Slashdot Mirror
BSA Claims Half of PC Users Are Pirates
judgecorp writes "Despite continued pressure on business users to buy legitimate software, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) reports that the campaign seems to be failing. Well over half (57%) of users surveyed in a global survey admit to using pirated software. That's a big increase from the same survey last year — when 43% admitted to using pirated software. The BSA surveyed 15,000 people in 33 countries."
Only half?
Doesn't that indicate that perhaps a different approach is required? This sue-happy, mafia-style campaign isn't working so perhaps that's not the right way to go about it. I don't have the solution but clearly neither do they.
The Boy Scouts of America have been using that TLA for a lot longer than the Business Software Alliance has existed. The former should sue the latter for damaging the reputation of their acronym.
... are liars.
Better get cracking on building those jails to keep all these pirates
If that many people are pirates, shouldn't we just use our voting power to deem the BSA as an illegal racket trying to hit us up for protection money?
Coding Blog
Obviously...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Clearly, the solution is to incarcerate 60% of the population, or at least monitor all their activities, North Korea style.
Do you know a company using illegal software? Report it now and you could be rewarded with cash!
What are you waiting for, click on the link below, now!!!
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
It's the only way to stop the evil pirates! People who copy copyrighted material illegally will bring about the end of the world!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I use a Mac!
#DeleteChrome
Over 100% of users will be pirates within just four years.
Things will be so much better when that happens. The authorities can then just arrest anyone they don't like and have a guaranteed conviction!
Do you know what the article doesn't tell you?
How the question was phrased, which makes a helluva lot of difference in the results of any poll.
"Tell me, sir, do you still pirate software?"
"Well... uh... no."
"So you admit that you USED to pirate software?"
"Well... no."
"So you admit you pirate software now, but didn't used to?"
"Well... uh..."
"So how often do you beat your wife?"
"UK is firmly below the global average, with just 27 percent of computer users admitting they have acquired software illegally last year. This translates into an approximate £1.2 billion loss by the software industry." - "People who use software without paying for it" != "People who would pay for it if they couldn't get it for free". Only a group like the BSA (and it can't be coincidental that their acronym so nicely fits with BullShitArtists) would use stats like that.
Instead of the usual sarcastic blather about the BSA, shouldn't FOSS advocates be wondering why an estimated 57 percent of the population would rather pirate proprietary software than use a free alternative?
This isn't how it was supposed to work.
..complete and total nonsense. Especially if you paid a survey company with a clear understanding of what kind of results you want. Can you imagine them publishing a survey saying "1% of surveyed users admit to copying illegal software, the rest either did not know or care".
Gonna need bigger prisons.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
You can bet that BSA surveys are rigged to generate the highest numbers possible. After all, if "piracy" was declining they couldn't really insists that all of the draconian laws and penalties were needed.
Cops figured this out decades ago - no matter that crime stats have been falling for ten years, somehow the police always need more people, more equipment, and tougher laws.
Any survey by the BSA - or any group with a vested interest - is automatically suspect.
Three Squirrels
Just more hype to further the Internet lockdown.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
is it really a crime?
This country is, at least in theory, a democracy. If more people break that law than voted for the current president, doesn't that indicate that the majority of people don't believe that piracy is "bad"?
I feel like there should be some eloquent Latin quote for this... Ubi omnes sontes, nemo sontes? Did I get that right?
I haven't needed to pirate anything in years, everything has a free and good-enough equivalent now. What does anyone pirate today?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Something tells me they didn't even probe further, but even if they did they wouldn't have reported this part of the data. I bet that a significant portion of the 57% of "admitted pirates" are also legitimate customers who are using pirated software to bypass the annoyances (activation, DRM) that generally comes from high-profile commercial software.
FC Closer
If I were a politician, which I'm not, too lazy for one thing and don't like people that much, but if I were I'd be totally delighted to win any race with 57% of the voters voting for me.
I believe that's what most winning politicians would call a mandate for their policies.
