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Originally Posted by Phantom
Every single piece of software directly affects and manipulates your CPU and hard drive. Yet you don't worry about that.
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Uh, yes I do worry about that. Again, as I said, I have a general idea of in what ways things like IRC clients, media players, etc. should use the CPU and hard drive. Again, if I don't, I have people I can ask.
I know that, for instance, if I'm having a problem with my video card, my IRC client probably didn't cause it. But, hmm, my update to the latest version of DirectX might have. Time to see if anyone else has had problems. Or maybe I could look over the publically available information and documentation on the latest version of DirectX beforehand and see if I should install it or not, if I was concerned enough.
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Originally Posted by Phantom
That's why you're being irrational. There are viruses out there that can damage hard drive boot sectors, so it wouldn't be much of a problem to add code like that to any software.
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Yes, but, you see, there's this thing called anti-virus software that most smart people have installed... (and I like to think of myself as being at least normally functional in the intelligence department)
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Originally Posted by Phantom
You don't know what evil lurks under the hood of Winrar. You trust it because, after all, thousands of users have used it and nobody has had any serious problems with it... yet.
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Yes. And obviously you can get burned eventually... witness the whole WMF debacle, for instance. Nothing is 100% perfect and foolproof and risk-free. But, yeah, the fact that thousands of users have used it and there's been no major reports of serious problems is in its favor.
But wait, what's this StarForce thing? Look, there's been quite a bit of media attention with many people saying they're having problems! Kind of not a good analogy, is it?
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Originally Posted by Phantom
It's the same with the latest versions of Starforce. There have been no reported drive problems with it yet.
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Not *yet*. But there have been many reports of people getting burned by previous versions. I'm still going to be wary for a while.
Furthermore, that doesn't help with the games that got shipped out with the previous damaging versions. Has there been a recall?
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Originally Posted by Jackal
Fine, I'll rephrase. No commercial company would. I assumed that was obvious.
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Er... up until recently, you had to shell out $40 to get an ad-free version of Opera. And Opera still makes money in other browser-related ways. They are definitely a for-profit company, with employees on the payroll. In what way are they not a "commercial company"?
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Originally Posted by Jackal
That's why there are defamation/libel laws. I'm not a legal expert, so I won't spell it out in detail, but again, I assumed it was apparent to people that there's a difference between saying "go boycott this malicious software" and "people have complained of problems with product X." Maybe not.  |
Sure, there's a difference. But if you think a bit of software is dangerous, you're within your rights to tell people to not use it/boycott it. For instance, what about when US-CERT sent out recommendations that people not use Internet Explorer?
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Originally Posted by Jackal
I already said that. Want to make any other self-evident points? It's StarForce's legal right to sue them, too.
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Yep, that is. I have to admit I almost hope they do, since then maybe we can get to the truth of who is right and wrong and settle the matter. There certainly are far "easier" ways to do so, but if StarForce wants to play it that way, well... so be it.
Peace & Luv, Liz
