This logo looks awfully familiar...
[screenshot of trademark infringing logo removed]
And they took the slogan too..
This site praises Portableapps, but... shouldn't they use a different logo?
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Yeah, it's a completely stolen logo.
They also rip off other products which gives us a bad name.
Someones in trouble now.
Our site is way cooler than theirs anyway.
Load the App and Play :evil:
This is a well-known ripoff site. You should edit website out of the title of your post or a mod will come by and do it for you. Welcome to PortableApps.com.
Quamquam omniam nescio, nec nihil scio.
Let me guess: same logo, only gold instead of grey?
Yeah, it's a shame, but while I understand the reason we don't, I still think it's cool how when you start his apps, they'll tell you straight away if they're outdated. They will also tell you if you're not running them as admin (Vista/7) with the option to back out and run them as admin... and he backs up his settings folder, with the option to restore the backup in the event something goes wrong. So he's definitely putting good work in. I won't use his illegal apps (commercial ones) but he does have some freeware app or another I have at home, can't recall which one at the moment. I am however suspicious of apps he takes from here and repackages with his installer and launcher.
I was talking to the guy a while back, hoping he could bring his skills here, go legitimate, but he just had this "hack the planet" attitude, couldn't bring him around. (I would have then tried to convince him to change his site's name and logo, but I figured, one step at a time, y'know?) Basically, he's out for all he can get and doesn't care who he burns.
Still, regardless of his skill, the utmost caution must be taken with his apps. AdAware didn't work, the one I tried, and Malwarebytes (the free version) stopped working after a while, and the "restore settings" option didn't do anything, it returned a funny error, so I just deleted the whole folder.
I wouldn't call what he does "skill."
Neither would I.
There is a certain skill to hacking. But otherwise . . .
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
Nor anyone here? Or is it only skill if you're 100% legitimate? Or if you started from scratch, so you would slight the authors of the R34 MOD or geek.menu as well?
I'm not taking sides because there aren't sides to take. John runs a cleaner shop here, and that's to be commended, but sometimes you've gotta give the devil his due. Otherwise, you end up looking foolish or hypocritical.
To summarize: John makes a launcher for an app that makes it portable. Josh takes the source for the launcher and expands upon it, adding an update notification, automatic settings backup, and a warning if you're not running as admin. From where I sit, they're both skilled. One may be committed to staying legal and the other may not care, but I don't believe these considerations change one's skill -- do you? That's all I'm saying.
Cracking a safe takes skill. Forging money, checks or other official documents takes skill. It's what you do with that skill that could be morally questionable.
spend the money and hope one doesnt get caught!
Please allow me to expand on that:
"spend the money :lol: and hope one doesn't get caught :evil: !"
Load the App and Play :evil:
If anything, John's the one who cracked the safe, but we're comparing apples to oranges. Of course, I'm not trying to accuse John of any wrongdoings, but if you consider the registry apps are tied to to be the safe, John's the one cracking it. Josh is just... I don't know. Using a better drill? Different drill? Yeah, bad analogy.
At the level I'm talking about, it doesn't matter what kind of apps we're talking about. It's just the launcher. The legal and moral levels are above what I'm talking about. I'm not even considering them; they're just details in the point I was trying to make. And it's irrelevant anyway, he's not interested in going legit or even contributing. And John isn't interested in his enhancements to the Format, for some reasons that are good for him, and perhaps, some of you as well. I disagree, but my usage is outside the target audience; that is to say, I use portable apps at home on a local drive, so John's reasoning that individual apps connecting to the network/internet to check for a new version being a problem for most portable users doesn't apply to me. Of course, I'm going to use John's version simply because I don't trust Josh, but he has some things we don't. But, the less said about that, the better; I'm not trying to encourage sedition in the ranks (yeah, I watch too much 24), and it's completely beside the point, and doesn't change the fact that he's willfully disrespecting this site and the hard work some good people have put into it.
Let me help you with your bad analogy. John is a man who is with the law and not trying to fight it. The apps are open source whereby he is going to a open safe with bent up dollar bills and smoothing them out so they flow through the vending machine better. Josh is going to a closed safe and opening it. John has helped make a great community of free software and users that only want to use the free legal stuff. Josh has made a community of uses that use free illegal stuff.