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
As usual when someone with an agenda throws statistics at you, you can rest assured that they've manipulated them in such a way to achieve their own goals. In this case, it's rather easy to see what they are doing. Worldwide? When I was in Africa 2 years ago, the hotel I stayed in had a computer in the community room. Windows Genuine Advantage warnings kept popping up. I fixed that for them... much to the bemusement of the Microsoft employee that was staying their with us. After traveling to several other locations we found that, at least to our limited exposure, ALL the software on EVERY computer was pirated. The Microsoft guy was appalled. I asked him where he expected these people to buy his software? Shipping to that part of africa was somewhere in the neighborhood of $500... There were no walmarts, or any sort of software vendors. The fastest data connection I came across was at a coffee shop at it was 56k. So you can be fairly certain that the entire continent of Africa's piracy rate is well above 99% Take the population of Africa... oh and China... and India... are you starting to get the picture? Did their poll ask people if it were possible for them to buy the software they needed in the first place? I doubt it.
I guess this is something that has probably been said a thousand times before, but, If pirating stopped overnight, then surely open source would become the standard within months? There's no way that pirates would suddenly start paying for software. And I mean NO WAY! In a way, pirating is doing corporations a massive favour by indirectly stifling open source, yes? Anyway, I love reading threads about this kind of topic, so I thought I should start to contribute :-)
Don't pretty much all computer users, especially those of the geeky variety, pirate software when they're kids and have little to no money to buy it?
I sure as hell did! Not because I wanted to "stick it to the man", but because I had no other way of getting software. I was a kid, I had no cash, no income. The software publishers lost nothing on me because had I not been able to pirate, I wouldn't have been able to buy the software anyway.
Now as an adult, I spend quite a bit of money on software and media. The only time I'll still download something questionable is when I cannot obtain it legally otherwise.
So surveying people asking if they've ever pirated software is going to be a naturally inflated number, because many of us did when we were kids.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And since we live in democratic countries, clearly piracy should be decriminalized.
Ah, yes, representative democracy and majority of MONEY. Never mind, carry on.
P.S. One start to wonder when one thinks about German Pirate Party and their direct democracy drive in relation to this piece of news.
Do not look at BSA statistics with remaining (unpatched) eye!
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
57& is a majority, so it's no longer a crime since the majority does it and think it's OK. The BSA can close its doors and die now...
Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and BSA Statistics.
I see a "avoid pirating tax" forcing to pay for BSA associated company software just for owning a computing device (no matter for which use or what will have installed), so won't be an anticompetitive measure of Microsoft, but Congress mandate this time. And then an obligatory agent that must be installed everywhere to be sure that you aren't using any pirated (or competing, or alternative) software. And is just time till they add national security, terrorism and "think on the children" to the mix.
If 57% of people break a law, is it the people's fault, or the law's fault?
C'mon! Let's get to 100% PEOPLE!
That'll be just for the attitude of those bastards. ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You filthy Pirate!
Do you use free software?
You filthy Pirate!
Do you know where your purchase receipt is for your software?
You filthy Pirate!
I bet those were some of the questions.
Add:
What is your MS Office license key?
Don't know off-hand? Pirate!
Happen to know and provide it? Pirate! Disseminated a license key!
More overhyped yet totally meaningless claims by some business with an axe to grind.
Seriously folks, 95% of drivers ARE CRIMINALS but that doesn't mean we need to throw them all in jail.
By the previous claim I mean that pretty much just about *every* driver has broken at least one road-rule (ie The Law) at least once during their driving career.
BSA argument/statistic is clearly based around examples like: if you've *ever* downloaded a "shareware" or otherwise "honor based" paid product but you never paid for it THEN YOU'RE A PIRATE (!!!!!!)
For the life of me I dunno why slashdot gives these people airtime, it's nothing more than FREE ADVERTISING for their business.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
one job plus one house equals two ips
I'd really love to see Anonymous hack this outfit to find out A) where the money goes and B) if they themselves use pirated software. This outfit smacks of Soviet-style tattle on your neighbor tactics.
Hm...
I use Ubuntu. I never paid anybody that $699 'license' fee that SCO claims I owe for some reason or other.
Guess that makes me a software pirate.
Anybody got any tips on getting parrot shit outta my shirts?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The Bullshit Statistics Association reports that not only to 57% of PC users pirate software, but that software piracy rate among Somali pirates is actually lower than average.
"This epidemic of out-pirating the pirates causes us great concern," said BSA's chairman Slammem N. Jale. "But it's not too late. We have examples of rehabilitated pirates."
