[pp.int.general] Microsoft Drafts Consumers In Fight Against Software Piracy: Carrot And Stick

[Andrew Norton]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Reinier Bakels <r.bakels at planet.nl> wrote:
> From IP-Watch: Microsoft Drafts Consumers In Fight Against Software Piracy:
> Carrot And Stick
> US software giant Microsoft said Thursday that users globally have started
> to join the fight against software piracy by sending in over 150,000 reports
> about problems with fake Microsoft products over the last two years.
>
> Link to the article: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/?p=8188
> An alternative for legalising "illegal" MS software is moving to Open Source
> software ...
>
> I still believe that within a few years, there will be no Microsoft anymore.
> The firms is not innovative (probably never has been), and users don't need
> yet another Windows or Word version. So "selling" software is just a matter
> of law enforcement, a "fight" that justifies all means for MS, apparently.

It's statements like this that undermine Open Source. It sounds
bitter, and derogatory. Windows is just as innovative as any linux
system. What Windows has over Linux (generally) is usability. Almost
every linux is still written by coders for coders. I have been
dabbling with linux for almost 10 years (when I first got unlimited
dialup, the first thing I grabbed was redhat 6.1 (I'd just built a new
dual-cpu system, and no windows license I had at the time supported 2
cpus) after 3 weeks, I went and put win98 on and made do with only
using one CPU, because even then, it was faster to do things, while I
waited for win2000 to come out. Even now, I have ubuntu on here, and
it's horrible to work with. It's just not designed for intuitive use.

I'm no windows fanboi, though, I much prefer the straight usability of
RiscOS (which I used as a teaching assistant for 7 years) or even
workbench to kde/gnome interfaces (and I started in the mid-80s, when
a lot of computers didn't *HAVE* a GUI).

However, straight 'Microsoft's never innovative' just undermines you,
and every other statement you make in the same email, as fanatical.

Andrew