BSA should be shut down by legislative decree

One gets fed up of this utter nonsense. Those putative sales never existed. For the so-called 'pirates' there was only ever one consideration. Organisations like the BSA, MPAA, etc., should be shut down by legislative decree and their assets seized. All software should be Open Source, it is too important in the present world to be under the thumb of a convicted felon. Apart from which, substantial evidence exists, esp. in the music industry, that the greater the piracy, the higher the sales. DGL.

Once again the large corporations blow piracy way out of proportion. First, the BSA fails to mention how much was made in revenue versus lost to piracy. Second, and most importantly, the BSA fails to mention how many of the pirated software consumers would have actually bought the software to begin with. The situation with piracy is that MOST of the people using it would NEVER have bought a legitimate copy to begin with. There are a couple of reasons for this (Below, "they" refers to the consumers of pirated software):

1) They don't need or want it enough to pay for it.
2) Revolting against harsh and unfair "protection mechanisms"
3) Revolting against sky high prices (Windows is a nice example of this)
4) They cannot afford it (ties to #3)
5) They want to actually try the full version of the software before they shell out the big bucks for something they cannot get a refund on.

Piracy is not commendable, but it has its merits as long as there is no commercial exploitation involved. It offers a chance to try the product so you don't lose money and it offers the actual crackers experience with software design and how software works. It also offers those who could never afford the product, but who need it for whatever reason, a chance to use it. Software companies and the BSA needs to realize all of what's mentioned here, especially points 2-5 in the list above. Here are some examples that should reduce piracy:

1) Offer fully functional demo versions, including saving, that last at least 30 days. Make it available on a cheap or free disc if it is too large to offer as a download. Games are an exception since they cannot be demoed this way. How game demos work today is acceptable.

2) Get rid of these unfair product activation schemes. Serial numbers are ok as they can be used as "tech support tickets." No legit key, no tech support. Forcing the consumer to "phone home" is not acceptable.

3) Make licenses household wide instead of per machine/CPU. This only applies to personal use software, not business.

4) Make licensing agreements fairer to the consumer. As they exist now, they are very unfair. Most consumers would not install software if they knew what was in those agreements (everyone should read a few just to see).

5) Make the pricing fair. Windows XP is NOT WORTH $200+ (Retail) FOR A HOME EDITION. At most, a retail copy of XP home is worth $119. Microsoft would still make a tidy profit and far fewer people would be tempted to pirate it.

Take these steps and large amounts of piracy will be eliminated. Piracy will never be completely eradicated because there will always be people who pirate for the thrill and those who are too cheap to buy software even at fair prices, but piracy can be reduced significantly through fairness to the consumer. In its current state, the software industry deserves the losses it suffers, in fact it deserves losses ten times greater. Try the suggestions mentioned here, BSA, it will amaze all of you what it achieves compared to increasingly strict "protections" and licensing.

Will the BSA and other software companies ever listen to any of these words? Not a chance, they're too damn greedy.

Name supplied

Dell wants $40 for Windows XP 64 bits upgrade

Did you happen to notice that the Dull website conveniently doesn't mention that you can purchase the OEM version w/ hardware?

The only advantage I can think of paying the $40 is to get support for the H/W drivers - but most anyone worth their weight in IT competancy I know could find these on their own easy enough.

Perhaps keeping the 32-bit version of LoseDoze XP Pro valid, as opposed to the Micro$oft exchange that invalidates its license, make it worth the $40, though - who is to say?

If Micro$oft had simply found it their ability to support WIN16, most existing installers would work just fine on the 64-bit O/S, as the H/W supports the mode, but M$ chooses not to...

Jim

Intel spends a billion a year on Inside campaign Take an aspirin

FYI, Just in case you weren't aware, here in the USA, if you don't protect your trademark, you lose it. Have you ever taken an aspirin? Aspirin use to be a trademark name for pain reliever from a particular company. When everyone started calling their similar pain reliever formula aspirin, the original company didn't fight it, so now they no longer lay claim to it. Ever rode on an escalator? same thing.

I realize it's great amusement to make fun of intel protecting their trademark rights, but perhaps occasionally, "The Inquirer Staff" (cough), might consider taking a moment to think that maybe there might be a very good reason.

Name supplied

Playstation no soft Cell

Have AMD and Intel realised how utterly pointless their x86 CPUs are compared to the ever approaching IBM Cell launch?

