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Only 244 Genuine Windows Vista's Sold in China
morpheus83 writes "Whilst Microsoft was bragging about the sales number of their latest OS Windows Vista, few would actually know that they have only managed to sell 244 copies in the whole of China in the first 2 weeks. You heard that right, and that's the number quoted from the headquarters of the Windows Vista chief (90% national volume) distributor in Beijing."
That's gross + 100.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Records are there to be broken.
I think every single legitimate sale could be considered a victory.
My twitter
There are 8,576,336 users already.
The other embarrassing figure Windows failed to release was that they have 243 employees in China--revealing that the only other copy is unaccounted for but, curiously enough, has been verified as 'genuine' by the WGA website five billion times.
Well, they only have a few small factors working against them.
1: Less performance than XP.
2: Lots of bugs.
3: Perceived lack of need to upgrade.
4: The fact that china is the piracy capital of the world.
5: Windows vista costs more than two dozen weeks wages for the average worker, so its expensive even to the rich.
Next on /., stories about how piracy is hurting MS!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
If you look closely, the vertical text on the right side of the Windows box says "Windows Vista Ulimate 2007". Given that we're talking about China, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, NO.
Did this make the front page? I'm as anti-M$ as the next guy, but come on, a few lines on a blog... with a pic of a baggied dvd case?
Geez, what's up with Firehose today?
My Babylon
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
244 copies ought to be enough ....
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
The distribution and packaging cost should be bigger for the Chinese version. Microsoft should have terminated the development of the Simplified Chinese version of Vista.
Ummm...not to be too pedantic, but I've never heard of "Windows Vista's". I have heard of Windows Vista, the plural of which is "Vistas".
...as in the Windows Genuine Advantage? :o)
So.. it has come to this
I don't even know one Vista user here in the States. This OS has been a real flop for Microsoft. Notice they don't give stats for actual activated copies of Vista or customer sales--they only give the numbers of OEM licenses sold. They did the same with XP to inflate the numbers.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Chinese Microsoft Genuine Advantage register stored on one Excel spreadsheet.
244 copies is what, 2.44 copies per new computer sold in China since Vista's release? I'd say they ought to be satisfied with that ratio.
No wonder since Microsoft started leaking Vista Retail upgrade links legally http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microso ft%3Aen-us&q=vista+retail+legal+http+links
Cheers!! Abdul Aziz
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Blame that one clumsy pirate who failed to stick the disc into his drive without scratching it 243 times beforehand.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The irony here is that the box, the CD case, the CD itself, and the hologram were all manufactured in China along with most of the Vista-compatible hardware there is in the world.
That are 244 master copies for the pirates...
Due to the overwhelming piracy in China, whatever genuine # came out would seem pathetic. Anyone have the stats on "genuine" DVD sales in China?
640 kopies should be enough...
Therefore expect 100% market penetration in China in approximately 3 more weeks.
Oddly, the only references in the "story" (TFA) are a circular reference back to site itself and an unintelligible link to a story in Japanese. I see nothing that substantiates the claim of 244 copies sold.
...
Really poor submission
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
unsigned char number_of_copies;
'nuff said.
What about the legit copies sold with new computers in china? I'm sure they amount to something as revenues for microsoft. It is understandable that vista sales would be low. As you could get the copy for a very very low amount of money from pirates.
That's right! Especially if you were never going to purchase it for any reason whatsoever anyway. They still have the cd to sell that you were never going to buy. Flame me, I dare you!
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
That's probably how many they would have sold in the USA by now, if OEMs weren't putting it on machines.
Where I work, people are scratching it off their new machines and installing XP.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Only 244 copies sold, yet there is probably an install base of 100,000 users already.
Those who can do. Those who can't sue.
This is not a good thing, people.
Isn't this the same slashdot that celebrates mass piracy? We all know that the chinese don't buy software, music, or movies and for some bizarre reason everyone on slashdot celebrates it. They are taking money from us-- they are blatantly robbing our largest industries. This isn't bringing us any closer to the magical open source commune you people envision for the future, it's only bringing us closer to poverty.
What do you think the US's role is in the world market? How many of you work in steel, ammonia, or aerospace?
I don't suppose any of you work in software, which depends on sales- possibly web industries that depend on paying customers who aren't buying bootleg products- maybe even the financial industry, which is adversely affected by the lack of revenue our media firms and software companies see out of China.
Stop being fanboys and start thinking like we're competing in a world market and our jobs are not secure.
I suppose you'd all like to see the market shift to an open source model, where all the code is written in east europe and china where its cheaper, and those of us who once wrote software here are then waiting tables for the executives and managers who were smart enough to outsource all their R&D and engineering as soon as possible.
Selling software, entertainment products, and media in China is really the best outcome for our middle class- it doesn't only benefit a few fatcat moguls, like most of you have fooled yourself into thinking.
China has been pretty frank about not giving a crap about piracy.
Who are the 244 morons who actually paid?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
When I lived in Beijing, my g/f needed Windows reinstalled on her comp but didn't have a CD. We went to a local market in Chao Yang district and bought a copy of XP for 8 yuan ($1). They have boxes of cd's in shrinkwrap...Autocad, Photoshop, Flash, whatever you need. And if you buy a bunch you can bargain for a discount. Don't even get me started on DVD's... Combine that with the fact that beer is cheaper than water over there and you can see I obviously had a good time :)
Let's hear the Slashdot crowd claim, once again, how software piracy is not really theft, and how it does not deprive the software-maker of anything of value.
And, of course, how the software-maker's steps to prevent the piracy are unethical, while the piracy itself is not.
I think you have that backwards! When a consumer is forced to purchase Vista with their new PC, it is the purchaser who is deprived of value. I'm willing to bet that even in China not too many people are even pirating Vista, never mind buying it...Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
THIS... IS... oh, wait; I guess it's not quite enough for Sparta yet, huh? Um... er... let me get back to you in a couple of weeks, k? Here's some earth and water in the meantime.
Wouldn't even break the top 10 of Blu-Ray.
First of all, I'm willing to bet there are very few "Vista-capable" computers among the "middle class" there in the first place. Second, Windows Vista is expensive as heck for someone over there -- it'd be like buying a car I reckon. Third, pirated copies are available for $1. That's one dollar!
What kind of IDIOT would you have to be to pay for a "genuine" Vista in China when you can buy a "non-genuine" one for a dollar?!
Marketing it in China was a huge waste of money. But whatever, Microsoft has money to burn.
I like basketball!!1!
When you can pirate like everybody else there?
If it weren't for OEM software being installed on machines before the sale, MS would have gone under already. I think it's likely that while pirate copies are hurting sales, most of the people buying pirated copies wouldn't have shelled out for the real thing. Even if Vista's copy protection had been 100% bulletproof, sales would still be dismally low. XP is a fairly solid operating system, and Vista is failing to bring anything new to the table. The desire to upgrade simply isn't there.
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NSFWI agree that in some part, piracy is theft. Some stuff I will buy even though I have to sell a kidney to get it like Adobe CS3 or the new Dreamweaver. I can handle buying those. I just can't justify paying more money to M$ for an OS that really hasn't proven itself yet. Maybe in two or three years I will be willing to pay for it, but for now I'll take my illegal $1 Chinese copy thank you very much!
