Racing Against Time

W00t, I got the gold RTM, two weeks pre-ship, ^Evil typed into the group channel. It needs a license key to install. Can someone look at it?

We have two weeks until others get a shot at it he added.

Gold RTM and two weeks pre-ship. At first confused, I suddenly realized what ^Evil meant: this was the final product released to manufacturing, and it would be another two weeks before it was shipped to the stores.

I hesitated for a moment, but could not help but ask, How d you hook up with that?

How? he asked, I m a supplier, that s how.

Less than an hour later ^Evil typed, I ve got another one. This one s going out tomorrow so we need to get right on it.

During my time inside the piracy underworld, it amazed me at how resourceful and hard working suppliers are, all in the name of releasing final product before it hits the stores. They will not sleep until a new release is cracked, packed, and released. They do not do it for financial gain they do it to be first.

How many project planners, PowerPoint presentations, and meetings do corporations require in order to do as much work as a warez (exaggerated plural derivative of software) group? The effort is staggering; a group of loosely connected people, often led by a high school or college student, taking on the largest software corporations in the world, and winning.

I began to understand the...