Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning - Gizmodo Comments

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

skulldriveshaft — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:35:51 EDT

@shawn_dude: or they could just make different cards, instead of making one card, and crippling specific features on it with software.

would it be okay for a auto dealer to sell vehicles with v8 engines that only used 4 or 6 cylinders based on your purchase price? and if you found out that all you have to do is edit the ECU settings to enable the full 8 cylinders, and then to further edit settings to get cylinder deactivation when power is not heavily required?

Creative sold the hardware with the capabilities disabled with hardware - modding my software to activate them shouldn't be a crime.

But too bad, the courts have already sided with the likes of Monsanto. In a nutshell you are only licensed to 1 year of use, after which you are required to pay to be able to use the seeds again.

Thats okay I guess, apparently it's legal.

skulldriveshaft

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

shawn_dude — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:32:35 EDT

What Creative is likely worried about is product differentiation and planned obsolescence.

An example: The iPhone and iPod Touch. Almost exactly the same piece of hardware except the touch doesn't have a cell/wifi radio. To make the cost difference make sense to the consumer and to encourage people to buy the pricier phone, Apple intentionally disabled useable features on the iPod Touch (note taking, etc.) It was all about product differentiation. Why is the iPhone worth about $250 more than the Touch if they are pretty much the same? Apple can show that besides the cell phone feature, the touch won't do these n number of things. (even though that difference is largely artificial and kinda scummy.)

Vista was a perfect opportunity to drive customers to newer products at the expense of Microsoft's already tarnished reputation. If the Brazilian Modder is correct (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), the drivers were intentionally mangled on the older products in favor of the newer, more expensive products.

If this is accurate, then Creative would be quite upset at having a hacker out there ruining their strategy by making their cheaper products work better. Why buy the $200 card when you can be happy with the $80 card?

That's what he did to upset Creative. The donations and other stuff was just the legal hook Creative is using to stop him. Hire him? Heck no. That'd just encourage others to do the same thing.

shawn_dude

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Onouris — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:21:48 EDT

@jd_cincy: How? I've had the same sound card and 5.1 speakers for years, and years, and years, and I now run Vista and use both my computer's sound cards on a daily basis, and it works as well as ever.

Boy I was so strong armed into upgrading I never even noticed.

Onouris

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

adam_h — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:06:37 EDT

I just sent Creative a nicely worded email outlining my past purchases and my decision not to buy anything of theirs again.

I wonder if they'll reply. Heh.

adam_h

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

tinyhands — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:40:39 EDT

From what I read in their initial letter, what Creative is ACTUALLY concerned about is the use of their drivers on non-Creative hardware. Creative may have recognized early on that internally-developing the drivers that the Brazilian created would cause a problem in that they could be used on other cards. Thus, they chose to make some of their own cards obsolete and concentrate on newer, more patent-secure technologies.

Creative has every right to protect and defend their market share. But if they can't build a decent soundcard and proprietary drivers, that's THEIR problem and consumers are right to stop buying their products because of that. Don't stop buying them because Creative has a legal right to defend itself.

tinyhands

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

vinchbr — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:57:13 EDT

let me re-phrase that...
we do have a lot of time if we dont work...
i used to have a lot of time, but my h4x0r5 skills are lacking =P
computer science graduate and can´t do half of the shit he did for creative, i actually have a audigy 2 platinum ex that doesn´t work, simply because i´ve put a buggy firmware update in there...
it sucks balls, i love my audigy 2 platinum

vinchbr

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

vinchbr — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:50:07 EDT

@Monty: we have a lot of time in brazil, and hes probably in college right now =P

vinchbr

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Darrone — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:22:37 EDT

@mikeklein: Did I mention his job was eating doritos and farting on a snare drum? I think I did, soooo, yea. Someone pays me 50k a year to fart on a snare drum, they got themselves a grade a employee.