"Aaaarggh!", roared Cap'n Bluebeard. "Me mateys and I used ta blow each other ta smithereens with an illegal copy of Mine Sweeper. But we've seen the light and sent our booty ta Microsoft, aargh. What good does gold do ya when yer conscience weight upon ya like a two-ton anchor?"
Jale concludes: "Send us all your money, and you can sleep easy."
... everyone knows that!
does not use serial numbers or any sort of DRM to begin with.
This may be partially caused by the general belief that only civilized people use Macs because only civilized people can afford to buy a Mac.
New Economic Perspectives
When the majority of people break a law, it's the law that's wrong. Laws exist to support and further societal norms. When the norm is illegal, the law needs to be corrected.
Note that I'm not saying copyright should be eliminated, or that it has no value. Just that the present implementation is wrong.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Killing everyone with illegally downloaded software? You're really taking this Blue Screen of Death thing seriously.
oddly, i was trying to think of the last thing i pirated, and i haven't pirated software since probably 1997. fortunately my company gives me a laptop with MS office on it. feels kinda weird, I guess, to be legit. because i remember looking for copies of autocad, proengineer, 3dstudio max, and photoshop back in the 90's. i remember getting a lot of stuff off zurich.ai.mit.edu via ftp.
jeez, not even games. oh wait, i tried to pirate doom3 off ... limewire? shit, i can't remember, it was a napster clone... but i ended up downloading a warez trojan and never did that again.
so... yay me? i guess...
huh.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Whilst the big software providers continue to push software that gives me way more than I want at a price well more than I should have to pay and provide non existent interoperability and closed shop mentality you will have to forgive me for opting out and choosing freeware. Others with less tech savvy will feel the need to pirate to be able to compete. Government need to take some responsibility for not forging a non brand centric path. It would help if we could agree on alternative standards but the fast changing OS world and the cut throat market make it a perfect place for the big players. Shame
You know people use PCs in places other than the UK, right?
Region, type of piracy, frequency, demographics (age, gender, race, income level, religion... etc.), time period, etc.
Saying 57 percent pirate and that's up from last year isn't useful. That doesn't tell you WHO is pirating and why. We don't even get any correlative information out of that much less the actual cause.
There's no way to use these statistics in a productive way unless the numbers are broken down a bit.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Up yours, BSA.
Whew. Thought they were accusing the Boy Scouts of America....
almost 7 billion people in the world. they ask 15000. any conclusion they come to is statistically irrelevant. its a rounding error. but, to make it sound like we need stricter legislation, they make it sound bad. its a bullshit statistic;.
not much illegally downloaded software could actually be used to kill someone though. at least not something the BSA is interested in. i suppose if you programmed something stuxnet-esque and offered it under a commercial license, you could possibly kill with pirate software.
"Oh of course."
Now if your Dutch, vote for the party that protects your PC and oh, the Internet!
https://www.piratenpartij.nl/
I haven't needed to pirate anything in years, everything has a free and good-enough equivalent now. What does anyone pirate today?
Oil tankers off the coast of Somalia apparently. Clearly piracy today is getting back to its traditional roots.
How do you "pirate" software? Are they talking about GPL violations? :)
Half of the internet can't figure out how to download a file. Why does it surprise me?
It puts extra pressure on the remaining 43% to cover development costs. I purchased every piece of commercial software I use. I do graphics and have probably spent 25K to 30K just in the last few years on software. Am I rich? Far from, more like dead broke, I simply spend most of my cash on software and hardware and rarely spend money on anything else. It's wildly unfair that some one else can have the same software and not spend a dime. Why not just pirate? Some one has to pay for the development of new software. Other than maybe Photoshop most of my software needs more features so I hope they keep developing. Everyone can call people like me stupid or a troll but we are the ones paying to provide the software that others pirate. There are open source options and I even use a few. I overall like Open Office more than Microsoft products because it's easier to use and has all the features I need. I bought my first copy on Word in the late 80s but I abandoned it in the late 90s because every time I slipped and hit the wrong key it reformatted the document and the computers of the time were too slow and I always managed to type more before it reformatted making it impossible to undo. After I discovered Open Office I never went back. There are open source options for most things it's just the commercial software is generally better so people generally don't bother with the open source they just pirate. I have to point out where will we be when the 43% throw in the towel? The companies aren't government funded so they'll have little choice but to throw in the towel. Ultimately the problem would be solved if commercial software disappeared since there would be nothing left to pirate.
