id CEO Claims PC Hardware Manufacturers Love Piracy

arcticstoat sends a link to an interview with the CEO of id Software, Todd Hollenshead, in which he suggests that hardware manufacturers count on piracy to help drive profits, rather than doing something to prevent it. Quoting: "...I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content — even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs — is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games. ...And I think that just based on their actions...what they say is one thing, but what they do is another. When it comes into debates about whether peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that by-and-large have the vast majority, I'm talking 99 per cent of the content is illicitly trading copyrighted property, they'll come out on the side of the 1 per cent of the user doing it for legitimate benefit."

Manufactures like sales.

[nurb432]

Really? No kidding.

Re:But does it run Linux?

[tmossman]

Agreed. My backup laptop is a Thinkpad 600X that's been frankenstein-ed together from a series of donor machines bought "as-is" on the cheap. It runs Ubuntu no problems at all, on a 450MHz P3 and 192MB RAM. With a wifi card attached, it does anything you'd reasonably want from a laptop, and can be kept alive nearly indefinitely given the amount of spare parts I've amassed.

Built like an M1 Abrams, it is a hardware manufacturer's worst nightmare. Lesser, more "modern" laptops with their shiny metallic cases and accelerometer-protected hard drives would shit their boot sectors at the merest mention of the horrors this computational Sisyphus has endured. It is a laptop for the End of Days; I've faster gear, and I've better looking gear, but when the zombie apocalypse finally jumps off, I know which laptop will be strapped to my back while I grind my way through fields of the undead with shotgun and machete. It weighs somewhere around 12 lbs fully loaded, sports a crudely spray-painted camouflage paint job and, in a pinch, can be used as a bludgeoning weapon.

Re:But does it run Linux?

[eldepeche]

Yeah, the insinuation that Via has competent driver developers should have tipped you off that you made a mistake.