Creative versus Daniel_K

L

LoStMaTt

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 26, 2003
Messages
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This is a sad state of affairs that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention.

As you know Creative has been more than lacking in their driver development area for Windows Vista.

A hero known as Daniel_K came to our rescue and was able to fix Creative's software and restore full functionality for Vista users.

Creative has decided to ban Daniel_K and many other users from their forums and have removed all links to his modified driver package.

Without Daniel's work hundreds of thousands of people would have worthless sound cards sitting in their computer.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/046201
 
It sucks that they are going after this guy. With creative support so terrible this guy was like a ray of sunshine. I used 2 of his releases and they solved my problems with my X-fi back when the drivers were much worse then they are now.

I think what got them angry is his enabling Audigy users to get DD and DTS out of their cards where it was disabled by creative in the drivers. He helped a lot of people out though and not only with the Audigy.
 
The good thing is, there gonna let him keep working on the drivers for Audigy/2 and sblive. atleast there letting him do that. But i feel he messed up where he started to ask for donations. Because he was doing fine before asking for donations.
 
Yeah asking for donations was asking for trouble...Creative's forum is obviously pretty busy with Creative bashers now. Still, this is the final nail in the coffin for me...won;t be buying creative sound cards anymore (many would ask why I bought in the first place lol)
 
Was he asking for donations for the drivers themselves? I would think if he asked for donations to pay for a webhost to download the drivers then it might not have been a problem. Then again Creative probably would've taken action anyway...
 
SockMan! said:
Was he asking for donations for the drivers themselves? I would think if he asked for donations to pay for a webhost to download the drivers then it might not have been a problem. Then again Creative probably would've taken action anyway...
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Yea he was, because he was just gonna give the drivers to donators after creative stop his posting. But then just decide to stop all the way. Til creative decide to let him keep working on the audigy drivers.
 
AdmiralFlameberg said:
Yea he was, because he was just gonna give the drivers to donators after creative stop his posting. But then just decide to stop all the way. Til creative decide to let him keep working on the audigy drivers.
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His drivers are all over the torrent sites now anyways and this debacle will just encourage more seeders
 
supergrover said:
His drivers are all over the torrent sites now anyways and this debacle will just encourage more seeders
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Also it looks like creative is logging all who download it thru the torrents. because some one at creative is connected to the torrent, some one saw creative ip listed. in the torrent download.
 
AdmiralFlameberg said:
Also it looks like creative is logging all who download it thru the torrents. because some one at creative is connected to the torrent, some one saw creative ip listed. in the torrent download.
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Saw that in the forum (watching hockey game and taking a look from time to time). I never saw so many first time registrations...prob due to the 1000+ diggs
 
Creative really shot themselves in the foot with this stupid PR move. The story is spreading like wildfire across the net and I think Creative just lost a shitload of customers. Heh, I don't think I will ever purchase another creative card again knowing they cripple their drivers on purpose.
 
aznpxdd said:
Creative really shot themselves in the foot with this stupid PR move. The story is spreading like wildfire across the net and I think Creative just lost a shitload of customers. Heh, I don't think I will ever purchase another creative card again knowing they cripple their drivers on purpose.
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I pretty sure creative isnt the first to do this. If I remember right, their was other tech companies that done this to there products in the past.
 
Yeah...because ATi and Nvidia only release 1 or 2 beta video card drivers a year. Not to mention they purposely cripple their GPU of the functions they have on another OS.
 
The stupid thing is that I like the XFI and I have not found another product that works like it does (the Surround sound and huge number of simultanious sounds ability in XFI games with Headphones is amazing!), but Creative cant make drivers worth shit for it.

I wish creative would let a quality company pick the hardware up and write good drivers for it. I am sick of the hissing under Vista (which BTW in the same machine dual boots under XP and has no issues :rolleyes: )


Anyone find the XFI Drivers Daniel made? I would love to try them out (never actually had heard of them before this). All that is on torrents are for the Audigy series.
 
Nothing new here, Creative keeps doing the same thing over and over again. I stopped using Creative products along time ago.My last card was a sound blaster live! even then I wish I had gotten a Aureal card. before the live!
 