Put all of the more than half of computer users that admit to using pirated software in jail forever where they can never buy software again.
By the BSA/MPAA/RIAA 's logic that will more than double the amount of software they sell, right?
If that's right, won't it also double the amount of taxes the government will collect from them?
There is no way half of all PC users know how to download pirated software.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Of course, there are lies, damn lies and statistics like these. But there is some truth to this figure -- especially in terms of expensive applications such as Photoshop. People who wouldn't pirate _anything_ else _will_ pirate Photoshop or Microsoft Office because they can't justify the expense until they establish the demand.
Of course, once they establish the demand, since they already have the software, it's 'easy' for them to 'forget' to buy a paid copy.
Happily, Adobe has seen the light and offers trialware versions of its stuff -- if more companies did the same, had reduced prices for trialware users, and so-forth, that 50-odd percent figure would likely drop dramatically.
The only stuff I possess which isn't pirated, is free software...
Fuck copyright.
After they have the nerve to get on the radio at encourage me to rat out my employer, perhaps destroying my own job, They Can Go Straight To Hell.
And NO I don't use pirated software.
news at 11
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Who cares about the drivel they emit?
If over half of the people routinely break a law and think nothing of it, how can that law be justified?
What constitutes piracy in the purview of the survey?
Using software you didn't pay money for?
Filezilla: PIRATE!
Firefox: PIRATE!
Linux: PIRATE!
VPN Software licensed for you by your company? PIRATE!
Free antivirus suite? PIRATE!
A program you slapped together yourself? PIRATE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The question they asked was "How often do you acquire pirated software or software that is not fully licensed".
Unless the two sets "software that is pirated" and "fully licensed" make up 100% of all software the conflation of the two in a single question will produce meaningless statistics.
I have a beta of a game which anyone is free to download. No licence. So anyone doing so would answer Yes if they were being truthful. As would I, since I acquired the software by writing it (A definition of Acquire is : To get by one's own efforts).
Arrr! Say here now! What be this talk o' pirates on Slashdot? There be no pirates here. Sir, I am mortally offended that you even suggest such a thing is possible.
We are honest business men. It's not our fault if things just happen to fall off of the back of the merchant freighters.
Half of all software is utter crap.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
The BSA can kiss my lily-white ass.
Them and all the other **AA douchebags as well.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
...is nobody's crime.
Pirates > Ninjas
Case in point...
I recently purchased a new Asus laptop with Windows 7 pre-installed. I've nothing against Windows 7 but currently it does nothing for me that Windows XP won't and I therefore see no point in learning a new OS that, in every other respect, is just change for change's sake in the way that everything has been moved around and renamed by Microsoft.
I have a shop bought copy of XP but discovered that despite XP still being supported, Asus doesn't have drivers for all of the hardware in the laptop for XP. So in this case I resigned myself to keeping Windows 7 on the laptop.
I'm mainly a Linux guy and wanted to partition the laptop to dual boot Gentoo Linux. I backed up the Asus Windows installation partitions and then trashed the hard drive with the partitions that I wanted. But when I re-installed Windows 7 from the back-up, it trashed my partition structure and put itself back on exactly as it was when I bought it.
A friend of mine is an MSDN subscriber and gave me an ISO of Windows 7 Home Premium, exactly as on the laptop originally. So I partitioned the drive as I wanted it and installed from the Windows 7 installation DVD I had made from the ISO. When it came to putting in the W7 License Key, I copied in the one from the base of laptop, but when it finished installing W7 it told me the License Key was invalid.
I read in a magazine article that an ISO image of W7 contains all W7 versions and you can prompt W7 to ask you what version of W7 to install by removing a config file from the ISO image and reburning to DVD.
So I repeated the installation and, sure enough, I got asked which version to install - again, I chose W7 Home Premium as the laptop had come with. But once again it rejected my license key.
Having done a few searches on Google (I'm reasonably competent with Windows but more Linux orientated), I discover that I have only an OEM license for Windows 7, which basically means I am piece of shit on the bottom of Steve Ballmer's hand-made shoes and am therefore not worthy enough to install the version of Windows 7 I legally have a license to use from an installation DVD that has that version on it.