Let's none of us deny that software piracy is illegal and to some degree... wrong (in that you're doing something to something someone created that they don't want done to it, of course, that doesn't say anything about just _how_ wrong it is... i would bet, not that wrong ultimately). However, poor sales of the software in China alone does not say anything about causation, simply correlation.
My point is this. Sure, piracy exists, but we cant blame poor software sales on piracy _alone_. After all, if we were to do that, people might start doing crazy things like complaining that people wont buy crappy music because of internet downloads, when the reality is that some music just sucks. If we had awesome Vista sales in the US, and poor sales in China, and you considered Chinese market factors on the process and built an actual model to analyze it, then maybe, maybe you could say something conclusive about piracy. You however, are just making a bigoted guess, at best.
Many people don't know, but the US exerts complete juristication and control over exports. I would have thought MS-Vista falls under the "publicly available" software exemption, but this wouldn't cover ITAR rules on munitions (incl encryption).
Commie Chinese only need ONE chinese sale then EVERYBODY has the chinese version of vista. Whaduya expect from a peasant farmer demographic, tivo users?.
Oddly, sales of blank CDs went up dramatically in China shortly after the release of Vista.
It seems all 244 copies were sold to Microsoft's Beijing quality testing center.
There is no economy in this.
Bulk of the profits from any mega corporation goes to major stockholders' pockets, and they either stash that cash up in swiss banks, or spend them on lavish houses or cars, restaurants and whatnot at inflated prices - the fraction of population who benefits from those are pathetically small percentage of the society.
It has been that way since first colonial companies have been founded, and it is still that way today.
Read radical news here
It is copyright infringement. Depriving someone of YOUR money is not a crime on its own. By your logic, if I make a burger at home, I'm stealing from McDonald's. It is up to each country to decide whether copyright infringement is a civil matter, a criminal matter, or not a problem at all. Also, you have absolutely no proof that any Chinese have pirated Vista, you are just assuming and libeling a whole country. Maybe they don't want Vista because it SUCKS, hmm, you ever think of that smart boy?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Microsoft pirates YOU!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
243 copies shipped to Chinese branches of Western companies. 1 copy shipped to the Chinese government.
spun up headlines in 2 weeks: "Bill Gates declares, 'Windows Vista huge success in China!'", "88% of Chinese computers run Windows Vista!"
What!? people want to spend as little as possible?
My god! This is awful. I mean it's not as though Microsoft want to charge aas much as possible for their stuff.
And it's not like anyone was forcing anyone to buy the software in the first place, unlike the bastards holding a gun to Microsoft's head forcing them to write Operating systems.
ha ha! Those 244 people must feel pretty dumb right now!
I 'won' a free copy of vista ultimate for attending a MS installfest in mtn view (at the MS campus, one sunday afternoon).
I spent the whole day there doing a test upgrade of my xp box to vista. quite a few things didn't work for me.
the deal was that we give MS some feedback on the install and we get, in return, a retail boxed ultimate copy.
they kept their promise and I got mine in the mail.
however, I don't plan to install mine. not sure what I'll do with it, but even for free - I'm not willing to install the drm-posing-as-an-os on my system.
I do use XP for photo work (and xp makes a GREAT platform for vnc-client, btw) but xp will be the last MS o/s that I ever install.
when people refuse to install legit copies FOR FREE, then you know you have a PR problem on your hands..
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Microsoft should be able to sell what it wants, at the price it wants with whatever DRM and restrictions like its ET = "Phone Home" stuff and whatever else it wants, because it is a free market out there.
But CUSTOMERS always determine success or failure in various markets. With the 244 MS China sales reps, IT guys & crackers having bought a copy of VISTA to jump start sales, the rest of China has given MS's VISTA a slamdown.
3rd world sales of VISTA are worse than the OS cost as other things cost more:
1. New Hardware needed in maybe 80%+ of users
2. New or patched applications & MS Office needed
3. Maybe your new PC goes into slowdown if you bought one with a pirated version of VISTA
How much is an OS worth & why is a stand-alone VISTA copy so high?
I seem to recall I bought my family pack of OSX 10.4 for around $150 for use on up to 5 computers, and there was no choice in which of 6 versions of OSX I would buy, and I did not fear that all sorts of things would crash when I upgraded from 10.3 (and they didn't).
Just my opinion, but I think Ballmer goes by 2010. I understand that pricing as high as the market will bear works in Tiffanys, but OS's are COMMODITIES. Ballmer is trying to moosh the numbers so MS stock price goes up or at least holds. Customers vote with their feet and their wallets, and Ballmer will never be able to spin customer demand.
They even spelled "Ulimate" wrong downt he side of the box. Amazing.
Oh you must be referring to that communist thing that's funding the capitalist US's deficits. Yeah what a failure it must be.
How many companies bought Vista? Well, 244, of course.
Seriously. What do you want/expect Microsoft to do about this? Realise that piracy is rampant in China? Realise that people can always get a pirated copy cheaper than a licensed copy, no matter how cheap it is?
I think we can assume that Microsoft already know this. So what do you want them to wake up to? Do you want them to under-cut the pirates???
Piracy? Of course, that will be the argument, and it will be used for even more DRM and other defective mechanisms. But let's look a little closer, will we?
I think the strongest reason is simply that in China, computers have not become the household item they are here. It's still a luxury, bought by people who want a computer, not a toy. Bought by people who know at least a bit about them and who are able to assemble them (or at the very least know someone who does). Don't forget, almost all large integrators manufacture and assemble there.
Also, it's cheaper to buy the parts (remember, built there... and maybe some parts drop off that conveyer conveniently) and assemble them yourself. And when you assemble them yourself, no system is forcibly shoved down your throat.
In other words, the reason why Vista sells "better" here (the comperative is not always the superior form of the positive) is simply that people have to buy it when they get a new computer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's hear the Slashdot crowd claim, once again, how software piracy is not really theft
Well, you asked for it, so here we go. Software piracy is not theft. It is copyright infringement, which may or may not be fraud. The purchaser of the software, having agreed to the conditions of the sale, breeches his/her contract when he/she copies that software and gives it away. As such, most cases of non-commercial software piracy should remain civil matters between the buyer and seller of the software. It is only when the pirate sells the illegitimate software as legitimate software, or otherwise commits piracy for profit should criminal charges come into play.
That is why software piracy is not theft, and should not be a crime. As for piracy being unethical, I can see real world cases where it perfectly ethical. If you buy a software product, and your disc breaks and the company will not supply a replacement, I would not find it immoral to supply you with a copy of mine. But when we start creating bullshit words like "intellectual property" so that we can make software piracy look more like theft or that only pirates would ever need to circumvent a protection device, is where we start to point the ethic finger back at the software industry and tell them to look in the mirror for a change.
I imagine that China, like other Asian countries, would have a relativly slower adoption and saturation rate than the US simply because of the language specific 3rd party programs and support getting to market.
Who needs Vista right now to do something they can't do in XP, or whatever else they are currently using. Adoption everywhere will be slow, but probably steady as older systems become more difficult to support over time, unless there is some paradigm shift.
