lives, but in most countries he could be if Creative so wished, and that's how they're looking at it, as they are a US based company. I think what really had them up in arms was that he was then accepting donations for a product they basically created to buy more of their products to "work" on.

The [some download website] case is very different. The industry kept saying they were infringing on copyrights and intellectual property. Which they clearly did not. They hosted no infringing material on the site. Basically it's the same concept if MS went after Google for infringing because you can find cracked MS software through Google.

[[TT]BrundleFly]

Headline News:

Brazillian man found floating in canal just some 20 meters from his home. Apparently upon autopsy, a Sound Blaster sound card was removed from his rectum. Reporters stated "The soundcard in his rectum does not appear to be the cause of death. It appears he was smothered to death with an electrostatic bag." No further details will be released at this time.

I'd wonder if the sound card still worked and I'd sue the dead guy's family as I don't believe using a sound blaster as a suppository is allowed in the license agreement... (Dude that sound card you got in your rig really stinks)...

EDIT: Let me put it to you this way: in some middle-eastern countries it is illegal for women to go outside without a burka on. Does that mean that women in the US who don't wear a burka are breaking the law?

It does if they look like this

[Slug{CLR}]

LOL Brundle!

Creative had little choice but to make some statement, failure to do so can serve to notify the world that its ok with them for this go on. I don't agree with how they went about it but I do understand why they did it.

[WalkinTarget]

this is a large part of why I sold my x-fi card some time back.

Bahahaa ... who's the sucker that bought .... errr .... nevermind.