That post won't hurt your chances of becoming a tester... but this one might:
No better way to endear the developers but by bragging about using a stolen copy.



And using the same name you use on the forums and begging in every blog post deserves at least a +10 .





Kudos to this person, though:

using a stolen copy of trillian astra is pure pointless

say you got a hold of a copy, now what? i would assume since you have to sign in to the alpha testers section that you would have to do the same on astra just like you have to do to use trillian 3.1 pro... it's checked against a legit account. if you don't have this, you won't get past the login screen to begin with to even use the program.

The Chronicles of My Life

Not even close to true. I won't bother to explain, but you can sign on just fine.

Trust me, I really could not care less if that is the deciding factor for them. I am a paying customer so I am not stealing anything, but thank you for the useful comment.

Nice morals of convenience.

So say you bought a 2003 Mercedes E320. You're now entitled to steal the 2007 model?

There are tons of people who have paid for Trillian. There are less than 300 testers right now. They are increasing the numbers as they work out the servers etc.
I know that is not important to some people, it is for the rest of us.
If someone gets a "cough cough" copy and carries a problem to the servers and makes it harder for people to test, or makes a longer process, be aware that it will be your karma, not ours.

Please be patient people. Right now it seems to be a long process.
They are communicating on a regular basis, listening to the needs and have been very clear what they are trying to do right now.

Please don't jeopardize this by being selfish and stupid!!

Thank you.

What are you smoking? Yes, I am entitled to a year of upgrades. (a year that started a month ago)

So yes, I don't really consider it stealing in any vague sense of the word.

Okay so I missed that bit and blew the metaphor, you're still stealing pure and simple. When Astra is done, you get to cash in your upgrade protection. Right now you're committing theft. All 'upgrade protection' means is that you don't have to pay for the new version within a year, it does NOT mean you are entitled to take the software without permission.

I just signed up to be a tester a few days ago (I thought testing was only open to Pro users) so I'm thinking that Astra will probably be released before I am a tester.

I know that when Astra is done, it'll be released, but it is a little frustrating not knowing the time frame at all.... I wish they might be able to say .... in about 3 months, in 6 months, a really general time frame with wiggle room, so we would know when to start checking here.

I can see how they might not know when the bugs will be fixed, but it would be nice.

Paying customer or not, Astra is pre-release and not available for download except by invitation. If I were naive (which I'm not), I'd say that the only copies that are out there are in the hands of people who were given access legitimately. The difference is that those people have the intelligence to keep their mouths shut.
You're welcome (and watch your tone).
A year of upgrades that are released to the public. xxdesmus, if you're unhappy with your decision to pay $25, submit a support ticket with your forum username as the subject and I'll see to it that your $25 is refunded. That way you'll be receiving exactly what you're entitled to, nothing less. (Note, this offer is only valid for xxdesmus since he feels cheated.)
Isn't rationalization a good thing? Anna Nicole Smith (dead celebrity of the moment) probably didn't feel that she was a junkie because doctors prescribed her "medication"...

Wow, That Guy Really Doesn't Seem To Get It.

A year of upgrades that are released to the public. An alpha version of a piece of software does not constitute an upgrade when it is not released to everyone. If you weren't sent an invitation, you are not entitled to the piece of software at the present moment. End of story.

Sadly, to say... no he doesn't.

He's coming to a sad realization. Cancel or Allow?

The Chronicles of My Life

It's such a paradox...

On the one hand, it's the greatest thing in the world that so many people are so excited about Astra. I don't think Scott or Kevin could ask for more positive reinforcement to confirm the love for their vision and the work they've done.


On the other hand, people are frustrated and angry, feeling left out or unwanted and that's not really the intent. It's to ensure that the servers can handle the load and accurate testing can ensue. It doesn't mean that they don't want everyone to have it, it means that they want everyone to have it when it is bulletproof and works as designed. The sad thing is that people are willing to compromise their ethics to get their hands on it...

i agree, the ethics of some people make the groups of others look bad even if that wasn't their original intent.

The Chronicles of My Life

I think it's a major problem. Society almost unanimously feels that it's okay to steal music, movies, TV, etc. Tonnes of people regularly pirate software, and always have.

I admit that I download TV, but give me a break, I pay for cable. It's no different than taping it or capturing the signal to my PC. It's just less hassle. And even if you don't agree with that, at least in my case, it's perfectly legal in Canada. Paying for cable effectively gives you the license to download the content. However... bit torrent really mucks things up because distributing it is still illegal.