Sure, the same way that men hurts tampon-sales...
There are 8,576,336 users already.
Only if new PCs can only be purchased with Vista. While Vista's half life may exceed the 12 minutes it takes to 0wn XP on any network, it's still short enough that only a fraction of those new PCs will have Vista in two weeks time. As for "pirates" and legitimate buyers, the supposed upgrade won't install and play the ten dollar DVDs the would be user purchased, so they never really become users.
Vista's going the ME route.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Clippit says... "It looks like you're trying to sell an operating system in China. Good luck with that."
If I'll breach a contract, I'd try to hide it in a less conspicuous place than my pants...
Why are you changing the subject? We are talking about retail purchases of Vista... In any case, one disagreeing with the seller is not justified stealing the seller's wares.
"Not too many" means "only a few millions" in China. Are you sincerely stating here, that 244 licenses really is the number of Chinese users of Vista, give or take a few pirates?
If you do, then you are a doofus, and the discussion is over. And if you agree, that the number of users is, at least, 100 times the number of licenses sold, then we are talking about, at least, 23756 pirates (thieves)...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You might be interested to read the Parable of the Broken Window. It should be clear how it applies and what your fallacy is. If it's not I'll add briefly, the money spent on vista (or fixing a broken window) could otherwise be spent on something more useful providing a greater benefit to the economy. Copyright is entirely based on artificially creating scarcity and inefficiencies in the economy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Mayhaps. But very few of those earn that kind of money by buying trash and keeping it.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Just read the article . The source pretty much uses itself for reference.
I am not a big fan of Vista, but I assure you, that considering the amount of major corporations' development centers in China, a whole lot more than 244 were sold.
Niether source nor content make much sense.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
It's not theft, it is copyright infringement.
To different things, as recognized by our founding fathers.
Copyright is a sticky issue. While I believe in copyright, what exists right now is wrong, abusive, and exactly the reason many founding fathers want to excplicitly not allow copyright. Which is why we have a compromise of letting congress i.e. the people, determine what it shuold be.
Personally, automatic copyright for 14 years, then a 12 time 14 years extension for 10,000 dollars would be fair.
Please note I did not say the copyright violations are right.
"...nd how it does not deprive the software-maker of anything of value."
The only people I ever read or hear saying that are people comlaining about the "anti-copyright crowd".
Even then, not all copyright violation hurt software makers.
For example, software from a defunct company, or software that is no longer for sale in any version.
For example: I am trying to get a copy of Carcossonne that was released a few years ago. You can no longer buy it from the people that made it, and it was released on CD only in Germany.
It's not in any software store, it is not available through ebay to the US, and it is not sold directly through the site anyumore. Which would be my perfered method.
My next step is to contact the company and see if they can help. If not, I may try to just get a copy of it. Which, from the makers point of view, no different then buying it from a used software store. Which I would do, except it isn't available.
AS for MS, I don't believe them. They have been putting pressure on China to change their copyright laws(which they believe would magically change the culture) and they have been known to lie to get their way.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Uh, actually, there are huge buildings/stores (for example the Pacific Digital Plaza (and neighboring buildings) in Xu Jia Hui in Shanghai, although it should be possible to find stuff cheaper than what they sell it for) over there that carry bucketloads of computer equipment, cheaply (I guess there aren't many layers to sever before you're near the factories). It may be true that there aren't too many ready-to-use sales, but computers are usually built by salesmen directly, or by the purchaser, in China. Therefore, few OEM OSs sell (pretty much for notebooks only, I daresay). Original Vista costs a huge amount of money in China, something like 250 Euros, if memory serves. The guys who sell this kind of stuff may get roughly 200 Euros per month. ... If someone wants to contribute this information, please do so :)
I think that OEM system builder XP's seem to be the best-selling version of pirated Windows (for private users) in China. Haven't seen a pirated version of Vista for sale yet, though, unless you count the Windows 98 (or something) with Vista theme, heh. Unfortunately, I don't know what it was like when XP came around
Interesting story though.
Sorry but I fail to see why all these stories about how poorly Vista is selling is news. It's like pointing to a naked man on the street and screaming "HE'S NOT WEARING ANY CLOTHS!!!" Is anyone truly suprised buy the low sales numbers? Howmany people have actually bought a copy of XP? Howmany people got XP preloaded on their new machines? Most people don't build their systems from scratch so not very many people would by a copy of Windows off the shelf. As for upgrading to Vista, we all know there is currently no reason to upgrade to Vista. The only people I see adopting Vista early will be the PC gamers who are drooling over the coming crop of Direct X 10 games. Everyone else will most likely continue using XP/2000. Vista has to mature as an OS before it will be worth the trouble of upgrading. These are non-stories. When I read these stories all I hear is "Waaa I hate evil Microsoft!"
always mosh clockwise
What's the dare? You are patently wrong, justifying a grossly unethical behavior.
Had it been a poor musician, for example, dying of hunger, while everybody is playing his tune without giving him a dime, you'd be full of sympathy.
But since this is a large corporation (which is paid by honest folks), stealing from it is Ok? No, of course not — it is just as wrong, as copying a song without the author's permission.
I suspect, you — as well as most of the Slashdot crowd — simply never produced anything worth stealing... And yet, all of you would work yourself up into lather over somebody violating GPL.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yes it's recursive, but after 243 iterations you get to the bonus level.
243 copies of Vista sitting on a wall. One got cracked and the other went BSOD.
241 copies of Vista sitting on a wall..
...it's a big country...
If I were Microsoft I'd calculate the total loss of pirated copies of Windows and tell the Chinese gov to pay for the licenses. If they didn't Microsoft could threaten "cooporate" with the NSA in providing a back door into windows for the specific reason of controlling the computers of Chinese consumers.
That would get their attention
Hmm...
Okay, but let's say every company in China that uses a computer to run its business suddenly had to purchase a full-price retail version of Windows for every computer they have. (I'm quite sure that most of them aren't running "legit" copies.)
Now, to come up with $150-300 per computer, they either raise their prices, or pay their workers less, or go out of business. This ends, or at least slows, the flow of cheap goods that has made our economy go over the past quarter-century or so. So in this case, purely hypothetical but likely pretty close to the truth, piracy of Microsoft's software actually helps the economy immensely. Right and wrong are never that simple.
And I'll even beat the "stealing" dead horse again and say that if someone figured out a way to duplicate my car (which is what we're talking about; no one "loses" their copy of Windows because someone pirates a disc), I'd be more than happy to let them, as long as they changed the license plate number so I could tell which one was mine.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
I can grok the bit about being a part of a global market, but why the quick assumption that 'no no noes, those nasty ol' Chineses are STEALING all their Vistas!'?
I mean, lookit from this angle: There are ~1000 apps that work as advertised in Vista, and that's from Microsoft's own mouth (mentioned earlier this week @ /. ). Couple this with the fact that the Chinese language versions prolly have far, far, far less (almost certainly takes time to convert stuff over for language concerns). Now, top it off with the ungodly price of the thing at relative economy - it would be like you or me buying a decent used car (or you spending, say... $10k).
Conclusion? Now you have a perfectly credible reason for the mere speck of a market share for Vista at this time.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"Do you want them to under-cut the pirates???"
yes. You do that with value add and a consumer cost no greater then the price point; Which has been ignored by MS.