Dual-core? Xbox 360 has a tri-core PowerPC G5 at 3.2Ghz and the Cell has 9 symmetric cores?

Have they ever heard of the term, "flogging a dead horse?"

Of course, if that is not the case, at least Linux gets a little bit popular, er that is, with 100 million PS2 users.

Name supplied

More BSA bananas

$33 billion lost is of course total nonsense, as if all the poor people in the world would be able (and willing) to buy all the software they use a pirated copy of now.

Then there's the question if software is worth the asking price, I have seen many a package that wasn't worth more than $2 sold for $80.

In fact I have received free bundled official software sold separately for $50+ that devastated my OS and forced me to do a radical restore, guess what would happen if I had actually paid for it..

This kind of estimate is something that's merely a amusing nonsensical filler for slow newsdays that any selfrespecting official and journalist should brush aside as nothing more than a joke.

I think btw that seeing many people in poor countries still package and fabricate the soft and hardware for ridiculous wages we should accept that they even are entitled to have some breaks, It would be outrageous to pay people 50 cents to work all day or even week packaging and assembling soft and hardware and then expect them to pay a month's wages for a (buggy)softwarepackage would it not.

Name supplied

$33 billion my ass.

W.

Linux and Microsoft

Hi,

I think that Microsoft are looking to be "cross platform" - ie run on things other than 80x86 - with .NET

There are a couple of flies in MS's ointment:

1) Linux. A lot of Linux software is available in source code format and so the shift from 32bit Linux to 64bit Linux will lose less software than, say, the Microsoft Windows shift to 64 bits.

2) Java. I don't know how the 64bit addressing will benefit the Java Byte codes - but it allows the deployment of applications on exotic processors (one day) and on different operating systems.

Keep up the good work.

Ian

EMC and storage

On Monday EMC launched, not for the first time, its Storage Router, Invista (http://www.emc.com/news/press_releases/viewUS.jsp?id=3130).

One of the major goals for the EMC Invista solution was to provide the ability to move data between different classes of storage array in order to minimise costs over time. In other words, provide customers with the opportunity for service level optimisation.

Unfortunately, with their announcement, it has now become apparent that there is significant cost, complexity and even service level disruption associated with purchasing and using EMC Invista for service level optimisation. The difference is especially great compared with the simple, efficient and flexible approach using 3PAR's newly announced Dynamic Optimisation capability on Utility Storage (http://www.3par.com/news/_pr/051605.html) -- a massively scalable tiered-storage platform.

The significant cost (buying another appliance), complexity (multiple extra layers and different tiers of arrays) and service level disruption is often inherent to the use of Data Migration tools for the purposes of service level optimisation.

Can EMC get customers to buy into another level of complexity (adding yet another appliance) in their environment? There may be initial interest in Invista, however, once customers experience the product's limitations it may just end up on the shelf gathering dust. The limitations of Invista for service level optimisation include:

1. Possible service level disruption as a result of the potential for negative performance impact to running applications during data migration. According to an EMC-sponsored white paper on the subject, network-enabled solutions like Invista will only "tend to be largely non-disruptive." Translation: "Customers should expect that there could be disruption to applications as the data migration activity occurs." This is the last thing you need if you are trying to optimise service levels.

2. The potential for data integrity/availability issues. This is the natural fall-out stemming from adding more products and appliances in the control path. More products lead to a greater susceptibility to failures -- worse reliability, not better.

In addition to these limitations, EMC has announced that Invista is a "stateless solution." Translated into laymen terms this simply means "don't blame me if your data gets lost." For obvious reasons, customers will not welcome a stateless solution when the Invista is tasked with the redirection and virtualisation of their precious mission-critical data.

Data Migration tools like EMC Invista should be used for the retirement of old arrays, not for active service level optimisation. And a tool used for asset retirement should be rented, not purchased. It should only be placed into a customer's IT environment when it has to be used (every few years) -- not part of a normal storage infrastructure.

So despite the claims, customers should be careful before making an investment in Invista. With Invista, EMC is adding yet another layer of complexity to a customer's storage environment at a time when other vendors, such as 3PAR, are offering in-box software solutions like Dynamic Optimisation that provide simple, online and non-disruptive service level optimisation.

David Scott, CEO 3PARdata Inc.