{sigh} what a sad society we all live in today.....

The Chronicles of My Life

Thank You Scott and Kevin and the entire Staff along with those that are squishing the bugs right now

And for those of us that have been around here any length of time know this and you don't hear from us, too much.
But we go through this with each new version, don't we?

Keep up the good work.

"Laissez Le Bon Temps Rouler"

yeah, we went through this when 3.x came out. not a word was spoken by anyone, updates were basically rare.

all of us users could only wait it out and wait for the final release.

The Chronicles of My Life

my only problem, is that a year ago in march I paid for a years worth of upgrades...and what have we gotten since then? My file transfers dont work on msn...but do on aim. and yet no updates for any of that. I hope this astra is worth the wait because if the file transfer system doesnt work. Then I am not paying another penny to them.

Well, first Astra was supposed to be out in final form many months ago, and I understand that sometimes things need to be pushed back a little bit for quality assurance. But, at the rate we are going now (adding like 15-20 new testers a week), it'll be at least 2009 before Astra is released. I understand the concept of easing the Astra Servers in, but there are currently over 10,000 testers who have applied for Astra. At the rate of 20 per week, over 10,000 total with that number growing each day - you do the math

Bump up the number of people to more, and deliver on your promise. You are already taking down the servers every week for an hour or two while doing work, if one week too many people overload the servers for an hour or two - no big deal. You are receiving way too much bad press for this delay, and how you are dealing with this rollout of Version 4 - and disappointing WAY too many paying customers.

I don't see a problem with using a cracked copy of Astra; you get a nice bonus: A zombie PC controlled by a backdoor program, rootkited of course so there's no detection by anti-malware tools.

Anyway, admitting to using the above in a forum full of Trillian-fanboys wasn't smart to begin with.

Also, we need a bublic beta soon. I'm dying to try out Astra I can't stand the super-ugly face of Gaim and Miranda anymore! Rescue me!

Hey Cerulean:

INVITE ME INTO THE TESTING PROGRAM OR I WILL BURN TRILLIAN ASTRA RIGHT DOWN TO THE GOD DAMNED GROUND

That's a new one. I thought he was joking until the cursing and regdate/postcount.
Uh. I think it's a safe assumption that Cerulean Studios are wholly aware of all of this.

I can honestly say that we're all ready for a full public beta release. It'll happen when the time is right. The worst thing in the world would be to release something too soon and have it not work. I think that would piss more people off than not having a copy at all.

Still talking about a program?
I think many people would love a world in which releasing a chatprogram too soon was the worst thing that could happen.

Heh, one of the reasons we're getting too excited about Astra and start bitching is that the devs are teasing us too much! We actually know how Astra looks like and how it works; all the screenshots and blogs took care of that. The more they tease, the less we can wait for the final or public beta.

heh...

S2ICeo swats at the dangling string of yarn in front of him.

The Chronicles of My Life

Most people don't keep things in perspective. You've obviously never watched the tech support queue fill up because something doesn't work (usually it's something like the MSN servers going down for maintenence or something).

If you mean the tech support on this forum, i did "some" posting there, mostly answers, and only a few questions.

There's a separate official tech. support system available to active Trillian Pro subscribers.

Let me say this, I'm a new user to the forum, even though I have been reading the post for some time now and have used Trillian for years. This whole Trillian Astra thing actually has me looking for other chat programs for several reasons.

First, why do the devs need to tease people so much, don't show us all these new and exciting features if we can't test them out. And don't try to compare this to cars, because its not the same, you can give someone an unfinished program to test out the feature, you can't do the same with cars

Second, why doesn't the development team take a page from the Opera desktop browser development team. Not to bash the Trillian dev team, but at times it seems like they don't care at all, the updates are irregular, they set dates or allude to dates and don't meet them, overall it gets quite annoying. Whereas the Opera dev team-who release new weeklies and info on Friday, almost always-actually releases its weeklies to the public to have them test out, why? Because they know the users that test unfinished products-like weeklies, alphas and betas-understand that the program might crash or not work perfectly but the users don't care because they get to help the program they like become better.

Overall the Trillian dev team needs to re-evaluate the way in which they go about advertising their product and teasing their customers. If Trillian is to gain more support, they need to stop the teasing and give us some hard code to play with and improve.