There should be just 1 version, and it should be a house hold liscense for no mre then 150 bucks.
If I swere to have different versions, I would do it at the support level.
99bucks, no support get lost. 199 bucks, 90 days support, 2000 buck large volume support for 90 days. Probably some year + support for even more money.
But in all cases the OS version should be the same. The extra support costs, the extra code to determine which version to install, the consumer confusion, and the consumer perception that MS is using a tier system to screw with people. All that costs money in one form or another.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Piracy directly benefits companies like Microsoft. It doesn't take an MBA to understand today's pirated copy is tomorrow's customer.
-Funny how Vista is somehow accidentally available as a download right now. (See another post in this discussion) Most Adobe titles are hacked and easily available too. This is _easily_ addressed in 2007, (DRM dongles) and yet, somehow nothing is implemented.
-Funny how it's these huge software conglomerates pushing this "pirating IP is BAD" agenda. They are using it to protect their market dominance at the expense of smaller competitors.
-What would happen if it was legal to duplicate and distribute any software? You would have more choices and dominant software vendors would have more competition.
They've got you and the legislators fooled with the false "deprivation" claim. They have sponsored laws that harm you. Please re-consider your position, it harms all of us.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So piracy is OK? How about if they just bite the bullet and say "we cannot afford Windows" and switch to something cheaper... say Linux?
No, instead they use Windows, send WIndows-centric files to their business associates and encourage them to believe the world revolves around Windows. Whether this helps or hurts Microsoft is not really relevant.
What is relevant is they discover they need a software product produced in the US and decide that, just like with Windows, they can pirate it. This certainly ends up hurting that publisher of that product. And it teaches a general disrespect for everything so when your nice GPL application gets "borrowed" and put into some embedded consumer electronic device the attitude is again "So?"
Microsoft apparently doesn't know much about China. Since during their ad campaign for Vista they cast a giant ad on the Jin Mao tower. Everybody knows the Jin Mao tower is haunted by a headless horseman. So naturally the reason why Vista isn't selling is because people think the headless horseman in the Jin Mao tower is trying to trick people into installing inferior software on their computer.
I have nothing compelling to say
I'm sorry, but I completely fail to see the relevance of this. Apart from the opportunity to childishly point and laugh, what does it matter how many copies they sell? If anything matters at all, it's how many copies are actually in use, which I guarantee will end up being a far, far higher number. (Even that though I simply couldn't care less about)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Pirates are using legal copies? So they aren't pir... Well, I'm confused...
This is why my company now has a "Software as a Service" model. The app was moved from a desktop product to a web-based hosted solution. Now we only need to worry about piracy if one of our worldwide sites leaks the source. And your location in the world no longer matters to us, if you want access, you need to sign up and pay us.
Microsoft is getting shafted because they're stuck in their current business model, and refuse to change it. The world no longer wants to install software if they don't have to, especially for a 10+ year old word processor. (And if they do install anything, they don't want to drop $300 on it.) Google understands this, Microsoft doesn't. Google's solution will still make money in China, Microsoft's won't.
The winds of business changed, and Microsoft missed it. Now we get to sit back and watch the impending car wreck that is Microsoft. So sit back and enjoy the show.
Microsoft is a commercial company. Other than the laws of the land (and in this case that's China) there is no 'should'. They can sell their product in whatever way they wish at whatever price they want. And this is what they have done. The idea that they are totally unaware of the realities of the software market in China is incredibly naive.
In China's case, it would not matter if Microsoft were selling their OS at the price of a single bland DVD. The pirates have the market sewn up, and will keep it sewn up until forced otherwise by the Chinese authorities. Microsoft are fully aware of this, and all their marketing efforts at present are simply "loss-leaders" towards potential future profits (or so they hope).
A bunch of American and European companies have locations in China (either factory or research) with many people working there and they don't have an interest in pirating a Windows CD, just because of the possible risk of infected images or litigation in their home countries.
You could say it was due to pirating if their projected sales are down by 1-5%, you can't say it if you didn't sell ANYTHING AT ALL. Let's be serious, 250 copies is not really a pirating problem (especially with the draconian DRM/WGA and the buggy/infected patches), it's a resale problem, people don't want your product, not even Chinese Americans that adore Microsoft or first adopters that want the latest and greatest. People don't even want it when they BUY a computer and get Vista for FREE (Vista OEM price = XP OEM price) and don't tell me that a country with over a billion people didn't buy more than 250 computers the last 2 weeks, even though a lot of people are poorer than their westerner counterparts, there are a bunch of companies, a bunch of gadget freaks (more than the US I think) as well as a bunch of filthy rich (richer than you and me). China is not the 3rd world country, the west wants us to believe. Sure it's a poorer country, more mining accidents and their government sucks, but it may be a 2nd world (like us during and right after the industrial revolution or the world wars), but I wouldn't call it 3rd world (as in massive amounts of people dying of malnutrition and no hospitals or massive internal wars).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
People always post averages like they represent statistics of significant variance. You have to remember, if you have a value range with extremes and you factor numbers associated (in the case population to earnings), you need to get a number that works for the majority, not a number that is in between then extremes to accurately reflect the total. If you take a 100 people and one of them makes a 1000 dollars and the rest make 1 dollar, the total will be 1099, so divided across 100 everyone made 10.99 right? Not really, according to that the vast majority is making 10x more then they really are. *That makes sense in my head even if it didn't come out in the actual post*
Where are the mod points when you need them?
If you buy a Dell with Vista on it (probably other machines too I don't know) and you want to get it back to XP be warned you will need XP with SP2 slipstreamed into the install. The original XP setup will bluescreen on install.
Dallas Real Estate
I work for the UK's largest online retailer of PC components.
OEM XP is out selling OEM Vista by about 9:1.
Retail XP is out selling Retail Vista by about 40:1.
"And sells it to millions of others depriving the maker of a lot of money -- stealing..."
No not stealing. There is very specific lawys regaurding copyright infringement.
Just because someone 'pirates' a copy, does not mean that person would have bought it anyways, and the copyright holder had nothing removed from there inventory.
"By this logic, buying stolen property is not theft, and should not be a crime. "
It shouldn't be a crime. Look at all the stuff in your home, how do you know the company you bought it from functioned 100% legally? You don't, and you can't. The consumer should not be held liable if the person they bought it from aquired it through fraud.
"Buying a cracked Vista CD is no ethically different from buying an in-dash GPS unit, for example, freshly torn out from some sucker's vehicle."
It is telling that you uise the word 'Sucker' and not trhe appropriet word 'Victim'.
In this case the victime is out a physical unit. If I pirate vista, home many copies wuill be missing from MS inventory? none. Only a lost opportunity to sell a copy.
That is defferent. I am not saying it's ok, only that it is different, anf there are plenty of reasons why.
If you still think it's theft, I recommend you study the legal side of copyright as well as it's history. Also read up on the arguments presented when it was being discussed as to wether or not to allow it when they were writing the Constitution.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think I saw a single street vendor on Qianmen Lu sell about 200 genuine Vista DVDs in less than an hour.
this is off topic from the article, sort of, but I wanted to provide a true story to further illustrate when downloading or copying is/should be 100% legal.
