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Poll: Are you a software pirate?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#91

Post by maxharris »

rwhitman wrote: post #90
maxharris wrote: post #80

For all of you that answered "Yes", please don't pirate software. When you create anything, no one has a proper right to it except on your terms. Without you, that thing you've created would not exist. You should be concerned about proper rights because your life, along with everyone else's, depends on individual rights (this has always been true, but it should be quite obvious to us because our technologically advan…

I'm sorry but your argument that someone who buys legitimate software will produce better work is just ridiculous. Mastery comes from practice, not sheer will - someone who has to work all summer to acquire Illustrator is going to be far less skilled than someone who spent the entire summer learning Illustrator on a pirated copy. Almost every talented designer I know acquired their skills this way. I went to an art s…

How do you know you wouldn't be better in some other way if you had not pirated the software? Perhaps you'd be great in another field, and stealing kept you from finding that out.

I think that it is as possible to escape the negative consequences of bad behavior as it is to escape the laws of thermodynamics.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#92

Post by rwhitman »

maxharris wrote: post #91
rwhitman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but your argument that someone who buys legitimate software will produce better work is just ridiculous. Mastery comes from practice, not sheer will - someone who has to work all summer to acquire Illustrator is going to be far less skilled than someone who spent the entire summer learning Illustrator on a pirated copy. Almost every talented designer I know acquired their skills this way. I went to an art s…

How do you know you wouldn't be better in some other way if you had not pirated the software? Perhaps you'd be great in another field, and stealing kept you from finding that out. I think that it is as possible to escape the negative consequences of bad behavior as it is to escape the laws of thermodynamics.

Is this honestly what you believe? That a poor student learning on pirated software can condemn themselves - by sheer act of moral fate - to a negative path in life?

Who determines "bad behavior" exactly? You know, in my world view, publicly casting your own subjective moral judgment on someone else is considered "bad behavior".

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#93

Post by weaksauce »

bemmu wrote: post #83
roam wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked there was no way of getting those images working outside of Virtual PC.

Are people seriously supposed to download a new image every N months and go through a conversion process each time to get it to run on VMWare.

The alternative is buying windows. If you want it for free it's not that bad to download every N months.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#94

Post by Yaggo »

weaksauce wrote: post #55
Yaggo wrote: post #18

Yes. I pirated WinXP in order to run IE for testing purposes.

You know they give you a version of xp and vista for testing ie right? It's a virtual machine image preloaded but time limited. http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=21E...

Well, I still would have to pirate WinXP to run VirtualPC.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#95

Post by pbhjpbhj »

robryan wrote: post #19
reynolds wrote: post #4

I really only use free software. Outside of software development I don't really have any other software on my laptops. I have purchased tools and never pirate them. Is pirating more of a Windows user's thing?

I think culture does play a part, and reasonable pricing. It's easy for someone to justify pirating windows, especially if it's not their main operating system compared with OSX which is at a price point that no one but a broke teenager would really consider pirating it.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I may well be on this - approx Amazon prices.

Win 7 is from about £75 (home/student); Mac OS X 10.6 is from about £25.

With Windows you get all the upgrades free until the next major release. With Mac OS X you pay for point releases and that is the price we see here? I note that Amazon (UK) has OS X 10.5 priced at c.£110.

From Apple Computer's website, http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1338:

Reference releases; update vs. upgrade

Mac OS X v10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 themselves are not downloadable updates, they are reference releases, also called upgrades. This means, for example, you can't upgrade from Mac OS X v10.3 to Mac OS X v10.5 via a downloadable installer. Reference releases are available from the Apple Store online, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Distributors (AAD).

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#96

Post by SeriousGuy »

sliverstorm wrote: post #84
SeriousGuy wrote: post #23

no right now thanks to MSDN I get most of the stoftware via the university. Before yeah, esp MATLAB which is worth being pirated :D

I'm the other way, I consider MATLAB to be worth buying. First piece of software I paid for, actually.

I agree, one of the few softwares worth paying for out of your pocket ! :D Though being in India I didn't had that much money.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#97

Post by stiggz »

It's unfortunate, but PC games just can't stack up against Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii games.. not to mention the next-gen (3d?) systems that are coming out very soon. If any PC games were worth the d/l, they would be easier to pirate than buy outright, but they're not. I just rent PS3 games, no pirating, and a more satisfaction vs. time spent playing

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#98

Post by maxharris »

rwhitman wrote: post #92
maxharris wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know you wouldn't be better in some other way if you had not pirated the software? Perhaps you'd be great in another field, and stealing kept you from finding that out. I think that it is as possible to escape the negative consequences of bad behavior as it is to escape the laws of thermodynamics.

Is this honestly what you believe? That a poor student learning on pirated software can condemn themselves - by sheer act of moral fate - to a negative path in life? Who determines "bad behavior" exactly? You know, in my world view, publicly casting your own subjective moral judgment on someone else is considered "bad behavior".

Put another way: change "a negative path in life" to "a path in life lower by some amount (however small) than what it could have been otherwise", and you'll have an accurate rendition of what I think.

Yes, I honestly believe what I said, and I don't think that what I've written below invalidates it (but if it does, please tell me - I'd love to know!)

I didn't mean that someone that pirates software as a student is necessarily fated to outright doom, which is implied by "a negative path in life". We all have free will, and can choose to do better (or worse) every time we make a decision.

I contend that the consequences of piracy are indeed negative, overall, for that person's selfish interests, long-term. However, the magnitude of that consequence depends on the context. While nothing can make a bad action good (remember that good and bad imply a context), many people are good enough that a few small bad decisions won't destroy them completely. Consider the case of a person that's excellent in all aspects of their life except for one: on Sundays, they travel to a nearby store and write obscene messages on the mirror in the bathroom with a bar of soap. They're still very awesome, happy and successful, but they could be just a little bit better (richer, happier, more well rested, whatever) if they chose to do something else.

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