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.
Well, I'm glad to see Microsoft... (Score:5, Interesting)
...invest heavily in warships to help protect our shipping lanes. Nothing could be a better use of their money than helping stop the violence inherent in piracy on the high-seas. Already, many American warships are in stand-off confrontations with merchies taken over by pirates. I--
Sorry, what? This is about software? How Microsoft is concerned about companies who are missing one or two licenses out of 5,000 or 12 year old kids bragging that they got XP off of I13|<p1R4Cy.com? Pfff. In that case, screw 'em.
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Re:Minor correction... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Minor correction... (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you get over the fact that a few things are in different places
That's one of my biggest gripes about Microsoft! Why in the hell do they DO that??? How stupid do they think we are?
Pretty stupid, I guess. They take the same damned program, move shit around, rename other shit, add fluff and eye candy and then expect us to buy the sam load of dingo kidneys all over again and...
Hell, I guess we ARE that stupid. I mean, I have XP on my box.
We have Offoce 2000 at work. Does Office 2007 do anything Office 2003 doesn't? Or even anything Office 2000 doesn't? What makes it worth the extra Five hundred dollars per license????
Could this be contributing to our global economic meltdown?
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Interesting)
Would this be a good place to mention that it took me at least ten minutes to figure out what they did with the File menu so that I could convert an OOXML document someone sent me into a different file format?
Re:Ironically (Score:3, Interesting)
There is proof that Windows can be a decent OS, but they can't use it
Re:Can they do that? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:For once I agree with MS (Score:3, Interesting)
So, as much as we like to bicker over this particular usage, there seems to be some [wikipedia.org] contention that this is a historically valid use of the term, and way predates computers.
From the wiki article, it sounds as if it has been used this way in law for a couple of centuries.
Of course, someone will likely say the wiki article is wrong. I'd be curious to see any actual legal sources to see if this actually has been used like that for as long as it claims. If it has been widely used in this regard for that long, then we should stop bitching about it since it would, in fact, be a perfectly valid use of the word piracy.
Cheers
Re:Minor correction... (Score:3, Interesting)
You've bought into the greedster's lies. I was a victim.
I was paying $525 a month for a tiny two bedroom basement (yeah... ironic for a nerd) apartment. I bought a small two bedroom house (it really is a modest house) with mortgage payments of under $400 per month. A net gain of over a hundred bucks a month.
They adjusted my adjustable rate mortgage so it's now over $800 per month, PLUS a bunch of bullshit fees they're tacking on. It's as if they're in the business not of financing homes, but foreclosing on them. My last payment including the bullshit fees was over a thousand dollars, nearly my whole paycheck.
I can barely make ends meet now. The grocery store, the gas station, the bars and liquor stores, the restaraunts, are all paying the price - I have to come up with the extra they're asking somewhere. Yet I'm not getting relief (and as a result, neither are the businesses that are being hurt by the lack of my business), the banks that are causing the pain are getting the government's welfare check!
Trying to pay off a credit card ironically (and stupidly on my part) made my credit score lower, as I wound up late on my car payment.
You're blaming the victim. The banks knew what they were doing, those of us unskilled in the ways of banking didn't.
Re:The question many ask... And more will ask. (Score:3, Interesting)
We have Offoce 2000 at work. Does Office 2007 do anything Office 2003 doesn't? Or even anything Office 2000 doesn't? What makes it worth the extra Five hundred dollars per license????
That is exactly why I switched from the Microsoft platform at home. I have my desktop, laptop, the wife the same, and had various foster kids circulate through. The product simply isn't priced for the home family. Old versions were simply installed on every machine in the house from the one purchased copy. New versions cost more and are less useful with the anti-piracy stuff, so even the first copy is no longer purchased. Maybe they make up for the loss of me buying a copy by those who do buy 2 or more copies who didn't before.
The alternatives are rapidly replacing the Microsoft OS and productivity system of choice. My dad bought a Mac as many have. Many others have installed Ubuntu with it's default office suite. It's legal, cuts piracy, and isn't good for Microsoft.
Microsoft is losing pirates. They are losing them to the alternatives and in doing so, are losing control of the platform.
Re:Minor correction... (Score:5, Interesting)
As in I work in IT and it took me 10 minutes to find the Save As option the first time I used the beribboned Office ...
I use OpenOffice because I can find things on the Menus ....
Re:Minor correction... (Score:1, Interesting)
Vista Failure. (Score:0, Interesting)
You guys wish I was not reporting a consensus opinion [slashdot.org]. Call me when Vista surpasses Mac's market share in the general population or GNU/Linux developer interest. In layman's terms, massive fail [slashdot.org].
This just in, Steve Ballmer says Vista is as good as M$ can do [slashdot.org]. Don't say he's crazy for doing the same thing and expecting different results. Sell, sell, sell!
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Re:Damage to software innovation caused by Microso (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think that they are subtly hinting that downloading free software ("piracy, open source - it's all the same") is "damaging to software innovation"?
They are using the same language of "piracy" as they have done for Open Source and (especially) the GPL: it limits their ability to "innovate" (embrace, extend and extinguish). This is possibly setting the scene to link the two in the minds of ill-informed people like legislators, managers and the general public (in no particular order).
"Piracy" and FOSS are both threats to Microsoft. One is illegal and the other perfectly legal and legitimate. But Microsoft would love to see them linked, and to have FOSS tarred with the brush of "illegal, illegitimate".