A friend of mine had his grandmother staying with him for whatever reason, and she decided to clean his place while he was running errands one day. Eventually, he figures out that she accidentally threw out his Windows XP cd. He still had the original product key so he decided he'd call MS up and see if they could ship him a new cd. After verifying that the key was valid and he was the rightful owner, they said it would be $50 or more (i can't remember the exact figure, but it was at least $50) + shipping to get a new disk. My friend (and I) expected a reasonable fee would be required (possibly $10 to cover the plastic and the pretty ink printing), but not a fee that was basically the same as buying a whole new Windows copy with a brand new key.
Now Micro$oft knows that there are exactly 244 bootleg-software manufacturers in China!
Well, 243, plus that one idiot who actually bought a copy to use...
It used to be one disk one country, Sales are up 244,000,000 percent!
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
Acutally this is helping MS. we all know that piracy is actually what allowed MS to become the de facto and in some realms obligatory operating system. The more users you have the more developers and the more other people want it. It's a cycle and piracy was what helped get MS to the top. That's old history.
Now say you are at the top, and your main competition is your old operating system which is sufficiently non-turdy that an update is not an emergency. What do you do?
Ceerainly few people will shell out the bucks to update. You can't give it away because there would go your OEM market. So you just have to wait for the sales of enough new PCs with it pre-installed to seed the market enough to get the developers to the point where they write things that work exclusively for it's new features that won't work on XP. (Direct X, and Widgets. anything else???)
that would be a painfully long wait. So how do you jump start this without selling below the OED cost. Let the pirates do it for you.
once the market for vista has healthy numbers then you start flipping the WGA boobytraps on. activate new ones each week so even when people work around them, the prospect of your computer suddenly topping funcitoning till you find an update to patch it (and how are you going to do that if your computer and your neighbors computer dont work) is more than Chon Wang can bear. Especially if it's a bussiness. It's so not worth the hassle that they pay for the real thing. Or at least a large fraction do which is the best you can hope for anyway.
I think that's the real thing that is going on.
in the mean time these low numbers are building their case. When they do turn on the draconian lock down they can point to these amazing, STUNNING, low lumbers of sales and saying. Hey we tried to limit the DRM but it cut out expected sales by thousands. No one can argue.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Buddy, they call it secret sauce for a reason. Better get a good lawyer!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I got a copy of Office2007 for going to some dog-n-pony show Microsoft was having, and what's funny is that what they gave out was a disc that contained some presentations on it, and the license code; you had to actually download Office from their website to get it.
;), and given all the negatives about it (DRM, slow, buggy, etc.) I see absolutely zero need to upgrade to that too; *maybe* if they'd shipped something "revolutionary" like WinFS, maybe that would have compelled me. As it stands, Microsoft has done nothing to inspire me nor given me any confidence they will be able to do so in the future.
I find that all very tacky, but whatever, I downloaded it. The thing I haven't done is install it; I just haven't found any reason to do so. I "get" the ribbon idea, so it's not a new thing, but I think at the end of the day I just can't get worked up about a word processor or spreadsheet program like I might have at one time. For all the work I do, word processing and presentations and spreadsheet juggling just doesn't make it worth to me to move from Office2000.
Same thing with Vista. I already own a Mac at home so I am already familiar with the interface and features
Microsoft is actually creating something [...] that has value.
:) when they developed Vista.
:)
No. Microsoft did create something of value (depending on who you ask
But when Microsoft sells you a CD/DVD with Vista on it, they're not selling you a valuable good or service. You could easily get an identical disc for almost nothing, so the disc isn't a valuable good, and you don't get any significant support, so you're not buying a service, either.
All they're selling you is protection from the government. If you don't pay this "protection money" to Microsoft, they will use IP law to fuck your shit up. If that's not artificial scarcity, I don't know what is.
And it's probably true that Microsoft would go out of business if they spent millions on developing a new product and then the government didn't force people to collectively pay them back when it was done. But you know what? When the government forces people to pay radically inflated prices for the sake of keeping a massive corporation in business, that's what they call a "centrally planned economy". And I know how y'all feel about those red bastards
Now, to come up with $150-300 per computer, they either raise their prices, or pay their workers less, or go out of business.
Why can they make and sell things so cheaply? Because they can skimp on operating costs. Costs which other competing companies, in other countries, have to account for in their operation.
If they're going to compete on the world stage, they should follow the same basic rules as everyone else. Doing otherwise gives them an unfair advantage.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
That's 243 more copies than most.
No wonder it costs less to make stuff in China. Not only do they pay workers peanuts and trash the environment, but they refuse to expend resources on counterproductive software. US employers should get a clue and stop spending money on shrink-wrapped software.
But if someone gave me a free copy of Mac OS X, or for that sake Amiga OS 4, I wouldn't install that. Anecdotal evidence only goes so far, ya know.
Oh, and you should sell that license. I'd pay for it, but admittedly not full price.
They now have details (IP activated from, registration details etc) of all the 5-yuan DVD-making pirates in china! All they have to do is sue all 244 and pay off some false positives!
On a similar note, we have that here in the rest of the world too.
It's called "Vista Paid-For" (sorry, Vista Business), and "Vista Pirated" (ahem, excuse me, Ultimate).
I was once told that diplomacy is the ability to tell someone to go to hell and make him look forward to the trip. Well, Vista Ultimate is the marketing person's ability to make someone plaster a "This copy is pirated" (read: "Windows Vista Ultimate") on one's screen so everyone who has a look at his machine can immediately be made aware it is pirated (or, in some very few cases, a moron who shits bricks of money and can't count, but that's a minority).
Then they can just sue anyone who uses it, since that is what "Ultimate" realy means.
-
tomorrow Microsoft will sell one hell of a lot of copies of Vista to all those Chinese pirates
Will they sell millions of copies at full-retail in China? No. That's not the point. The point is they make _much_ more money allowing pirated copies to flourish than they would otherwise get forbidding pirated copies.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The ethics of software piracy are not so cut and dry.
Copyright law was not put in to place as a Kantian edict, but instead it was put into place for utilitarian purposes. It is not property law. It began as a method of information control and later became a method to increase learning. Lastly, copyright became a business model.
From a utilitarian perspective, software piracy might be the more ethical behavior (resulting in more people benefiting than from the strict commercial model.) Given that Microsoft does not adhere to a strict commercial model (having been convicted of anti-trust); Microsoft may not always be giving exactly what the free market will bear and may create less benefit overall than would other distribution models.
