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Piracy Built the Romanian IT Industry
An anonymous reader submitted a link to a Washington Post article about a very interesting press conference. Romanian President Traian Basescu stood up in front of international press and discussed the role pirated Microsoft software played in bringing about the IT industry in the country. The other big player at the press conference was Microsoft chair Bill Gates. Gates' company was opening a technical center in Bucharest, and he declined to comment on the president's remarks. Romania passed anti-piracy laws nearly 10 years ago, but nearly 70 percent of software used in the country continues to be of an illicit nature.
A: Romania is officially a democratic republic.
B: "socialist" is a broad term which can refer to many kinds of government.
Uh, what? Fuck that shit. I live in Romania since I was born and the level of technical education is nothing close to high. Most of the IT professionals I know are either self taught, either have gone to university to another country.
But what the president said it's true. And you should have seen the "WTF did that dude just say" look on Billie's face.
This is not your signature.
You say that "most bussinesses have legitimate licenses". I would beg to differ.
There might be a few companies that do; but, majority, by far, and MANY government offices, don't. Well, unless in the last year and a half since I last went there things changed RADICALLY.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Take off the rose colored glasses and see how the world really works:
In 1842 there was still no international copyright law, a condition that was stunting American letters and depriving authors on both sides of the Atlantic of a living. Britain was willing to recognize the copyright of foreign writers--but only if their countries reciprocated.
This American publishers adamantly refused to do. Instead, they competed in bribing English pressmen to get early sheets of British books. The sheets were rushed by boat over to the United States, where the jolly pirates churned out cheap editions in a matter of hours.
But it was not only British authors they were robbing. Few publishers were willing to pay American authors for books when they could purloin better-known British ones for free. Herman Melville was hurt by the lack of an international copyright, and such eminent American authors as Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne had to pay publishers an advance, rather than vice versa, in order to have their books produced. The early giants of American literature had to scramble for work at customhouses and in other government jobs, and Edgar Allan Poe, according to his biographer Sidney P. Moss, had to raise advance money for one collection of poems by soliciting 75 cents a head from his fellow West Point classmates, to whom he then dedicated the book.
"The Americans read [Dickens}; the free, enlightened, independent Americans; and what more would he have?... As to telling them they will have no literature of their own, the universal answer (out of Boston) is, 'We don't want one. Why should we pay for one when we can get it for nothing.'"
Copy Wrong
Most of the companies around here have legitimate software installed due to the fact that most of the companies selling software require WINDOWS with a licence installed. If you want to get your money as expenses, you have to install the damn windows. I hate to say this, but Romania is a MS stronghold, thanks to pirated software. I still have to see an accounting program running in Linux. And on top of that most of the shitty accounting programs require MS Office installed if you want to print something - the hell if I can understand why on Earth would you need that, probably just sloppy programing, and more then that you get no fucking warning about this shit. You have to call them to assist you. Just hate this.
If you want to pay the taxes you have to install a program that runs only in Windows.
On the other hand Vista is so demanding that more then 99% of the computers I sold this year wont support it.
So all hail MS!!! Romania te saluta!
If he had released a local edition at an affordable price, that would be commendable. But he preferred to allow pirated editions to build his market share, knowing that eventually he would be able to wield the big stick of trade sanctions and the carrot of investment and convert these to legit versions.
MS has resisted low-priced editions because it would raise the question, in a global market, of why the product was drastically more expensive in the West. Grey market imports would cut into sales. A couple of years ago, however, when Thailand was promoting Linux, suddenly a cheap reduced functionality version of Windows was released in the region. It's always about preserving market share.
Romanian salaries are 10 times lower than in the US - if MS would sell Windows 10 times cheaper than in the US, most Romanians would buy it... no comment.
Currently, Windows costs about 3 months of a student's scholarship, or almost a month of a beginner engineer's net income.
it is mostly an IRC joke.. But it just so happens tht 95% of romanian chatters use the Grave key instead of the Apostrophe.. like "they`re" instead of "they're".. or "you`re" instead of "you're".. you get the picture..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*