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Microsoft Calls Today Global Anti-Piracy Day
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.
Pirates seize Indian vessel with 13 crew members off Somalia
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 might be appropriate.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
> 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 !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
The jokes/reality just write themselves when it comes to M$:
Their newest product line is so sucky that no one wants to pirate it.
Now that's an innovative strategy!
"...whenever possible."
You know you have problems when even pirates don't want your software!
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It took me a few minutes to get used to a mouse back in the 80s, too; now that I know how to use one, it's intuitive.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
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.
Well, hopefully they are going to replace Paint with Paint.Net. That alone would be a huge step in the right direction.
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.
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.
Comment of the year
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.
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, 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. 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!
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
As nabsltd noted above, 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,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."