Uh, no. If your way of thinking is "I will not pay," you find whatever you can free. If you can get Windows free, you use it free. If you can't, Microsoft thinks you'll suddenly decide to pay. Will you really? Probably not. You'll get something else that's free instead. Which does Microsoft prefer? Do they want you using pirated Windows or free GNU/Linux? Well, if you have pirated Windows, and you're using it, and your kids or students or whoever has access to it is using it, they are learning to use Windows. If you have free GNU/Linux, and you're using it, and your kids or students or whoever has access to it is using it, they are learning to use GNU/Linux. In the future, when they get a computer or get a job where they have to use a computer, they will ask for one with what they know how to use. If that's Windows, they buy a Windows computer or their employer gets a Windows computer for their office, which is something for which Microsoft is likely to see some money (businesses are less likely to engage in risky behaviour like software piracy). If that's GNU/Linux, they buy a Linux computer or their employer gets a Linux computer for their office, for which Microsoft will NEVER see any money. It's in Microsoft's interest to let those who flat-out will not pay use pirated Windows so that it is the only thing they will agree to work with in the future rather than driving them to the competition.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Not only are they ripping off Microsoft, they are ripping off Disney. Mickey and Minnie in Santa suits are bringing you pirated Windows Vista.
How ya like dat?
I agree; they ought to follow the same rules as everyone else. Or switch to Linux, as the other post said.
Now, tell that to the shareholders of all the companies enjoying the fruits of all that cheap labor, all those folks who want profit at all costs.
You can't have your capitalist cake and eat it too. If you make the people you're exploiting "play by the rules," you're going to have to accept some lower profits, and I don't see a lot of companies doing that.
I'm not saying "yay pirates;" I'm just pointing out that things are never as black and white as the GP claimed.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
i got vista ultimate through some discount ,even installed it after taking ghost of xp image ,but found that it was not worth it .hence removed it and got the xp ghost back .
bottomline is the graphics effects and alt-tab effects i was able to get on xp itself using transofrmation packs ,so dont feel like using like vista unless get to see some
applications which doesnt work on xp ....
No. Microsoft did create something of value (depending on who you ask
But when Microsoft sells you a CD/DVD with Vista on it, they're not selling you a valuable good or service. You could easily get an identical disc for almost nothing, so the disc isn't a valuable good, and you don't get any significant support, so you're not buying a service, either.
All they're selling you is protection from the government. If you don't pay this "protection money" to Microsoft, they will use IP law to fuck your shit up. If that's not artificial scarcity, I don't know what is.
And it's probably true that Microsoft would go out of business if they spent millions on developing a new product and then the government didn't force people to collectively pay them back when it was done. But you know what? When the government forces people to pay radically inflated prices for the sake of keeping a massive corporation in business, that's what they call a "centrally planned economy". And I know how y'all feel about those red bastards
Get an Ubuntu base, which sorts out most of the driver problems etc (and with Beryl you can do a LOT more than with Aero), then install XP in a VMware shell so it's at least a bit stable and you can just roll back any virus infections..
:))
That's what I have to do on a new laptop that doesn't even have XP drivers available (Vaio SZ4XWN)- Ubuntu to the rescue. And it's just sooo delightful to zap Windows &%$£^ Vista. I have NEVER had a version of Windows that was so incredibly useless. I mean, even an unpatched copy of Worries for Workgroups works better (hmm, would be interesting to see how fast that works in a VM - should positively fly
Insert
Pirates pirate to profit. They sell CDs with cracked software. Every CD bought from them, is a CD not bought from the software maker. The actual amount stolen from the maker is somewhere between the pirate's price (which the buyer did pay) and the maker's price (which they buyer would or would not have paid, had it not been for the pirate). We can argue about the exact amount, but there is no doubt, that the software-maker is deprived of some money by the pirate.
It makes no difference. None...
Informative my behind.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Whoever posted the original thread must be an idiot, unless he just tries to misinform the public for whatever personal agenda. According to the "joyo", an Amazon partner in China, they have cleared their Vista stock by 2/13/2007. Although they didn't reveal the numbers, Joyo started selling 10 versions of Vista with price range from $100 to $500 since 1/30/2007. Joyo is the largest retailer of Vista in China according to Microsoft. I also dug out the 244's origin. It was Vista sold by a much smaller (and little know) shop "8848" from 1/19/2007 to 2/2/2007. This is an perfect example of fabrication and distortion in its worst. The number is the result of a marketing research by a firm ZDC, with no relation to MS. Shame on you Slashdot!
"because it is a free market out there". It is not. It is a monopoly.Curious that we (learn to )treat the market as if it were indeed free, as if only the customer needs and wishes mattered, when the situation (in most matters/sectors) is completely different, due to the various monopolies/oligopolies that effectively take away the freedom of the customers. A completely "free market" is an abstraction, of course: bussiness always interfere with customers as much as they can - and they'd be foolish not to. But the situation we live in the IT market is completely different from what one studies in economy 101, lest you see Linux distros with infinite demand due to their null price.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Er, what was "VISTA" the acronym for again?
Grand cock-ups become coveted collector's items. Vista is going to be Microsoft's version of the Edsel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In my experience it is only companies that are directly in receipt of US government grants that would bother buying legal copies. It is only the high probability of getting audited by a young white nerd in a suit, and of this directly impacting your income that would make you buy a legal copy. As a result, I would bet 100 yuan it was someone like PWC, KPMG, or the US embassy that bought all 244 copies.
From these few copies, a few "evaluation" copies will invade the rest of China, and the rest of the web.
Not just "haha"s but "hahahahahahahahahahahahahhah"s are in order.
I'm a Chinese in China with a computer experience of 14 years(since 386 with dos 3.3), let me say some reasons i knew about. Vista is too expensive. 300 dollar(ultimate edition) means 2200 RMB. Many people buy a whole PC priced less than 3000 RMB here in China. Individuals won't pay anything 'software' of which price is higher than 100 rmb(14USD). Yes, if microsoft can make a geniune copy less than 100RMB, i believe everyone in China will consider it. It would be going to be a shame not to own a genuine one. But for a product now priced more than half of my computer and can be bought, copied and downloaded everywhere, I definitly going to save some money. Owning computer is no longer a luxury in China since most computer parts are manufactured here(including almost every major brand). Everyone is going to have computer at various price. Also rich people won't think of owning a genuine copy a prestige. Long ago their taste switched to cars and houses. Those worst poors dont want computer at all but food and a place to live. If ask me why there were only 244 retail sold, I'd say microsoft knew this and they dont care. More over, i doubt some microsoft dudes leaked some vista copys on purpose. How can you explain that up-to-date, fully-automatic and one-click vista activator published by some vista fan forum? it must be with assitance of a microsoft insider. The activator make every copy working exactly as a geniune one, with one click and well-documented instructions and a support forum.. Also the news covering this 244 sales is misleading people. That number was the sales of one online software store(8848 Sofeware Store in Beijing) in two weeks. So , there was just one store. i believe the total sales in China was far higher than 244.
China, in fact, is very fragile.
The thing people seem to forget is that its only lost money if the person would buy a legitimate copy(or in this case could). If there were no copies of Vista that were copyable in the world, China would just use something else or not upgrade at all.
So Microsoft isn't losing any money with what's happening in China, despite how they may claim to be.
But it's the median average, and not the mean average. Still an average though.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Strut and peptalk and invoke the rule of law and the international community.
Don't worry fatboy. Noone even speaks English around here, much less cares what you think... Blizzard is in California, buddy. Even the gold-farmers need to buy accounts.
But, I guess this is why they steal US-made 'Microsoft Windows', not 'Failed Impoverished Communist Empire-OS'.
Our programmers will be fairly safe as long as out-sourced code remains terrible and poorly-written. People just aren't getting any smarter over there, I suppose.