At that point in time, I could have got a W7 license key from the Internet, or maybe scrounged one from my MSDN-subscribing friend but I'm not into using pirated software any more, for the simple fact that when the time I stopped using pirated software about 5 years ago, I have never had a virus or piece of malware on Windows XP since.
As of now, I've given up with W7 on the laptop, I actually wish I'd not accepted the Microsoft T&Cs and got a refund because it's of no use to me - instead the laptop is now a Linux-only PC and I shall put my legitimate copy of XP on as a VirtualBox VM.
I do wonder if I have a case under "Fair Usage" with UK Trading Standards in this instance since it does not strike me as unreasonable to want to partition my hard drive the way I want to and to then install the provided W7 installation files onto that partition structure so I could build a dual boot.
Maybe the BSA would be interested in taking the case up as someone who, despite being treated like shit by a software company, has not chosen to pirate software as an easy solution to the problem of getting fair usage?
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
if you use Linux you will have to produce a valid receipt or you will be harassed until you buy expensive, buggy corporate shovel ware.
photosMy Photostream
Copyright violation is really a civil problem instead of a criminal one IMHO and the laws in a lot of places reflect that. However there is so much money involved that various agencies have been induced to go as far as international paramilitary operations (dvd jon, megaupload etc) to what comes down to arguments about copyright. I'd say there are real crimes such as bribery occuring to inflate the response to copyright infringement.
When numbers change, you always need to ask what actually changed. Especially on surveys. Especially on surveys where people self-report.
The "increase" in piracy rate may well be a combination of effects, the most obvious one being an increase in the percentage of people admitting it (i.e. a reduction of the dark figure. It could be a slight decrease of actual piracy, and a large decrease of the dark figure. Or it could be a huge increase in piracy, with a decrease in people reporting it.
So, in summary, it basically tells us very little about piracy.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is the BSA, not paying for their members software is PIRACY!!! And TREASON!!! And TERRORISM!!! And THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
This is the BSA, they don't care about right or wrong, they care that you payed the maximum fee possible and don't you dare sell on licenses forced on you that you don't need. That would mean the terrorists have won!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I run Linux and OpenBSD and software with GPL, BSD, or other free licences for all my personal stuff. I have everything I need and more for free.
On the other hand at work we often get people asking us to save a few hundred by buying Windows student edition or wanting to install software on multiple machines when we have licensed it for only one. I won't do it, we either pay for the correct license or we don't use it. It's one thing for a home user to rip off some software but companies never should.
You described a case when free software competes with commercial software. But imagine following scenario:
* There is an entrenched piece of software by company A used by most people that costs 700$.
* There is a startup company B producing similar thing that costs 50$.
Now in case you pirate the software produced by company A, that's not a lost sale for company A. That's more a lost sale for company B.This kind of behaviour will lead to demise of company B and company A will become a monopoly. Add to this network effects and zero distribution costs and file format lock-in etc- they will only speed things up.
What I want to say is that software market in general is easily dominated by big established companies. It's almost impossible to compete with established players, even if you sell a similar/better product for less. And piracy is one of the things responsible for that.
Now markets where you need to offer support or adaptation/localization of software (enterprise markets) are somewhat different. And that's where Linux shines.
--Coder
Their STATED goal is stamping out piracy. Their ACTUAL goal is make millions performing services of "stamping out piracy". So if piracy is up, the demand for their services and their profit obviously goes up as well- who else will defend poor huge software companies and their profits from the scary pirates?
An entity established to solve a problem will ensure that the problem will NEVER be solved. They will make sure they maximize their own gain from CONTINUING to solve the problem. Especially if its a government entity, but corporations like this work the same way.
--Coder
What would the figure be if they removed all the people who admit to using Linux etc. I think that the BSA and fellow criminals consider FOSS to be theft and "piracy".
Perhaps the numbers are 7% of people actually use non-free software without paying for it and 50% of people do not use any Free software.
The number of people, even those running Windows, who are not using any open source software is shrinking all the time. I have come accross the most un-technical people using GIMP or Open Office.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
"A friend of mine is an MSDN subscriber and gave me an ISO of Windows 7 Home Premium, exactly as on the laptop originally."
"I discover that I have only an OEM license for Windows 7" [...] "I legally have a license to use from an installation DVD that has that version on it."
