Microsoft Calls Today Global Anti-Piracy Day 500
arcticstoat points out an article at Custom PC, according to which: "Microsoft has announced that today is Global Anti-Piracy Day. Launching several global initiatives, the aim is to raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy. ... As well as educating people about piracy, Microsoft has also initiated a huge list of legal proceedings that it's taking out against pirates. Microsoft isn't messing about when it says 'global' either. The list of 49 countries that Microsoft is targeting spans six continents, and ranges from the UK and the US all the way through to Chile, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and China." Interestingly enough, unauthorized copies of Vista might not be harming the company all that much: reader twitter was among several to contribute links to a related story at Computer World which highlights Microsoft attorney Bonnie MacNaughton's acknowledgement that pirates prefer Windows XP over Vista and Office 2003 over 2007.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Informative)
Pirate Bay is celebrating too - sweet pic of Bill (Score:1, Informative)
Re:If it weren't for piracy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:2, Informative)
Or you could click on that huge button on the top-left corner, which replaces the 'File' menu for the most part.
I have a lot of gripes about 2007 myself. But the Ribbon is actually usable after minimizing it and customizing the Quick toolbar to the things you use most often. Vertical screen real estate is a priority for me. With the ribbon minimized, it has a much smaller footprint than most other applications. My biggest gripe(other than than defaulting to the failed draft OOXML format) is that it does not follow OS conventions for theming and can look out of place if you use custom themes.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Informative)
Office (or at least Word) 2003 has ONE invaluable feature that Office 2000 doesn't. It actually understands its file format well enough to open and recover a corrupted file instead of having a corrupted word file (which large ones ALMOST ALWAYS get) cause random crashes and unexplained formatting behavior.
Now granted, you can't really sell a product on the fact that it knows how shitty its file format is and can compensate if you specifically tell it to do so, but at least I can write a test plan that doesn't melt.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:2, Informative)
Paint was last updated when they released Vista - they changed the default palette ;)
--- Mr. DOS
Re:Ironically (Score:3, Informative)
Takes about a hour to set up, you can integrate all your drivers and everything, and then install it on any computer you want.
I use it on my gaming machines and it simply flies. Far more to my taste than Tiny XP, because it comes with all my registry tweaks by default.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Informative)
Right-click the title bar and click properties. Or, if you want it to persist, create a shortcut to cmd.exe and edit its properties.
"QuickEdit Mode" matches copy semantics to selection, and paste semantics to right-click. Without that, right-click has a context menu with paste anyway.
I also like to expand the command history buffer and in layout, change the screen buffer size (and you can dick with the colours and fonts too to get rid of the appalling raster font). All of the stupid defaults are backward-compatibility crap to make it work with ancient DOS-only programs that assume things like 80-character screen width. Win7 seems to be promoting Powershell to a more primary place, which will sidestep some of this compat stuff and let them leave the old cmd.exe alone and compatible forever.
There's a command line for changing all of these but I can't be bothered memorizing it.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Informative)
Note that the MIT license is permissive, which wouldn't require Microsoft to actually share the source upon distribution (also note that Microsoft used to include a BSD licensed networking stack).
However while looking at the exceptions noted on that licensing page [getpaint.net] it looks like Paint.NET's license isn't compatible with Section 6 from the Open Source definition.
You'd have to replace the GPC library [man.ac.uk] it includes.
Re:Can they do that? (Score:3, Informative)
I must say that the sheer amount of American "special days" is ridiculous, and takes away any meaning they could ever have. A quick google on October:
# Adopt-a-Shelter-Animal Month
# Computer Learning Month
# Family History Month
# National Apple Month
# National Clock Month
# National Dessert Month
# National Pizza Month
# National Popcorn Popping Month (wtf!)
# National Roller Skating Month
# Polish American History Month (they need a whole month?)
# National Stamp Collecting Month (oh yeah)
The first week in October is Fire Prevention Week (don't bother with it any other week of the year), the second week is Teen Read Week.
Special Days:
01/10 * Homemade Cookies Day
01/10 * World Vegetarian Day
02/10 * Name Your Car Day (no way)
03/10 * Captain Kangaroo Day
04/10 * National Golf Day
04/10 * World Card Making Day (why define things as Global or World when it's only in America?)
05/10 * World Teacher Day
06/10 * Child Health Day
09/10 * Leif Ericson Day
09/10 * Moldy Cheese Day (this one I like)
12/10 * Farmer's Day
13/10 * Columbus Day
14/10 * Indigenous People's Day
15/10 * National Grouch Day
15/10 * National Poetry Day
16/10 * Boss's Day
16/10 * Dictionary Day
16/10 * World Food Day
17/10 * Black Poetry Day
18/10 * Alaska Day
18/10 * Sweetest Day
20/10 * Monster Mash Day
21/10 * ANTI PIRACY DAY WOO
22/10 * National Nut Day (AKA President Bush Day)
24/10 * National Bologna Day
24/10 * United Nations Day
25/10 * National Denim Day
26/10 * Mother-in-Law's Day
28/10 * Plush Animal Lover's Day
Is anyone seriously gonna wake up and think "OH! IT'S MOLDY CHEESE DAY!" or prepare weeks in advance for national denim day? Why do they exist? Is it mostly companies that make these up in the hope of upping their revenues? :(