It's hilarious, really. You're a company that makes a product. People are pissed because they can't use your product. A lone man with more coding skill than every developer you've hired in the last decade comes by and write drivers that work and let your customers use your product, making them incredibly happy. Do you:

(A) Thank him and offer to host his drivers
(B) Offer him a job
(C) Offer him a job and lay off the rest of your incompetent staff
(D) Tell him to never let anyone see the drivers again under threat of legal action

If you picked (D), you may be qualified for a management position at a rapidly failing tech company!
 
Arainach said:
It's hilarious, really. You're a company that makes a product. People are pissed because they can't use your product. A lone man with more coding skill than every developer you've hired in the last decade comes by and write drivers that work and let your customers use your product, making them incredibly happy. Do you:

(A) Thank him and offer to host his drivers
(B) Offer him a job
(C) Offer him a job and lay off the rest of your incompetent staff
(D) Tell him to never let anyone see the drivers again under threat of legal action

If you picked (D), you may be qualified for a management position at a rapidly failing tech company!
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He isn't coding shit. He is just modding the driver packages and taking Creative drivers and trying to earn money off them, calling it donations. The drivers are just as much a result of engineering as the cards themselves and are IP.



This is the meat of the whole thing:

The funny thing is that you are faster "protecting" your technologies and intelectual properties than providing improved drivers and softwares for your customers.



You purposedly crippled and ruined the Audigy/Live! (Emu10kx) and the Audigy LS/SE/Value/Live!24-bit (P17) drivers for Windows Vista.



This just proves you don't really care about what your customers and what people think about you.
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..but, while this sucks real bad, Creative isn't the only company to do crap like this.



nVidia has bought other companies with products that were in current circulation and promtply canceled all driver support for those products for new versions of Windows.

3dfx - No 2k drivers for either Win2K or XP for Voodoo cards
ULi- No Vista drivers for any ULi chipset motherboards.
 
Man it takes a lot to pull me out of lurker land but this is pretty annoying.

I like Creative. I've bought their products. I'm not so narrow minded that I can't see that Creative might have some very good reasons for wanting Daniel_k to stop modifying their drivers. Telling him to stop on their public forum was probably not the best idea.

I don't plan on buying any Creative products anytime soon.

 
Yea, it is horrible PR. The either should have just enabled the drivers to work properly or let Daniel_K be the Omega of soundcard drivers. He kinda ruined it for them for letting the cat out of the bag about them intentionally disabling the drivers.

This all back fired on nVidia as well when the used lawyers to temporarly silence Omega, you figure they would learn from others mistakes and not make them themselves.
 
Met-AL said:
He isn't coding shit. He is just modding the driver packages and taking Creative drivers and trying to earn money off them, calling it donations. The drivers are just as much a result of engineering as the cards themselves and are IP.
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Decompiling isn't a walk in the park. Modifying a compiled program without access to the original source code can be just as difficult as writing the original program.

And no one's saying Creative wasn't within their rights - just that simply having the right to do something doesn't make it the smart or proper thing to do. I don't walk down the street yelling "**** AMERICA" although I'd be well within my rights to do so, for instance.
 
Stopping people from not having do upgrade is the only thing Creative can do stay in business. All they have that sell are sound cards, everything else they have is done 10 times better then another company. They've also long held the title of having the WORST driver support ever. Coincidence?
 
Sounds like i best grab the drivers fast for archiving before they kill them. My GF has an Xfi in her PC and once Vista sorts itself out she will proberbly want that moving to Vista to match her laptop.

I personally gave up on Creative a while back after issues with their soundcards. I enjoy my Soundstorm on my Nforce2. Guess i'll be having to look elsewhere for a soundcard when i get a new motherboard.

WTG Creative. See you in Chapter 11 along with SCO.
 
This issue is on the front page. Don't just complain in here, people. Let the company know your displeasure. They may not read it but the post and page count will get their attention. The email address of the VP is on their website too.
 
Arainach said:
Decompiling isn't a walk in the park. Modifying a compiled program without access to the original source code can be just as difficult as writing the original program....QUOTE]

In his own words:


"daniel_k
Super Contributor
Posts: 344
Registered: 04-03-2007



Message 14 of 76

Viewed 2,024 times





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cartel wrote:

Ok I guess I'm in the minority.
Although the 2002 driver is old as the hills, it remains the"best sounding"
but you have come the closest I seen, and for the average user, this is quite acceptable.
Can you tell me what I need to make my own driver?
any tools or compilers I need?
maybe a site explaining it?
thanks so much


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I didn't "make" my own driver.

It is just a working mix of different driver sets.

