FREE (but at a price)
139,000,000
Wow! That's a big number. It's the number of references which the www.google.com search engine found for the word 'free'. I'm sure you've all seen it filling websites, television screens and advertisement boards on every street corner (even on your favourite team's sport shirts). It's a very powerful word which grabs the attention and appeals to the greed nature of man (or woman). We don't want to pay for anything. In an ideal world there would be no need for money, no need for barter, just a swapping utopia where objects are taken, used and discarded without a care about their cost, or the great effort which it took to create them.
W@rez
This is a hot topic on the web and will continue to be so for many, many years to come. There has been countless attempts at creating 'crackproof' software and often it has included using some extra hardware ('dongle' device). But all recent attempts have thus joined the great big pile of 'nice try, but no cigar' cracked software of yesterday. There never has been, and probably never will be, a 100% crackproof piece of software or hardware. Due to its nature it MUST be easily duplicated in order to sell it to hundred, thousands and (in very rare cases) millions of people. If it can be copied by the software distributors, then it can be copied by others too.
As home computer systems come even more powerful with terra-flops and other crazy naming standards becoming familiar words to most users, it seems that the software's complexitity and (sadly) price looks ready to sky-rocket as development teams multiply in size in order to create these gigantic binary beasts. You only have to look at the new 'hotware licencing' (or whatever the MonkeySpank Corp. is calling their pay-per-use software) to see why 'free' warez software look so attractive to many people.
Let's face it, who in the world can afford software that costs anywhere from two or ten times more than the price of their entire PC system? How many blank CD's can you buy for the price of a 'budget' piece of software? And how many cracked programs can you pack onto just one of these 700 MB disks? Of course W@rez don't come with the glossy box and a huge printed manual. This used to be a big hurdle to the illegal users because the software was close to impossible to use without them. But things change. These days manuals in .PDF (Portable Document Format) are almost as easy to download as the cracked software itself. Even the developer's/publisher's website give you access to them. And consumers demand easy-to-use software, software which can be used without ever picking up the manual.
The Dark side of W@rez
Up until now w@rez seem like a really good thing. You can grab the latest appz, gamez, mp3z or moviez at almost no cost to you. Its 'a FREE ticket to ride on the software bus'.
But let's remember that there is a price on this 'free' software which goes far beyond the few dollars/euros or whatever currency you use for the cost of a blank CD. There is an impact on the developers (the coders, the artists, the musicians, the designers and all the other production members) for the 'loss' of a sale. Many companies have gone out of business due to poor software sales. It's a sad fact that many good, small, independent developers have ceased to be while others simply push up the price of their software to cover the loss from w@rez.
Okay, you might be saying, "Tough shit. If they can't produce good software which people want to pay for, then they deserve to go out of business. They are overpaid as it is." But most of the w@rez industry doesn't care about good software and supporting its developers for their good work. In fact, the better the software is and the more popular it is, the more quickly the w@rez industry want to crack, pack and stack it onto their illegal software pile. Good software comes at a price. It costs huge amounts of money to design, code, bug-test and tweak it into the stable product you see. Cracked software often isn't stable due to badly removed protection schemes, corrupted files or, in the worst possible case, infected with a virus, worm or trojan.
Of course it would be unfair to tar all the crackers with the same maligious brush. Not all cracked is unstable and/or infected. Let's remember that original software straight from the box can be very buggy too.
Your infection collection
Let's be honest here. How much of your software collection is paid for? How many 'burnt bargains' do you have? How much money have you saved? How many times have you actually used that w@rez disk which you wanted SO badly, but didn't have the money?
Did you collect that CD because you REALLY needed that software, or simply because you've got a bad case of 'gold (disk) fever'?
Another claim of w@rez is that it lets you try the software before you buy. So how many of you have actually bought that full application that you use everyday once you've found a working w@rez copy? How many piece of good shareware have you bothered to pay a few dollars/euros for?
Anti-virus software, firewalls and service-packs are all good measures to help protect you from infected software, but you will never be 100% safe. There continues to be dangers for using pirated software, either from bad cracks that make applications fall over, back-doors which steal your important data, viruii and other data-detonators, to hefty fines for possessing and/or distributing illegal software.