John is the one who is the better man because he has higher values. I had a friend convert me to PA.c because I needed apps to match home and school. I opened this site and it had a clean feel and loved it right away. I went to the other site and looked at the apps there and left because they didn't look clean. People here are nice and helpful and here is my app home. Thanks to all the devs, mods and John, this place has put a fire under my butt to want to help improve and write programs.
Load the App and Play :evil:
First, the safe analogy isn't mine, I just sort of rearranged it. Second, I've never disputed the moral differences or the differences in professionalism.
So let's drop the analogies. We're talking about open source. The point of open source is that it's open. Anyone can get in and make improvements. Make changes they like, and redistribute their version. Linux is the best example of this. John wrote/designed the PortableApps Format, the Platform, and others. The Platform has been forked; there's the R34 mod, and then there's geek.menu. The Format has also been forked, by Josh. It's the same thing. (Well, except that Josh doesn't play by the rules; in addition to stealing logos and distributing commercial software in a "cracked" format, he's not releasing the source code to his fork of the PortableApps format, and that's an open source no-no.)
Those are the facts. Venturing into opinion, while I could split hairs on your post, you're basically correct. Well, except assuming I disagree. Like you, I prefer PortableApps.com software as well. But using the PortableApps.com suite doesn't mean you can't use other software. PortableApps.com is a great place to start when loading a flash drive or external hard drive with portable software, as they probably run the cleanest game in town. But they aren't the only game in town, and that's all I'm saying.
You have a point.
Load the App and Play :evil:
I wasn't making an analogy. I'm making the point that there's a difference between judgment of skill and judgment of morals. It is possible to be highly skillful but morally questionable, I don't see how anybody could question that statement with any kind of logical, rational thought.
Now debating what is skillful and what is morally questionable could take infinity and a day*.
*Intentional irony before anyone questions it.
Nobody is debating that Josh has any moral ground whatsoever, himself included. He made it very clear that he wasn't accepting any authority over or responsibility for his actions whatsoever.
Skill is relative. For example, the person who made "I Made a Game With Zombies in It" (sic) for the Xbox 360 "Indie Games" platform is skilled (even though they ripped off Crimsonland pretty directly) but the team at Valve who made Left 4 Dead might disagree. Same thing.
Morality is subjective to the point of near hypocrisy; that is, it's hard for anyone to exert any kind of moral authority over anyone else because nobody's perfect. I might drive 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, for example, but be angry when I see someone blow a red light or stop sign. Yes that other person did wrong, but so did I in some way. I'm not trying to say that John did something wrong, but to imply that he's never done anything wrong, ever? It's absurd. I don't even give my wife that much credit, or my seven-year-old niece. Of course, to say "I'm sticking with PortableApps.com" or "I'm on Team John" -- that's fine. But to turn this situation into an epic to rival Beowulf is rather silly.
PS -- Dark, that's what an analogy is. Using a fictional situation to explain a real one. (Funny, I'd be the one known as/called Dark if I used the handle I've been using since 1992, "Dark Reality", but I made the rare decision to use my real [first] name here instead.)
Then I don't see what we're 'arguing' about.
I just think that people who say something is not skillful because it is morally wrong, is wrong in and of itself.
If you want to take this one off topic then "Darkbee" is actually derived from letters of all three of my given names. So technically, I'm using all three, just not in complete form.
We aren't arguing. Most people seem to agree with me; the points of dispute are as follows:
* Whether a skill is a viable skill if it is morally beneath us, and:
* Whether loyalty to PortableApps.com and/or John T. Haller constitutes a form of exclusivity (using apps exclusively from PortableApps.com, not changing the drive logo and/or volume name, not using a third-party theme or the R34 mod, etc).
And we're on the off-topic board, not sure you can really take a topic off-topic. Worst case scenario, the topic gets closed, and I'm surprised this one hasn't been closed yet. But as far as username origin stories go, that's pretty unique.