Darrone

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

mikecoscia — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:13:34 EDT

Man thank god I downloaded those drivers. My Audigy 2 works great now in Vista!!!!! F*** you creative, I will never buy anything from you again.

mikecoscia

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

cylonite — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:12:03 EDT

any chance for a class action lawsuit? wilful negligence?

cylonite

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

PynkFloydd — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:42:24 EDT

It's just been downhill since they got delisted from the NASDAQ, huh?

They actually had a solid plan with X-Fi by catering to gamers and audiophiles. They managed to royally F the execution up... They're gonna end up like Vodoo graphics if they keep this up.

PynkFloydd

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

yacoub — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:24:38 EDT

I haven't used Creative soundcards in years and I was a gamer. Most recently Auzentech's X-Plosion 7.1 DTS is my soundcard and it is excellent.

yacoub

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

strider_mt2k — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:07:09 EDT

The only reason I don't pull the Creative card out of my machine and go with the on board sound is the fact that offloading the audio to a card is better for gaming performance, and hey, let's face it:
The stupid thing is already installed and working!

So IN THE FUTURE I won't be as hung up on what card I run.
For now, with the machine I'm running it can stay.
For now.

strider_mt2k

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Bokusatsu_Tenshi — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:47:06 EDT

Oh Creative... that shitty company that continues having a shitty costumer relationship and continues releasing shoddy products because unfortunately, there are few other competitors.

Yeah, Creative does sucks. Not only on the stuff no one else cares.. like their lame attempt on 3D cards, mp3 players and other stuff... but also on their main product: sound cards.

Same Creative of "our sound cards makes CD quality music sound BETTER than CD quality music!!!" and bullcrap like that.

Companies like these eventually ends up dying poisoned by it's own greed.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

strider_mt2k — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:46:43 EDT

I never use those additional features.
I do a little gaming, watch the occasional video and maybe do some internet radio while I'm surfing.

The most I'll throw at it is running Audacity, but nothing major there either.

My days of worrying about sound card branding are over.
There's no need for it any more, and certainly Creative has done nothing to earn my continuing support based on what's coming to light from this story.

strider_mt2k

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

jd_cincy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:08:07 EDT

Creative has been scamming pc owners for close to 20 years, forcing them into pointless upgrades under the guise of new "features" and OS support.

I stopped buying Creative gear years ago, m/b 5.1 works fine for me!

jd_cincy

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

incomplet — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:25:04 EDT

Well I thought it was a lovely story. And he told it so well! With such enthusiasm!

incomplet

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

SBM_from_LA — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:24:02 EDT

Speaking about Creative's sound cards... I wanted to upgrade my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card, so I bought the Extreme Gamer X-Fi card because I had just purchased the Logitech Z-5500 digital speakers. The Card did sound great, but it suffered from the infamous "squeal of death", which many people were having with that particular card. What happened was... when I would play music or watch a video, the audio would play extremely fast. I was saddened to find out that creative never issued a fix for this problem, and just said if you experience this problem, try placing the card into a different PCI slot, which I did. Unfortunately, I had the same problem and just simply returned the card for a full refund. Not sure if I will ever buy another creative card. I put my original Audigy 2 back into my computer and with my speakers, they actually sound pretty good.

SBM_from_LA

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

MastaFalse — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:23:37 EDT

At LEAST.

I don't think I'll knowingly ever buy a Creative product again. And Cambridge Soundworks is owned, but technically apart from, Creative so I'll still go there if the price is right. What a bunch of dildos.

MastaFalse

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

mikeklein — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:12:37 EDT

@Darrone: 50k/year? Uhhh...try doubling that at least.

mikeklein

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

xrez — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:12:53 EDT

OK no more Creative products for me! If this is the way Creative treats people who are actually giving support for their products, I can imagine the horrors that support will be for an average user! I think everyone should boycott Creative products. Substitute their sound cards for something like the Razer Barracuda. Their speakers suck so go for Logitech or Klipsch instead. Heck their media players pale in comparison to the iPods. All in all, screw Creative products, as there are better ones out there!

xrez

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

rdldr1 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:02:46 EDT

Auzentech
Razer Barracuda AC-1
HT Omega
ASUS Xonar

They are what Matrox is to nVidia.

rdldr1

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

rdldr1 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:01:06 EDT

@ctthoqqua: sure you can use those cards, however its technologies are more supported by video game companies than any other brand. It may be clever marketing, but I've done my research before I purchased a new sound card. Creative sound cards are generally the best for games, Id like to see evidence otherwise.

rdldr1

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

badweasel — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:00:48 EDT

My question is why did Creative "purposly" disable features?

