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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!
> 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!
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.
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.
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