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.
For once I agree with MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Pirates seize Indian vessel with 13 crew members off Somalia [hindustantimes.com]
So I agree, piracy is a terrible problem. Our hearts go out to the families of the missing sailors.
However, I would think that Microsoft would be more concerned with copyright infringement that piracy. Are they planning an anti-copyright infringement day? September 19th [wikipedia.org] might be appropriate.
Really Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
pirates prefer Windows XP over Vista and Office 2003 over 2007
Its really sad when even Pirates don't like your crap. That's like making a movie which even the pirates don't pirate.
Think about it, people who can get it for free, don't want it, even as it is free. This is not boding well for Microsoft.
my own press release (Score:2, Insightful)
I hereby declare today as Global Anti-Proprietary Software Day.
Corporations and computer users all over the world lose untold trillions of dollars dealing with the pain of using software that they cannot have full access to, or effectively move from one computer to another.
No other option (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess M$ just hasn't figured out that because the sell only a bloated, slow, and crappy OS and no longer sell the good one, the only option is to pirate it. DUH
Re:For once I agree with MS (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn you. You beat me to it [slashdot.org]!
To be serious for a moment, does anyone else feel that Microsoft's crusade on software piracy is simply insensitive in the recent wake of high seas piracy? A lot of good men and women are out there getting killed just so companies like Microsoft can deliver their product around the world. Rather than displaying their global conscience and supporting the cause of defeating real piracy, they're worried about a bunch of 12 year olds who harmlessly steal software for kicks! Meanwhile, the vast majority of consumers who use Windows have actually paid for Windows. Repeatedly.
But that's not good enough for Microsoft, is it? They want to squeeze blood from a stone. Get every last nickel out of those horrible people who miscounted their licenses by one, or the people who load Linux/BSD/Solaris/Plan9 on their machines. (Because, obviously, anyone using Linux is ACTUALLY pirating Windows!)
You know what? I can't bring myself to care, Microsoft. In fact, I hope your company BURNS for those practices.
Damage to software innovation caused by Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
> raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy.
Which fades into insignificance when compared to the damage to software innovation caused by Microsoft !
Open source games instead of Xbox? (Score:3, Insightful)
And I'd like to remind everyone that the easiest way to combat piracy is by using open source software instead of Microsoft/Apple products whenever possible.
That would appear to include replacing, say, Xbox 360 games with open source games. Which Free video games do you recommend for me to play while kicking back on the couch? Is there an open-source first-person shooter that's as polished as, say, Gears of War or the Halo series? Or could you suggest an open-source alternative to Smash Bros. or Animal Crossing?
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their newest product line is so sucky that no one wants to pirate it.
Now that's an innovative strategy!
Re:Open source games instead of Xbox? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even pirates don't want Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
You know you have problems when even pirates don't want your software!
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
2007 isn't that bad. The effing "x" formats are a P.I.T.A but as per usual, the next Office version is a decent incremental upgrade, which will, in due course, be adopted by the business community at large.
If they followed the same sort of incremental, professional design philosophy with Windows, they wouldn't spend so much time having their user base frothing in hatred and rage.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the ribbon is that it assumes that menus and toolbars are not a quick and easy way of finding what you want.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, hopefully they are going to replace Paint with Paint.Net. That alone would be a huge step in the right direction.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the housing crisis was largely the result of above the board legal activity, that was the problem. There plenty of blame to go around, let's assign it:
1) American People: those saints who decided it would be wonderful to flip houses, get second mortgages, get mortgages they couldn't afford, take the equity out their houses and piss it off.
2) The government: created Fannie Mae in the Depression as a response to the gutting of the housing markets. They created Freddie Mac in the 1970's. They also gave these two institutions a virtual monopoly in securitizing loans...which they proceeded to do in wild abandon starting in the 1980s.
3) The government again: they (in the guise of deregulation) thought the Depression era restrictions on Commercial and Investment Banks was soooo Depression, the U.S. needed a modern banking system.