There's your problem. It's actually *not* exactly the same, and you were given the wrong ISO. There's more than one distribution image for Windows 7, each almost identical to the rest - except for the code that handles activation, which accepts only certain key sets depending on whether the disc is intended for OEM, retail, etcetera. It's a PITA as you discovered, just not for the reason you thought. They do the same with their Office line, more of those same-but-different discs depending on whether it's OEM, Academic, Retail, Corporate, etc. It inconveniences their paying customers but has no deterrent on pirates that I can discern (if anything, I think it would only encourage them).
Machines that come with Windows 7 should (ethically at least) come with recovery media, but skinflint OEMs instead tend to sell them with a recovery partition and a one-shot image burner app to create your own set of discs - which many customers utterly fail to understand, or even know about, until it's too late.
There's more than enough free software to run almost any business you could name. Admittedly, you might need a commercial license or two for some very specialized stuff, but if all you need is office and some web presence, I'm a little hard put to understand why you'd have to buy any software at all.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Global warming *is* happening. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
We've been measuring the global average temperature for 150 years, and the graph in the top right tells the story of what's been happening to global averages. Only an idiot looks at that graph and says that the temperature is actually going down.
What may or may not be in question is how much of an impact we're actually having on it, and how much of it is a natural trend. They argue that there was actually a mini ice age in the middle ages, and that this is a natural warming of the world as a result of coming out of it. They point to what the Vikings called Vineland, and remind us that they used to grow grapes for wine in Greenland. What they forget is that this mini ice age was caused by the Romans deforesting Europe, and that most of those trees have not grown back... there has to be another reason that the global cooling they caused has been reversing itself.
Beyond that, the thing that's particularly annoying about climate change deniers is that we know that these hydrocarbons (which most climate change scientists are saying is the root cause) are not good for human health. They have been linked to several types of cancers, and are a contributing factor to other quality-of-life diseases like asthma. We also know that exposure to smog has detrimental effects on the local flora and fauna. (well, some plants it's like super fertilizer, but it kills others). Knowing these detrimental effects exist, what surprises me is that some climate change deniers are actively campaigning against change, because they believe global warming to be a myth. Even if we can't agree whether humankind is responsible for the climate change, can we at least agree that reducing hydrocarbon emissions is a good thing to be trying to do regardless on its impact on the global average temperature?
Shouldn't the walled gardens be stopping this in the future?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Software piracy has not caused the industry to collapse.
Ahoy and avast, maties.
57% really?? Most users are lucky they know how to turn a computer on, and most likely didn't know what they were even answering. Ask the questions the right way and you will get the answers you want.
I think the biggest problem is a lack of the usual compromise between a customer and a vendor. Of COURSE piracy has gone up; any mass produced, commercially polished applications I've purchased legally in the past year phones home so often that my laptop is literally useless for many purposes without a wi-fi connection.
It's becoming a case of cutting off a nose to spite the face, and it's a real problem. I don't want to see companies that make good, useful products go out of business, but the bullshit DRM coming out of the software sector is simply ludicrous. Everything from various operating systems the latest games needs to phone home periodically these days; and some applications need *constant* reassurance from daddy that there's no stranger-danger from the big bad user.... it's enough say "Fuck it all; piracy's easier."
I wonder if the big corps are doing it on purpose, so when piracy reaches more than 95% of users, they can ask for a bail-out and even MORE draconian laws. Oh, and so the leaders can float to the Bahamas on golden parachutes.
My company produces a certain software product for which our customers buy licenses.
I on the other hand make changes to that package and have roughly 20 copies of it sitting on my hard-drive right now. (customized for different deployments mostly)
I just copy them down from the repository and build.
It would be hard to say that I have a license for each and every copy of the platform I have, and thus you could technically say I am running unlicensed software.
On the other hand, my employer owns all the copyrights to this platform and they pay me to make these changes, so I am also not in danger of being pursued for this.
If I were asked if I had a license for every piece of software on my work computer, I would consider the truthful answer to be 'no' just on the situation specified above(one that is no doubt common to many if not most in the software industry).
As the BSA wants to scare their supporters with this sort of survey(to get more $upport), I have little doubt that they make the question as vague as possible to get lots of 'Yes' answers. As such I would consider this survey to be about as accurate as a pop-up alert in my web browser claiming to have found malware on my PC.
