..on or around Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 04:07:07PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > This whole conversation was really interesting. Here in the Digital > Media Design program at VUW we encourage students to learn how to > research and teach themselves what they need create projects in > response to design briefs. We give them starting points to begin their > inquires. We don't require students to purchase particular software > in order to complete a degree(I doubt that architecture students are > required to buy super expensive CAD > programs for their degree).
in many universities students are required to learn applications they can't afford to buy, and so invest time in aquiring crackware. this is normal and well known. the software vendors themselves realise that this is a vital part of their distribution strategy - from a cracker's perspective much of the Macromedia suite was offered on a silver plate (for instance). in a few digital design departments i have lectured at the computer labs are severely under-resourced and so it's understood students must 'find their own way'. at the R.M.I.T architecture department there were around 20 computers when i was loosely involved with the place, some of which were entirely dedicated to rendering a single scene for the bulk of the day during exams. every student complained it was unworkable. a typical 'Interactive Media' degree requires students learn the entire Adobe suite, a couple of 3D animation packages and a film editing package. even at educational license rates (in that rare case) the inventory budget per student can come to thousands of dollars very quickly. at the end of the day, the fact is Uni's most often require students to steal to get by. Uni's want to be competitive in a marketplace built around proprietary software and so push the responsibility of aquiring these tools onto students in the reality of not being able to afford licenses for all students all of the time. it's practically an 'nudge-nudge' affair, passed from teacher to students, much of the time. before i moved entirely to open-source software some 7-8 years ago any artwork i did was done using cracked software. of course it was. i didn't know another artist that actually bought Flash, Director, 3DSMax, Maya, Lightwave, Rhino, Final Cut Pro [etc] and i sincerely doubt - given the state of art's funding in New Zealand - that situation has changed today. the development and consequent peer-distribution of strategies for stealing software has been vital to the development of this thing we call 'digital arts' worldwide. personally, i'm glad to have invested the time needed to no longer have to play that game ever again. julian -- http://julianoliver.com http://selectparks.net emails containing HTML will not be read. _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