(C)opied Copyright?
Perhaps the funniest thing you will ever see on a 'free' w@rez site is at the bottom of most front pages. Now scroll down through the long, badly formatted table of non-working links, blind circle buttons, pop-up script windows, countless porn banners, forced voting systems, buggy scripts (which often nuke your browser) and you will spot some tiny text at the bottom of the page. Which reads something like '(c) copyrighted 2001 F#*ked-up-Kripp3r-w@reZ Kru' Hmmm.. exactly who is this warning directed towards? Why should anyone take notice of 'their' copyright when they have blatantly violated other people's copyrights in order to fill their webspace with w@rez?
FREE and legal
Okay, so you have never touched warez, so you have nothing to worry about, right? Wrong! Surf around with a while and so you will encounter a free service. A free email, some free webspace, a free mouse-mat, some free music or some other free service. All these seem too good to be true. "There is no such thing as a free lunch".
Your privacy and intellectual property rights can often be the price for 'free' stuff. You are forced to fill out forms, provide personal information and give marketing companies a wealth of data about your profile. What websites you visit, what items you buy, what music you listen to, what adverts hold your attention for the most amount of time.. etc.. etc.. Look closely at the 'terms of use' on the sign-up page to that new, 10000 GB webspace you are about to hit the Submit button on. You can spend hours, days or weeks creating your masterpieces to fill up your webspace, then later you realise that the host owns ALL of your hard work. They have the complete right to sell and distribute your work.
FREE canned meat?
Everyone on the planet has been hit by that digital plague, spam. Even the lost tribe in Eastern, Rumble-tumble land recieve junk e-mail (strange when you consider that don't even have electricity ;). For some it's just a small inconvience, for others it's a monster pain in the ass. Have you ever wondered how much space and download time is wasted each day by spam? No? Neither have I. ;)
Your personal data is a valuable resource which companies gain large amounts of money by selling onto other companies in order to spam. Trust me, I know. Those innocent looking websites you visit can leech information without your knowledge or conscent. Do NOT trust any site. The ones which 'promise' (not in a legally binding way) to keep your data private and will not pass it on to others. In fact there has been many recent cases where giant companies have betrayed their 'promise', taken their vast databases and sold them onto third parties. Visit the news archive at www.slashdot.org and you are sure to uncover some very well known names in the 'spam halls of shame'.
Windows XP (eXtinct Privacy)
Can it be true, will the next version of Windows operating-system really force users to keep an open line to the Gates? The rumours of pay-per-use software is surely the final nail in Microsoft's coffin. Will it enable poor users to pay for their OS over a long period of time, or will it be a repulsive way of collecting protection-money from serious users? In the past service packs and other security upgrades have been a free service. And rightly so IMVHO, if you buy something and it doesn't work properly, aren't you entitled to either a small amount of compensation, or a full refund?
Of course the MonkeySlappers will use the tired old arguments about software piracy and this week's groovy buzz words to justify their backdoor into your home. Ever noticed how Internet-exploder jumps off to www.microsoft.com every so often for an update? If this is really a automated upgrade feature, then why do we still need to download megs and megs of service packs, security fixes and new browser components every week or so?
The initial registration of Windows XP could be an extention of current data harvesting technique. Like the hundreds of input fields on a sign-up page to another ICQ clone, or all sing, all dancing e-mail service, Microsoft have the same goal in mind; that of collecting user profiles. With the expansion of the Internet onto even more diverse hardware and wireless communications become popular, it can only be a matter of time before some company tracks your every move, every message, every purchase and every decision. In fact everything is already in place to do so. Some cable television companies offer internet access for free so long as you are prepared to fill out regular market-research questionaires. Give them more personal data and you get free stuff. I'm guessing Microsoft have already looked into the world of cable box with internet access.
Why do I need to fill out a form just to install a new soundcard? They really don't need my personal information (except for extra profit that is). If the product is good, then I will buy some more in the future. If it is bad, then I won't. See, there is no need for lame marketing studies, expensive ad-campaigns or social engineering. Just make good stuff.
Conclusion
There is no such thing as a free lunch, unless you pretend that you're having a heart attack in the restaurant, or find a dead bug floating in your soup.
Happy fishing