In the interest of being open-minded and flexible, I tried turning over a new leaf and actually paying for a piece of entertainment software. Naturally, I first obtained a pirated version and a crack and discovered that yes, indeed, I did want to play this particular game. Unfortunately, the cracked game generated an amount of graphic garbage, caused the mouse to move like molasses and screwed up my display upon exiting, so I determined that I would, for once, exchange some valueless pieces of paper for said software product.
I soon felt powerfully confirmed once more in my total disdain for intellectual property as it relates to software when the same problem immediately evinced itself and continues to do so despite monkeying about with DirectX updates, ATI driver settings and so forth.
But at least I paid for the software, so I can get the benefit of technical support, right? Oh, my aching sides! (wipes tears from eyes) That’s funny. The pirates know more and offer better support than the poor slobs on phone duty, assuming you want to wait 20 minutes to talk to them.
With all the modding communities that have sprung up, I give it 5-7 years before the first true, high-quality open source games start to appear. In fact, if there are any programmers interested in such buccaneering endeavors, I have an OpenGL/D3D engine, access to a classroom full of 3D artists who will take any rendering or animation assignment I want to give them and a pair of game designs. Let me know if you’re down with OSD and you’re interested.