You can't make these old drivers Vista-compatible, unless you have the skills to reverse engineer it.

Even so, it is not worth the work.
"

He mixes creative's work. That's all. So he is effectively asking to be paid for creative's work.
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I have hated Creative Labs drivers for years now. The last Creative card I bought was a Audigy and ended up pulling it out of my system after just a year or two of use. I just use onboard sound now. Also I have been reading that apparently Asus is getting into the soundcard market with their Xonar series. I think I might buy one of them and give it a try.
 
RedStarSQD said:
He mixes creative's work. That's all. So he is effectively asking to be paid for creative's work.
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People pay GeekSquad all the time to make up for a company's inability to deliver a working product. The results may vary, but they still get their cut.

When you have a product that doesn't work the way it's supposed to, and someone comes along and fixes that product, getting it to work the way they're supposed to, I don't look at it as paying them for someone else's work. I look at it as paying them for fixing my problem. That may not be the way it ultimately boils down to, but that's irrelelvant to me. I have a working product now, that the company couldn't deliver in the first place. The person responsible for my happiness deserves their due. Anyone willing to go as far as Daniel_K did to make things work deserves more than a simple thank you in my eyes. At least someone cares enough to make things right. Creative certainly doesn't, or else they'd have a working driver in the first place.
 
Just read this on Guru3D, and seriously, what the fuck is Creative thinking?

It's seems almost like a nursery argument. Come ON! There might be deeper reason for this that I don't know of, but whatever it is, it still does not change the fact that the whole of Creative have been outdone by one 1337 d00d. amirite? :D
 
Creative is an awful company. The only reason it's still alive is that it's EAX has become an industry standard. I'd be happy to see it go under so a real environmental effects standard can be implemented.
 
You know,it used to be if someone was looking for a soundcard,one of Creative's would be the first one mentioned.Now that Vista is spreading out,the most common response is "go with the onboard audio".All because Creative has totally dropped the ball coming up with drivers that allow the cards to work properly.Whatever meager money this guy got for his efforts(c'mon,admit it,how many of you really pay attention to those donation request on freeware?),it pales in comparison to the benefit Creative gets from having drivers out there that actually work with Vista.They should be ashamed that some guy working alone could do what their whole programing team couldn't!
 
I was already done with Creative's crap. This was just icing on the cake.


Can't wait to pickup one of the new ASUS cards.
 
The thing is, hes not programming the drivers. he just changing a line here and their. And copying files here and there. Thats all. He not really reprogramming the drivers from the start.

I used to do something like this when I was modding Razer vista drivers, when Razer didnt have any. And I did the same thing.With the X-merdian drivers and the Razer XP drivers. Getting them to go around the whql thing in Vista. with a simple file copy.

Plus asking for cash for something you do not own and all you did is change lines and copy files over , is a mistake. That be like me walking into target changing a design on a shirt and then asking for donations to keep doing it.

He was perfectly fine not asking for donations. he ruin it when he started to ask people to donate him cash to work on the drivers. Unless he hosting it on his site, then he dont need donations .
It would had been something diffent. If he was hosting them on his site but he wasnt.

If he was programming he wouldnt be using creative code. Now those people who makes the KX drivers, their the ones who are programing/coding drivers. You can mod drivers but that dont make you a programmer or a coder. You just changing lines and copying and pasting files. Like the ATI and Nvidia driver modders are doing

So creative couldnt hire him any way, he not really doing any thing that a normal person cant do. If they needed some one, they would hire the KX driver team since their actually programing the drivers.

Theres a diffents between programing/coding drivers and modding drivers. their not the same thing.

I dont agree with daniel because, he wouldnt be in this mess thats hes in if he never done the donation. In my view he was just looking for a quick buck since he has no page to host the drivers, So all of those donations is going into his pocket for his own use. To me thats selling modded drivers. he was trying to do was making cash off some one esle IP and got upset when he couldnt do it any more.

Now I would actual agree with Daniel if he Actually programing this and that from scratch without the use of any of creative code. Or if he was hosting the drivers on his site which he isnt.
 
Met-AL said:
nVidia . . . ULi- No Vista drivers for any ULi chipset motherboards.
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It's included in the Windows Vista default drivers. I'm running Vista x64 right now on a ULi M1695/M1697 based mb. I have full PCi, PCI-express, USB, IDE, and SATA functionality.
 
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