.... And oh yeah... buy a mac!

badweasel

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

ludwigk — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:51:46 EDT

Sounds like our protagonist here was fixing a lot of crappy, buggy drivers. And for that, Creative should just cut him a check, or send him a pie basket*, because he's frikkin earned it.

What's going to get him in trouble (and what Creative just cannot let him do) is enabling functionality in Creative's products that is licensed from other companies. Things like Dolby technology. It makes sense that Creative would build their asics/firmware with Dolby related support across the board, but then enable/disable based on whether the specific product being built out of it actually licenses that technology.

By enabling said features, Creative is opened up to law suits in terms of breach of contract, or additional licensing fees based on the size of the installed user base, or issues of "due diligence" in terms of their contractual obligations to protect the IP of their technology partners.

Creative is still a bunch of dicks, but in some specific cases, they may not have a choice in the matter.

* The guy lives in Brazil. He's probably up to his ears in fresh fruit, and bootylicious bikini models, so send him some pie instead.

ludwigk

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

GadgetPlay — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:39:29 EDT

It's "an X-Fi," not "a X-Fi." Does this bother anybody else? I'm seeing this sort of thing a lot lately. And yes, Creative's being a real dick.

GadgetPlay

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Rotnmeat — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:33:21 EDT

And I thought I had problems with creative drivers. Good thing I don't have Vista installed. I haven't bought a creative product in over 3 years and that was just because I "heard" that they retooled their drivers from WinXP instead of using the old hacked Win98 drivers.

I had a wonderful RMA experience where I was getting static interference coming from DVD playback. They said nothing was wrong with the board and sent it back without really doing anything. Their excuse was "we can't recreate every person's hardware configuration for the sake of finding a rare issue." If it's so rare, why not send me a new card?!

Customers: lifetime to gain, seconds to lose.

Rotnmeat

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Charles — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:26:41 EDT

@Darrone: Corporate Singapore, actually.

Charles

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

dbx — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:05:16 EDT

This should be recorded as a classic case study for every MBA student to learn how not to handle the precious commodity known as "goodwill". Creative was sitting on a gold mine because this guy was basically working for free to enhance Creative's product line and their reaction was to publicly take him down? This shows that Creative is populated and run by retarded monkeys and the fallout from this PR gaffe is going to cost the company its prestige, respect, and most importantly - clientele. Creative: you're not the only game in town bitches. There's plenty of competition out there and you just cut your own legs off by taking the most disadvantageous path possible for yourselves.

dbx

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Y2KGTP — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:03:39 EDT

Call him what you will, but he was tapping Rebecca Romijn for a few years....if he was smart the house was wired with X10.....

Y2KGTP

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

IrisMR — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:59:43 EDT

@Darrone: I agree. They should've hired him. but that would'Ve been helping their customers, showing gratitude... not pissing in their faces like they wanna do.

Never buying creative stuff again. Screw them.

IrisMR

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Darrone — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:54:44 EDT

@HeartBurnKid: Not suggesting they actual fix their drivers. I'm talking about from a PR standard. This guys job could be to eat doritos and fart on a snare drum twice daily, its just a PR gesture.

Darrone

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

ctthoqqua — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:50:33 EDT

@rdldr1, @Jestyr:
Also:

Auzentech
Razer Barracuda AC-1
HT Omega
ASUS Xonar

Creative is irrelevant. Screw them for what they did to Aureal.

ctthoqqua

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Monty — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:43:18 EDT

So what does Daniel_K do for a living that he has time to fix all of Creative's drivers for free? It is absolutely wonderful he is doing this, and I see no reason why he should not be able to collect donations to go purchase the hardware to fix the drivers for. (And hopefully have enough left over to buy himself dinner.)