4) The Banks: they found they could get in on the housing crisis by making bad loans, creating way over-leveraged "assets", making their books opaque so that than even banks don't now trust each other.
5) The insurance companies who though credit default swaps were just like house and life insurance. They were wrong...in a very leveraged way.
6) The Federal Reserve: kept the interest rates waaay too low for waaay too long.
7) Foreign countries and institutions that thought it would be better to get in on the feeding frenzy rather than keeping their powder dry.
The list goes on. The problem due to shady or illegal deals was minor. It was all there in black and white.
Major pointless UI changes = BAD! No cookie! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you're just trying to troll the GP, but seriously -- who are these mythical "most other people"? The only folks I've run into that claim to like the MSO 2007 ribbon interface are posters here on Slashdot. My wife's previous school had MSO 2007 installed drive-by fashion unannounced and mid-year by their socially-clueless IT guy, and it caused no end of trouble. Suddenly teachers (and sometimes students) would take / email docs home and be unable to open them. Suddenly no one could find where anything was supposed to be, for some of them after *finally* having gotten used to the menus in MSO 2003 through much effort and frustration. Suddenly macros that helped glue the office's processes together stopped working.
Okay, granted, only the second issue above actually has to do with the ribbon UI, so to come back to that, the changeover was hell. Tens of hours per person, possibly more for some folks, that had been spent getting familiar with the old UI was completely undone by MS's ribbon infatuation. What a complete waste of time. And for what? MSO 2007 sure doesn't offer any new functionality. Heck, it breaks more than it innovates. The new UI was annoying as hell for me (still is when I have to use MSO 2007), and I'm a geek. And never mind the myriad frustrating assumptions MS made about who uses what most often when they designed the ribbon. Imagine how beyond-the-pale maddening it must be for users who are dyslexic (my wife, some of her colleagues, some of her students) and have trouble dealing with computers anyway.
Cheers,
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
The story behind the ribbon:
After each version of Office ships, Microsoft asks a selection of users which features they would like to see in the next version of Office. When they did this after Office 2000, a large percentage of the features users suggested were already-implemented. When they did this for Office 2003, even more already-implemented features were suggested. The conclusion was that Office isn't lacking features, but the UI is so arcane that nobody could find which features it had, or how to use them.
That's the problem the Ribbon is intended to solve. In actuality, it removed a few features from Office (dealing with custom macro toolbars, IIRC.) I think that it's definitely a move in the right direction. It might not be right for every application, but for programs like Word and Excel that:
1) Are used by myriads of untrained people
2) Have craploads of features
I think it's the right move. For something like Photoshop, point 1 doesn't apply, and for something like Notepad point 2 doesn't apply, so it's not right for every application.
Re:If it weren't for piracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, if it weren't for piracy, Microsoft would never have dominated the market in the first place. People buy at work what they have used at home. I can't justify paying $500+ for software I use only when re-writing a resume every few years or so.
How about Tax Anti-Piracy Day? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think someone needs to put together a special day (today would be good) called the Global Tax Anti-Piracy Day!
Tax Piracy is when you have a company in one country, but then setup a sham company in another country so you can avoid paying your fair share of taxes. These Pirate companies plunder the benefits of the real country of origin [finfacts.com], taking advantage of all the infrastructure benefits such as schools, roads, and police - but pay for very little or any of what they take by loopholes in their real country's tax system!
Just think of the billions of dollars lost by honest companies, and their lost innovation because of these Tax Pirate Companies [microsoft.com]. Think of the increased taxes that honest companies must pay. Think of the children who can't go to good schools because Pirate companies plundered the public coffers! This is a threat that must be stopped, and the pirate company's officers punished!
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you should have read the contract back then. My mortgage company can't legally tack on a bunch of bullshit fees. And you should have realized that with interest rates at "historic lows" (as every newspaper business section proclaimed in the headlines), they were unlikely to go anywhere but up. Especially if you had a "teaser" rate.