Hope you don't get mauled by a pack of wild dogs on the street.
that screed made no sense anywhere
Ok, maybe I moved too quickly. It seems obvious to me, but I guess it's kind of a counter-intuitive idea for people used to thinking about software as a good.
So: Point one is that there are only two things that have value in a market: goods and services. Goods have value because there's a limited amount of them, therefore in order to get some goods I have to persuade someone else to part with theirs. Services have value because they require someone to spend time and effort performing them, so you have to persuade them to do so. We usually do this persuading by exchanging money, therefore a market consists of buying and selling goods and services.
Point two, the part may seem weird, is that software isn't a good. Software is information, and information is neither a good or a service.
The gathering, creation, modification, or presentation of information can be considered a service, but once the information exists "out there" in the public, it doesn't require effort from anyone to continue existing or being useful.
The media that the information comes on can be considered a good, but since the information can be easily and limitlessly copied, a disc with information on it isn't worth significantly more than a blank one, because the latter can be transformed into the former with almost 0 effort.
Well, the government decided that institutions like Microsoft should indeed be able to sell information, but in order to make it possible they had to force it into the "goods" model. The easiest way was to outlaw making copies of certain information, so that if people wanted a copy, they had to buy it from the government-approved vendor, who was allowed to make copies, and could set the price however they wanted.
That's why we say it's "artificial scarcity". Unlike with real goods and services, if it weren't for IP laws, there would be nothing preventing everyone from acquiring whatever publicly available information they wanted for free. And therefore that information would have 0 market value, because it would be infinitely available. The only thing that gives information value is the laws which prevent us from sharing it with each other, thereby creating an information scarcity.
Hope that was more clear. Any questions?
I don't excuse the Chines piracy but this is at least partly MS's own fault. Vista costs as much in China as is does in the US which makes no fricken sense for a product whose marginal cost of production is virtually $0. Here are the costs: Home Basic $199.00, Home Premium $239.00, Business $299.00 and Ultimate $399.00 In a country where a factory worker makes ~$3/day, these prices are absolutely ridiculous. Vista should probably be prices around $20 there.
Oh, by the way, you might want to check your calendar.
It is now 2007
Love yr nostalgia work though.... We lost the Cold War? When we gave in and became a communist nation? I thought Russia was the impoverished crap-hole overseas sinking under the weight of its collapsed empire. Last I checked, we were still the richest nation in the world and still dominate the software and media industry internationally.
I understand the concept of people being fat is basically non-existent in Russia, since the fat ones are generally devoured by wild dogs... or stabbed by the many free-range criminals.
I only run for exercise.
Microsoft's second most pressing concern about Vista is that the activation protection will be hacked. Their greatest concern is that no one will care.
No, you lost the Cold War when you kept imaging that you'd won the Cold War in face of all the evidence. Dominating the world software industry with sales of 244 units? Wow! Clear thinking buddy. Time to shift yr fat ass from Fox News and look outside yr window, Cho Seung-Hui.
Dominating the world software industry with sales of 244 units? Wow! Clear thinking buddy.
Time to shift yr fat ass from Fox News and look outside yr window, Cho Seung-Hui. All the evidence? What does Russia even do anymore- are there any large legitimate businesses there? I can't think of any that I interact with. Sometimes I see clothing that's been 'made in Russia'.
Yes, 244 units internationally. You have excellent reading skills. Do you guys even have schools over there- Or has your government sold them all to buy gold-plated jets?
Boss: "You paid for Windows? You incompotent boob! Get out! You're fired!"
Table-ized A.I.
You know, that stinky stuff you put in yr Hummer?
Have you checked the US balance of payments lately?
Russiaactually has lots of your $$$$ from selling you lots of this stinky stuff.
China lots of your $$$$ from selling you most of everything else.
Living off your credit card is certainly an unusual view of being rich. You should Google to see where the money actually is - ie not in your pocket.
You are actually broke, have an unpopular president and have lost a war n Afghanistan (Oh, and Iraq). Much indeed as was the USSR before it fell apart.
Fatass, or should I call you "Cho Seung-Hui," you truly are truly a credit to yr Krispy Kreme eating compatriots.
BOOM! HEADSHOT! BOOM! HEADSHOT PSHEW PSHEW! - you are a no less that a man, or at least a 13 year old of true taste. Cho Seung-Hui was from South Korea. Quick googling, I found this common phrase "The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world..." Is this even a competition? I'll line it up, anyway.
Let's see... Russian GDP... $733 billion
Not bad!
US GDP... $13.22 trillion
Oh, whoops. You lose.
Russia: $317.6 billion
China: $974 billion
US: $1.869 trillion
Our debt goes up and down depending on whether we have democrats or republicans in office- right now, we have republicans. I think the debt will go away when we elect a new administration, but thanks for the concern. For being in such a rough spot, we sure seem to be doing pretty well, especially compared to that decrepit junkyard you call home. The fact that someone living in dogshit, east europe knows about things like 'Krispy Kreme' is a sign that we're still pretty influential. Sorry, pal. Keep trying.
Slashdot is letting pweople now of a site the says there is 244 copies sold.
That is all. If that site is lying, then shame on them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Based on past, public information, here are my guesses as to how Microsoft will force upgrades:
:-)
OEM Sales:
* Heavy penalti^H incentives for OEMs who are selling "too many" copies of the "outdated" OS.
* Stop certifying drivers for "oudated" OSes. This won't do as much, but it will cause those "scary" boxes warning that the drivers aren't signed and might be harmful.
Business Sales:
* Develop new incompatibilit^H features for MS Office and business-centric applications. The idea being to ensure that you need MS Office to exchange office documents with anyone.
* Backups are going to all but require MSs' new backup servers in business-targeted versions of Vista if you want to use Vista's TPM-based encryption. Watch for them to push it as a SO / HIPAA best-practice or requirement soon, as well as the equivalent laws in other countries.
* Drop support when the EOL the older products. Governments and others with more leverage may have more inertia, but unless they move to non-MS controlled document formats, they'll get people to complain that the governments are being "luddites" for not upgrading when other things, like the office formats, become a barrier.
Home Users:
* Aggressively push the Vista-only DX10 onto game makers, capturing the gamer crowd.
* Make sure that no other OS can (legally) play HD media (Blu-Ray & HD-DVD) in as many jurisdictions as possible.
* Tout their new parental controls as a substitute for parenting. They'll probably also push this on educational facilities, trying to mandate that such controls be used in schools, etc.
I'm sure I missed more than a few things, but that's the strategy I see them using, at least in broad strokes. I bet they have ideas more detailed than this, but we probably won't see them unless there's another Comes v. Microsoft where the litigants are bright enough to put all the otherwise expensive-to-access public documents in the case online, no doubt helping effect a settlement. Of course, you can still (legally!) pick up a free copy of them on The Pirate Bay of all places
DISCLAIMER: I have little connection to Microsoft or its competitors save that I've used their products and that I once was a member of the class (i.e. a nobody) in one of the older anti-trust suits against Microsoft. I prepared an objection to the settlement on the grounds that it was beneficial to Microsoft and did nothing to redress continuing harms, but I did not manage to file it with the court in time.