Stroking cat different from stroking user interface

Have you already tried to put a jacket on an unwilling cat ? It's a nightmare. And it's extenuating. Not to mention scarring. Allergic people will be hard put to benefit from such a device, they won't be able to stand the effort required to put the thing on the cat. And cats do not like being dressed in anything. Besides, stroking a cat is not like stroking a computer interface. Even if I know it is connected to a cat, I'll just be scratching a piece of metal. I don't think that will be anything near as therapeutic an effect as is scratching a cats ears.

Pascal

Microsoft patents objects, lesson

Hi,

I am a software developer from Romania. And, if Microsoft didn't knew by now, all things are treatead as objects in this era.This is the object oriented age, so when designing an application, we always try to represent things as objects. This includes email addresses...What a stupid "invention".

Maybe they mean "treating email addresses as objects in the user interface" or something, but anyway you put it, it is just plain wrong to patent this and it can possibly deter us from writing straightforward code because of the fact that straightforward things are patented.

Like you say...sheesh.

I wonder how long will it take until they patent the addition of two numbers in a single line of code :)

Name supplied

Everywhere Girl is omnipresent

The "everywhere girl" is already everywhere, so why does she need to travel ? Perhaps Greyhound should be asked to solve this existential puzzle.

John

Who is she?

Ok, has anyone fessed up who this person is? After all the promotion you guys have given her, she should be a Hollywood star!

Just wondering...

Bill Reister

Dear Eva Glass

Dear Eva

Hey,

Just thought I would give a shout out. The INQ has become a part of my daily reading materials. Quite a picker-up after staring at code for hours on end. From the pictures, I can easily say you are extremely hot, although not as attractive as our buddy Mr.Magee, but still very cool. Keep up the good work. If INQ ever goes down, then I have to live with trying to fish this news out of fanboy forums of 12 year olds. :-)

Cheers,
Clint

A thumbs up for Hewlett Packard support

Having read without question the relentless bashing of HP and offshored tech support that goes on in the Inq and elsewhere, I thought I'd share a very positive experience that I had with HP's tech suport today, in the form of a feedback email that I sent to their management.

And no, I'm not an HP employee, shareholder, Bangalorean, professional sycophant, etc, etc!! :-)

---------------->

Support received today on incident 7000254428 (USB scanning problem with Officejet 4255 all-in-one)

Hi,

I am just emailing to express the great job that the person who I spoke to today (in Bangalore, though I don't know the persons name) in assisting me to resolve a critical scanning problem with my Officejet AIO 4255, that I'd been having for months, and which was stopping me getting some urgent court documentation processed. I hadn't been able to fix the problem by myself, nomatter what I tried (OS re-installations, software reinstallations, configuration changes, PC BIOS settings, USB device, port and cable adjustments, etc, etc).

The person that received my tech support call today (after only a short wait) not only helped me solve it very rapidly, but also more than matched me in various techie discussions as we went about it. It isn't often that that happens, as my profession has been software developer/manager for a couple of decades, and I've been a PC hobbyist for years too, so I am very much an expert user and PC "tech head".

She had flawless knowledge of the product, the product's software and the general PC/WinXp environment, down to USB communication and chipsets, beyond what I have ever experienced in tech support calls (which I generally avoid at all costs, like a lot of people) before.

I don't give this praise lightly. I am normally a firm cynic regarding offshored technical support, and long ago stopped buying Dell because of the hopeless (offshored) support that I got from them, but my experience today changed my mind and left me a happy HP user. I will buy HP again.

Having said all that, there is still a remaining problem getting the 4255 to work reliably over USB (at least with the Intel USB chipset) with the scanning tool in MS Office 2003, which (after the above) I now think is either an MS problem, or some HP-related issue which the MS software doesn't handle properly. I think it is generic, ie. not related to my specific unit, and should be looked at by the product/firmware development people, to produce a workaround if possible. You can get all of the details of my original problem from the incident log.

Thanks,
Chris Melville
Perth, Australia

Cell fone

Hello Mr "The Letterman", I read your comment and then emailed the Cell team to see if they could respond to your statement(I am an IBM Global Services Employee and have nothing to do with the team that developed the Cell chip).

Here are some clarifications they forwarded to me:

"First the 2 Teraflop number is a system number, not a cell number (most of the flops coming from inside the nVidia chip)

At ISSCC we reported the 256GFLOPS (single precision) at an operation of 4GHz.

The math is:

2 Operations an instruction (Fused FMA)
4 Single Precision op per instruction (SIMD)
8 SPUs
4 GHz operation

(Does not include Flops from Power Processor Core)

Regards"

JZ