Did you not get a truth-in-lending disclosure? Did you not read the paperwork? The truth-in-lending disclosure is short and easy to understand, and sets out things like rates and fees. The rest of the paperwork is longer and more difficult, but it shouldn't be impossible for any geek type.
Unless they actually defrauded you, you're not a victim. Take some personal responsibility.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a different system. It doesn't work like the previous system. That means that, if you're familiar with the old system, you will have to learn the new system in order to use it -- just like you once had to learn the old system. This does not mean it's a bad system.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Insightful)
This does not mean it's a bad system.
No, the fact that it violates Microsoft's own UI standards is what makes it a bad system.
When every program puts "Save" and "Save As" on the "File" menu, there is no "learning" involved. You know where to find all the common tasks, because they are in the same place on every application.
The Office 2007 ribbon makes this sort of UI consistency impossible.
The Piracy Sham (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft and all these big name IP holders have, for far too long, used piracy as a scapegoat for everything from dwindling stock prices, to terrorism. What companies know but will never admit to is piracy is a market force that is in response to pricing and demand. Just as no company will ever get sales from every single potential customer (at least in the free market), there will never be 0% piracy in a product that is in demand.
As it stands there will always be a tiny percentage of people who will pirate a product. This minority is not a missed sale because it is in reality as non-sale. That small minority would probably never have legitimately purchased any copy of Windows and wants things for free. You cannot lose a sale that you never had in the first place. Now when you get beyond that small core group of pirates you get into potential customers/lost sales. As I said earlier this 2nd tier of software pirates would probably purchase a copy of windows if it was a price they were willing to pay. With a product that is so abundant as Windows there isn't a clear case of "I am not willing to pay X dollars for windows, so I will move on". This is where the demand comes in, people who don't agree with the price and are willing to take it should tell Microsoft two things, they won't buy it at it's current price and are only potential customers if the price was more reasonable to them. This may sound selfish or morally unsound but it nevertheless is a market force, even if illegal. If Microsoft wants the 2nd tier of customers to pay for their product they will have to do something that most large businesses and holders of IP seem to have forgotten, adjust to the market!
Implementing DRM, Activation, and using the law to crack down on pirates will never stamp out piracy as people usually adapt and adjust methods of getting something they really want. Look at the XP activation sequence, it seemed like a solid approach until someone figured out how to disable it. Windows XP is just as pirated as earlier version without activation. Nothing has changed except for pissing off legitimate customers. It becomes a shame when a pirated version of a piece of software becomes easier to handle than the legitimate version.
Microsoft already makes a pretty penny on the revenue that counts, a perpetual stream of income from OEMs, as well as business licenses. If Microsoft were to lower their prices on retail copies of windows, it would most probably lead to increased retail sales from non-business consumers. Businesses usually follow all the rules because their operations are under more scrutiny than an individual. This global anti-piracy initiative will not do anything except show how full of shit Microsoft is in trying to force the market on their own terms.
Ribbon not the solution wanted (Score:4, Insightful)
As nabsltd noted above [slashdot.org], menus are pretty standard for all other MS-based software -- except for this ribbon garbage in MSO 2007. Now, while I'm generally a fan of software companies listening to their users, the question MS asked and the answers they were given, funnily enough, had nothing to do with completely reworking the menu UI. So basically MS *wasn't* listening. Had they asked instead, "should we completely rework the menu UI?", I rather suspect that most existing users of pre-2007 MSO (i.e., the vast bulk of the potential market for MSO upgrades) would have replied with a resounding "hell, NO!" in consideration of all the time and energy *already* put into learning where the heck everything is. I mean, sheesh, with MSO 2007, they could have at least offered an easily-findable obvious option to toggle back into the older menu structure.
But, sadly, it is not the problem the users faced directly, nor is it the solution they wanted. Which is why so many folks are not a fan of paying through the nose for an "upgrade" that offers no appreciable new functionality while simultaneously guaranteeing hours of frustration as users try to find things again. Whee.
Cheers,