Maybe you could use pirated IBM software to keep track of the people you haven't killed yet.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
If all your software comes in via an app store and the media goes away, how can piracy occur. The question is, when all software comes via this conduit, what are the stupid BSA guys going to do for jobs.
Like those freedom loving countries like North Korea.
And from this, what follows? Answer: nothing.
None of those people were customers to begin with.
So the BSA can go F themselves if they think this statistic is a good reason for new and more draconic laws impinging on end user's rights.
ARghhhaa matey!
http://www.thestranger.com/binary/02ba/1337178666-greoigre_friedman.jpg
BSA also undercounts taxable income? ???? (Wonder of wonders?)
I listen to pandora, actually.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
What may or may not be in question is how much of an impact we're actually having on it, and how much of it is a natural trend.
This question is really simple to answer. Troposphere is getting warmer while stratosphere is getting colder. That means troposphere is absorbing energy radiated from surface even before it reaches upper levels of atmosphere (a.k.a. greenhouse effect). And this is not the only evidence pointing at the culprit. There are satellites in orbit measuring the spectrum of energy radiated from Earth. Those measurements clearly show that energy radiation in wavelength ranges absorbed by CO2 is decreasing. Do I need to say more?
Do I need to say more?
To me, no. But I'm a tree-hugging dirt worshipper, and that's essentially preaching to the choir. In my mind's eye there can be no doubt that we're at least partly responsible for the quickening global warming, and as a scuba diver to boot, I have seen first-hand the impact that man is having on some of the most fragile ecosystems in the world.
That being said, I was trying to meet him halfway, and give him a reason that didn't depend on global warming to try to reduce emissions and plant trees, because he seemed to think that global warming/climate change is a load of bunk. :) If the end result is the same and beneficial for everybody, I don't really care how it was rationalized.
I normally don't reply to ACs but your post intrigued me...WHAT new hardware? I have Win 7 running on a 1.8GHz Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM in the shop, I have it in dual boot with XP because frankly as long as XP is getting updates (and the only thing I use the box for is downloading drivers and as a patch server) there really isn't a point in switching that particular box but you know what? it runs fine. I've also tried Win 7 on old P4s and Athlons, old laptops, and frankly as long as you have 1Gb or better (which surfing is so nasty with 512Mb now with all the bloated JS you'd be nuts to use less than 1gb anyway) then it runs just fine. Sure you won't get Aero, but who gives a shit? I turn most of the Aero bling off anyway as all those animations just slow me down. Not really missing anything by tossing Aero and for multimedia especially the stack in Win 7 is head and shoulders better than Xp.
So I really don't know what you are gonna see "break" because the only trouble I had with Win 7 was a CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) TV tuner that frankly didn't want to run on anything but XP Sp2. A quick trip to Woot! and I replaced it with a USB Tuner, problem solved and the new one supported digital which the old one didn't. The only trouble I've had with customers and Win 7 was one that had an OOOOOOOLLLLLLLLDDDDDDD Scanner, we are talking Win98 era crap, that I couldn't find a driver for, that's it. That's all. So I have to give MSFT credit for Win 7 as the amount of hardware that "just works" without even looking for a driver is just insane. So what EXACTLY is breaking?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I've been going back and forth with the vendor for 2 weeks already. It starting to feel like they don't even want my money.
A possible increase of less than 1 degree Celsius in 130 years? Of those 130 years the trend was clearly downward for about 50 or about 38% of the total period. What was the accuracy for digital thermometers in 1880? Of course they had all kinds of fancy digital circuitry in the 19th century. For analog thermometers how much accuracy was lost due to the parallax effect when trying to estimate the meniscus level? Was the fact that thermometers tend to have a nonlinear tolerance range taken into account? What was the margin for error? We can be pretty sure it wasn't +/- 0.000 degrees.
Even in the distant future here in the 21st century our inexpensive traditional thermometer designs often have tolerances of +/- 1 or 2 degrees celsius. When did the more expensive hyper-accurate environmental thermometers that we now have begin to be used by defualt? What about rounding errors? if the thermometer at a station read 23.23 degrees did 19th century observers round it down? Did we have the same number of weather stations in 1880 as in 2012? If the rising CO2 really is the cause of the temperature increase then why is the temperature going down for almost 40% of the time? I would expect at least a more or less steadily increasing temperature to go along with the steadily increasing level of CO2.
