   Why?
  When people know you''re good at computers, why do they assume you''ll help them warez stuff? 
  Because they''re dumb. ;  I take great pleasure in declining to help people who come to me with problems with their pirate software."Richard, could you take a look at [Game X]? It won''t run.""Where did you get it?""I downloaded it, but it''s...""Go away.""Huh?""I don''t help people with illegal software. Get the fuck out of my study."Such a release, especially because the people who do it tend to be the people who irritate the heck out of me. ;quote:Original post by superpig  I take great pleasure in declining to help people who come to me with problems with their pirate software."Richard, could you take a look at [Game X  ]? It won''t run.""Where did you get it?""I downloaded it, but it''s...""Go away.""Huh?""I don''t help people with illegal software. Get the fuck out of my study."Such a release, especially because the people who do it tend to be the people who irritate the heck out of me.   Thats exactly how I feel. I mean wtf is wrong with payign £30 for  a game to support the people who spends 2-3 years developing it? ;  Someone at my school called our Office of Information Technology to ask for the school''s Direct Connect hub IP address... ;quote:Original post by Zidane  Thats exactly how I feel. I mean wtf is wrong with payign £30 for  a game to support the people who spends 2-3 years developing it?   Indeed. But even beyond the ethical arguments, the simple quality issue is there; you can''t guarantee that the game ever would work in it''s pirate state. Files may be missing, hacks and cracks may have broken other aspects of the game, or systems like FADE may be in play. More often than not, it renders trying to support that kind of thing completely futile; at least with a proper commercial game you''ve got some guarantee that it''s of a reasonable quality. ;  For some reason I always get people asking me to "program my satellite card to get free TV". Like I''d have the faintest clue of how to do that in the first place, and in the second place they want me to commit a federal crime punishable by 25 years to life?Gee. ;  In a similar vein, I always get people asking me questions about programs I''ve never/rarely used. No I don''t know how to do a line graph in Excel, nor do I magically know where Outlook stores *your* emails, or how to work your crazy webcam software, or how to do weird image and text layout in Word Perfect. ;quote:Original post by Mithrandir  For some reason I always get people asking me to "program my satellite card to get free TV". Like I''d have the faintest clue of how to do that in the first place, and in the second place they want me to commit a federal crime punishable by 25 years to life?Gee.   25 to life? Man that is one fucked up judicial system.   I Want My Island"The same people who so greatly oppose slavery, so much that they are willing to kill over it... have just forced me to fight the battle for them."- Robert (I Want My Island) ;  The best part is when you''re at parties and you tell them what you do for a living and they ask you if you can fix their Windows installation.Which, more often than not, is broken by some virus they got from a pr0n or juarez site. But yeah, what''s so wrong with paying $60 to buy a chunk of software to support the people who write it?   Resist everyoneI am your only friend. Click here for more information.