Journal greginnj's Journal: Free SW Alternatives
Re:hmm
(Score:5, Insightful)
by zerocool^ (112121) Alter Relationship on Saturday December 10, @07:25PM (#14230765)
(http://www.fredrock.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 13, @11:24AM)
It's getting to the point now in my life where I'm financially stable and can afford to buy the odd game. But, even as such, I usually try before I buy, and that means piracy. For example: I just played through F.E.A.R. It took me about 8 hours to beat it. And, upon starting up again, I've realized that it has no replay value whatsoever. $55 for 8 hours? Thanks, but no; I'm glad I didn't buy it. It's uninstalled. On the other hand, Age of Empires III I downloaded, played, and liked; and I'm going to go buy it.
I origionally pirated my copy of Neverwinter Nights; but because I enjoyed it so much, I ended up buying the retail version, both expansion packs, and paying for all the downloadable premium modules. And I'm talking as they became available; not years later in the ultra-mega-pack for $40. I probably have close to $180 invested in Neverwinter Nights.
Every time I feel guilty about this policy, I end up buying a game and being pissed off about it. The latest example was Doom III - I bought it, and played it, and it too has lackluster multiplayer and no replay value.
It basically boils down to if you make good games, I'll buy. But, if you put out crap, I won't.
However, it should be noted that this only goes for 1.) Games and 2.) MS Office. Now that I work for tech support in the CS department of a university, I have access to the MSDN Academic Alliance copy of Office, so that's now legal, but I used to pirate it. However, I also used to feel bad about it; since I knew that the only reason I was pirating it was because I needed to be able to create word documents for specific purposes (resume comes to mind), and it's what everyone else uses; I'd have been technologically happy with Open Office. But it's to the point where I've found free programs to replace all the little things I used to pirate.
For example; CuteFTP - now I use FileZilla. Eudora - now Thunderbird. Nero - now I use burnatonce; though I'm still looking for a free (beer; possibly speech too) CD Burner that doesn't suck - burn at once burns images, and does it well, but doesn't do anything else. Photoshop - Gimp. Norton Corporate AV - now AVG Free. I don't even remember what I used before Exact Audio Copy. And I want to know where VLC has been my whole life.
I've also stopped downloading TV programs and Movies. Movies basically because I never go to the movies anyway (baby) and anything that's good, I'll buy when it's on DVD (I'd rather sit at home comfortable and be able to pause). TV - now that I have Tivo, I don't miss anything; and I've sort of gotten over the need to archive everything; but should I want to archive, I can always use TiVo desktop, a program to strip the DRM from the files, and re-encode the MPEG2.
So, basically, I'm pretty much proof of "if it's reasonably priced, I'd just as soon buy it". I'm also proof of "If you put out crap, and claim that piracy is hurting your sales, you're wrong: it's either too expensive, or it just sucks".
~W
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sig?
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(Score:5, Insightful)
by zerocool^ (112121) Alter Relationship on Saturday December 10, @07:25PM (#14230765)
(http://www.fredrock.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 13, @11:24AM)
It's getting to the point now in my life where I'm financially stable and can afford to buy the odd game. But, even as such, I usually try before I buy, and that means piracy. For example: I just played through F.E.A.R. It took me about 8 hours to beat it. And, upon starting up again, I've realized that it has no replay value whatsoever. $55 for 8 hours? Thanks, but no; I'm glad I didn't buy it. It's uninstalled. On the other hand, Age of Empires III I downloaded, played, and liked; and I'm going to go buy it.
I origionally pirated my copy of Neverwinter Nights; but because I enjoyed it so much, I ended up buying the retail version, both expansion packs, and paying for all the downloadable premium modules. And I'm talking as they became available; not years later in the ultra-mega-pack for $40. I probably have close to $180 invested in Neverwinter Nights.
Every time I feel guilty about this policy, I end up buying a game and being pissed off about it. The latest example was Doom III - I bought it, and played it, and it too has lackluster multiplayer and no replay value.
It basically boils down to if you make good games, I'll buy. But, if you put out crap, I won't.
However, it should be noted that this only goes for 1.) Games and 2.) MS Office. Now that I work for tech support in the CS department of a university, I have access to the MSDN Academic Alliance copy of Office, so that's now legal, but I used to pirate it. However, I also used to feel bad about it; since I knew that the only reason I was pirating it was because I needed to be able to create word documents for specific purposes (resume comes to mind), and it's what everyone else uses; I'd have been technologically happy with Open Office. But it's to the point where I've found free programs to replace all the little things I used to pirate.
For example; CuteFTP - now I use FileZilla. Eudora - now Thunderbird. Nero - now I use burnatonce; though I'm still looking for a free (beer; possibly speech too) CD Burner that doesn't suck - burn at once burns images, and does it well, but doesn't do anything else. Photoshop - Gimp. Norton Corporate AV - now AVG Free. I don't even remember what I used before Exact Audio Copy. And I want to know where VLC has been my whole life.
I've also stopped downloading TV programs and Movies. Movies basically because I never go to the movies anyway (baby) and anything that's good, I'll buy when it's on DVD (I'd rather sit at home comfortable and be able to pause). TV - now that I have Tivo, I don't miss anything; and I've sort of gotten over the need to archive everything; but should I want to archive, I can always use TiVo desktop, a program to strip the DRM from the files, and re-encode the MPEG2.
So, basically, I'm pretty much proof of "if it's reasonably priced, I'd just as soon buy it". I'm also proof of "If you put out crap, and claim that piracy is hurting your sales, you're wrong: it's either too expensive, or it just sucks".
~W
--
sig?
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