Let's none of us deny that software piracy is illegal and to some degree... wrong
In some countries it is not illegal.
Copyright is a privlidge(in the US) not a right, so I would say it is wrong in any moral sense either.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
got a single fact to back any of that shit up?
One small one: no one wants Vista. Even fewer want it when they run it and find out how buggy it is, or at least that's what I've heard from the local shops that are doing a nice little business putting XP on machines that came with Vista.
You said "wrong" 11 times but you can't shine and sell the Vista turd.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Trade surpluses, Mr. Fat Cho Kreme. It's all about the trade surpluses.
g uid=%7B0E5A2A2E-B134-4ACB-976E-D15B12DD6007%7D&sit eid=mktw&dist=
Here is you:
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?
Here is Russia:
http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20070410174512.shtml
And China:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/6353183.stm
Or in your language:
"Aw shit I gots no $. A-rabs and Commies stole my $. Ken git no mo donutz...."
Maybe the real reason is that Machines in China aren't sold with bundled OS.
If machines were sold without bundled OS in the rest of the world then Vista "sales" would be way down.
No sig today...
ultimately i agree with you, in a way. i use some software that is free for personal use and costs for professional use. i think that is the best arrangement. it achieves the familiarity goal you mention, only in a way that is agreeable to all parties. i know i have recommended software to past employers that i am familiar with. though never an os. a lot of the software i use in a professional capacity dont work on every os anyway.
always mosh clockwise
the source says: one vendor 8844.com sold 244 copies between 1/19-2/15. (http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/pcuser/articles/0703/1 5/news013_2.html)
then the writer made an brilliant conclusion that only 244 copies were sold in whole china.
then another idiot jumped on and spread the wonderful news!!! ....
then slashdoters started developing all kinds of theories....
very funny.
It's not that Vista doesn't have a new enough look and feel, or that it doesn't have some nice shiny new bells and whistles. It's that it still has all of XP's crappy baggage, and many of the 'improvements' like the new start menu that lists all programs in a big drop-down list that runs off screen and requires scrolling to access I actually find cumbersome and unintuitive. By baggage, for example, I mean the crappy 2D rendering that has plagued Windows from the start. How HARD is it to get the OS to sync vertically with the monitor's refresh rate so that windows don't flicker and tear when you drag them around? It's certainly not impossible, as Mac's OSs have shown for years. If Vista is 'All New!' then why does the desktop periodically blink and refresh all it's icons exactly like XP and 2000 and 98? Why is there a flicker of an hourglass (oh, now shining circle, excuse me) for a split second when you right click? That garbage should be history if the OS and it's GUI were really rewritten from the ground up.
Vista being new and improved is total BS from a GRAPHICAL-user-interface point of view. Maybe they fixed networking and security issues, I don't know, but they sure as hell didn't do anything special with the 2D or even 3D graphics. The GUIs in many DX9 games are smoother. What happened to Vista running in native DX10? What a bunch of crap. Vista is basically just a new skin over XP. My nVidia graphics card's nView features can do transparencies and stuff in XP almost as well, and that really is just a skin.
And did I mention bugs and crashes? I had a hell of time installing a stock-standard HP printer, for example. Didn't work for the first two ports I plugged it into, but then started working randomly in a third. Is it in the list of installed printers? Is it, bogroll. And my aunt got some weird spyware or worm that I went over to clean out. Windows Defender threw a fit with it, so I ran AdAware. The result? Windows Explorer got completely borked. And I mean COMPLETELY. From that point forward Windows Explorer would crash and restart every 6-7 seconds. Even in Safe Mode. How do you like them apples? I had to us Internet Explorer to navigate through the file system to save some photos and videos before doing a complete recovery from the ghosted image on the recovery drive. And bear in mind this happened while running nice a light AVG antivirus. I can't imagine what would have happened if I hadn't removed all 15,000 components of Norton Internet And-Suck-My-Ass Security.
Two thumbs down for Vista - one for actual performance and one for sheer disappointment - in my opinion.
A-Bomb
This isn't exactly correct though, because you're mixing two issues. Copyright defends certain rights of the copyright holder, namely those exclusive rights to make copies, prepare derivative works, distribute copies of the original or the derivative works, exclusive rights to perform the work (for various kinds of art) and to display the work (again, for art). In the license that is provided, the owner of the copyright provides you, the end user, with certain rights that they otherwise reserved (the right to copy the software into memory, onto your hard drive, etc.). Violating this license is in one sense a contract breach, but in another its also violation of copyright law which is very much a government involved legal manor just as violating the right of someone else almost always is. For example, if you loan someone a piece of equipment that they then refuse to give back, they may be both violating a contract and performing larceny, but just because they breached a contract doesn't mean they are not guilty of a real crime as well.
It wasn't meant to be a moral argument. It's a practical one. Some people will take anything they are ABLE to get for free, regardless of "supposed to."
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Twelve more and the Chinese Activation Server will overflow.
F_T
Here is you:
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?
Here is Russia:
http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20070410174512.shtml
And China:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/6353183.stm
Or in your language:
"Aw shit I gots no $. A-rabs and Commies stole my $. Ken git no mo donutz...." You're an idiot. Our purchasing parity is still massively larger than China or Russia. Our industries are largely outsourced, so those of us with white collar jobs are still seeing massive profits. We use world bank to ride the growth profits of many developing nations, anyway. Our economy cycles. We go in and out of trade gaps and debt without suffering major costs to our luxury goods.
We still have a lot more carry-around cash. If things continued this way for the next couple decades, Russia and China might have comparable purchasing parity and potential, but the reality is that our economy will cycle within 5 years. Our debt fluctuates depending on administration, and this administration is 'starving the beast'- because they're neocons, like Reagan. Those of us who don't live in dog-shit ex-communist countries can have a broke government yet still have largely profitable industries. Countries like China wouldn't buy all our debt if they didn't depend on our nation rising out of it very quickly when this administration is ousted- they're extremely dependent on us. Enjoy all our outsourced pollution.
Translation: Watch out for wild dogs, and make sure you check your hovel for rodents. Despite your horrible misinterpretation of the world market, which cycles through this every decade, we're still way richer. So I can buy plenty of donuts, thank you. You can gloat when you're not living in east europe, the asshole of the world.
A recent technical journal reported with some astonishment, that in all of China, there were seemingly only 244 machine's capable of burning mas's quantitie's of DVD's...!
The New Apostrophical Societie's (NA'S) rule is:
'If a word end's in an "S", always precede the "S" with an apostrophe. This way there can be no misinterpretion, and it will drive the Spelling Nazi's crazy!'
.
- aqk
F U
i think a lot of arguments boil down to morality and ethics, the rules be which we want society to function. we are all on this planet together, we need to get along. i know some people will take anything they are able to get. they just cant complain when they are on the receiving end. of the people i know who take what they can get, they are the first to complain about someone being rude or taking from them. if someone is going to create rules to live by, they cant complain when someone uses those same rules against them.
always mosh clockwise
Original:
5 /news013_2.html
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/pcuser/articles/0703/1
Go to babelfish and get it translated:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
Funny, but I can't figure out anything really. Mabe some Japanese speakers can help us out here?