Never the less, how the heck does he have the time to do this?!

Monty

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:41:42 EDT

@Darrone: Because Creative isn't interested in helping their customer base. They are interested mostly in creating purposefully buggy and underfeatured drivers in order to force customers to upgrade to the X-Fi.

And this is exactly why the whole open source movement is so important -- it takes away the ability of hardware and software vendors to do this.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

slush — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:40:47 EDT

I sent the PR Vice president of Creative Labs a little nasty gram. I know it probably won't get much attention, even though it should.

slush

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

David S — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:35:52 EDT

Jesse Katsopolis > Mr. T in every way, but especially as a macro.

David S

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Veracity_Inexcusable — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:32:53 EDT

It makes me tingle when i see someone doing the right thing. So many consumers get the shapt for the ole mighty dollar to flow into millionaire pockets.

Cha-ching for the little guy...

I will be buying ASUS PCI-E products from now on. they have the best PCI-E cards in the market and will continue to support htem indefinatly...

Peace

Veracity_Inexcusable

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Jestyr — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:31:56 EDT

@rdldr1:

Asus Xonar
Turtle Beach
M-audio
SIIG

all decent sound cards. Xonar recently got limited EAX support

Jestyr

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

fostina1 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:29:36 EDT

creatives just mad some kid fixed something that they have had a whole department working on since vista came out.

fostina1

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

DustyButt — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:26:32 EDT

What is this?!

No MR. T!?

Wha!?

I really thought if anybody had the stones to post all T all day it'd be the Giz.

Wow. That was disappointing.

***DUSTYBUTT PITIES THE FOOL***

DustyButt

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

ripfire — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:23:30 EDT

@rdldr1: Integrated sound.

ripfire

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

ripfire — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:21:50 EDT

Wait. Is this real? Or is this another joke?

Damn. I can't wait for this day to be over.

ripfire

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Way — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:20:45 EDT

@Git Em SteveDave: Remember when he was Jesse Cocker? I wonder why they suddenly changed it to a more Greek name?

Way

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

riqgeez — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:13:06 EDT

Mullets make me laugh! ROFLOL! He looks like a young Scott Baio.

riqgeez

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

rainfever — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:12:08 EDT

Actively screwing the software drivers on your product sounds like the most dumbassed decision making I've ever encountered. You know its just for their bottom line. Idiots, creative just lost allot of the respect i have for them.

rainfever

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

rdldr1 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:10:17 EDT

My question is that why on earth are people smashing their Creative sound cards? If they are a gamer, what brand sound card are they going to use now?

rdldr1

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Darrone — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:07:27 EDT

@BoinK: does anyone care about this except the hardcore blogging consumer? The people who care are the people that arent going to be fooled by their negatively attacking a modder.

Darrone

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

BoinK — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:05:54 EDT

@Darrone: But that would imply that they are not capable of doing the work themselves. Essentially they'd be calling themselves morons. Better to bury their incompetence I guess is what they're thinking.

BoinK

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:05:42 EDT

Uncle Jesse? Where are the rippers? Seriously, what does Jesse Katsopolis have to do w/ the A-team. Is this some sort of test?

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

shorty63136 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:04:27 EDT

@ Darrone - I agree. Don't piss on the guy like that and then say, "Oh, well here's a towel - a small one." He's really doing THEM a favor. Just hire the guy to fix your effed up problems.

Jerks.

shorty63136

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Darrone — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:57:22 EDT

Why doesn't creative do a grand gesture, please their entire client base, and hire the guy for like 50k a year. You get a shitload of nice press, you kill any negative feeding bloggers, and you make a PR mistake into a gesture of good will? nope, not in corporate america.

Darrone

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Necromatik — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:56:23 EDT

this is the old baby diaper full of Indian food and burnt hair trick isn't it?

Necromatik

Daniel_K, Creative Fixer-Upper, Responds to Corporate Shunning

Johnny Chimpo — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:55:51 EDT

I took one look at the pic and pissed myself! thanksfor the laugh, giz.

Johnny Chimpo