So I don't think the results are quite so certain and even if the results were 100% certain statistically it still doesn't change the fact that the CO2 increase is being measured in parts per million and not percent and, considering how complex all the climate variables are in the real world, an increase of 1 degree celsius over more than a century just isn't all that convincing. It's a small change no matter how you want to look at it. Maybe it is due to the additional CO2 from human combustion. It's certainly possible, but if you just consider the temperature record evidence it is by no means conclusive. And even if it were conclusive, fossil fuels could easily run out or become too expensive before the planet is rendered uninhabitable to human life. Or a superior energy source might be discovered/invented before Armageddon rendering combustion as obsolete as whale oil energy. I could just imagine how panicked everyone must have been when they did the math and realized that eventually they would simply kill all the whales and run out of oil.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I'll bet that maybe 1% of people who used Winzip (beyond the 30 day eval period) ever paid for it. Ditto for Winrar.
Never mind the other piracy, mp3s and videos...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
What do the Boy Scouts of America have to do with software piracy?
Just askin...
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
(from http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2011/)
"How often do you acquire pirated software or software that is not fully licensed - all of the time, most of the time, occasionally, rarely, or never?"
Results were:
So that 57% number can be interpreted as people who have acquired "pirated" or "not fully licensed" software at some point - it makes no effort to differentiate how often that software is used.
Not to mention, I'm not sure how FLOSS software fits into the definition - considering who's asking, I wouldn't be surprised of "fully licensed" is explained as "you paid for it".
Either way, almost half of their "OMG" number is in the "rarely" category, which really cuts the legs off the argument.
Ruined by Suits
The software industry would have been great if we could have just kept "the suits" out of it. Any time you let techno-peasants with degrees make decisions, you create a "value detracted" situation. I remember attending one of the first COMDEX conventions. Encyclopedia Britannica was at the convention. I asked the dude in the booth about his 'wares'. He informed me that he had the entire EB on DVD for ONLY...... $1997.00 What a deal! "Hey Dude", I said.... "Did you know that a dvd costs only ...like 50 cents?
I suggested that if they found one idiot willing to part with $1997 for the data, please send me his email. I have some swamp land to sell him. I further suggested that If they marketed the product for $37 they might sell 30,000 of them. Nope. These guys with degrees couldn't wrap their heads around this concept. Where ae they today? Gonzo.
Google was later invented and Google showed us all how it's done. Microsoft grew so rapidly at first because with right from DOS 3, they used setup.ini so that pretty much anyone could copy the OS. I think their early marketing was based on pirate propulsion. For every one OS purchased there were likely a dozen copied. This was the original virus. In very short order, they owned the planet. Wordperfect lost to Word because they made their software more difficult to copy than Word. Wordperfect was a better word processor, but because only 1 in 300 were savvy enough to know how to copy it, Word walked all over them. Word was probably copied by 1 in 40.
Software companies need to learn a few things still. They need to price their products so that it is not worth it to copy them. Adobe is going to have to learn this lesson with its CS suite. $3000??? Who are you kidding Adobe? $499 should be the top. And don't yack at me about support costs. Screw support. In 30 years I've never found a support system worth anything. All you get is FAQ's (boy does that suck. Another invention by some techno-peasant). With bandwidth what it is and with rapid elearning solutions, companies should just create "how to" videos. People learn visually. My entire IT career has been vastly enriched by me just creating "How To" videos for anyone that wants to learn any software. When I get requests, I learn the software, then create rich media how to videos to provide private tutorial assistance to clients. Software companies would be well advised to just let the private industry take care of support like I've just explained. For those of us who do this kind of work, the earning potential is virtually unlimited.
"I almost agree... I dual boot win7 and Ubuntu and there is still no comparison. I get more work done while in win7...as soon as (insert your fav brand of Linux) can properly install my video, network, sound drivers without a glitch...
Out-of-the-Box I can watch videos and brows, without a glitch and including the MP4 files Microsoft don't want me to use. I also find with each new dumbed-down iteration of Windows, it gets harder to perform the simplest task without the GUI getting in the way.
AccountKiller
You see, there were not so long ago (or perhaps there still are) laws against oral and gay sex in some states. Such a backward an irrelevant laws must be overturned.
They were.