21 Jul '06 20:28>
Originally posted by HomerJSimpsonExcessive? If you can afford to have TWO CPUS in your computer and you feel you NEED an engine strong enoung to take advantage of them is $110 really that much? The high end in any markey will be priced much higher. Furthermore, just because it's expensive does not make stealing correct. Ferraris are expensive too, does that make it any less wrong to steal a Ferrari? You DO NOT NEED Deep Shredder 10 or any chess engine for that matter and you have no right to steal it. If it were water that were far far overpriced and you had no money, stealing would be acceptable to preserve your life. This is not the case here.
It would bother me if the engine were a little bit better priced, Deep Shredder is $110 which is quite excessive in my oppinion for a program that is less than 2MBs, and what makes it worse, is that most programs you buy like Any DVD give you free upgrades to new editions, not the case with Shredder.
Moreover, you show an amazing lack of ignorance by comparing the work devoted to a program by size. Chess engines have no GUI to take up lots of space and are a completely different type of program to what you are used to. It is no wonder that they are small. However, this is no indicator that making the engine was an easy job. And again, this is a ridiculously stupid argument. Saying that something was easy to make does not justify stealing. Maybe I think pizza is easy to make and not a great value, should I steal from Pizza Hut?
The chess software market, despite what you believe is actually not that profitable. For example, it is even uncertain if there will be a Chessmaster 11 due to lackluster sales. I'm not saying it is the best chess program ever, but it does show that even big companies have trouble making business work with chess. A big part of that reason is people like you. Just look at all the copy protection mechannisms Ubisoft had to impose on the rest of us because of you, it's a pain in the @ss and it still didn't work. Please don't force Vasik and other engine authors to do the same thing. Be moral.