Monday 23 October 2006

Thieving

I'm well aware that my view of the world could be described as "skewed". For instance, the Internet Explorer 7 installer said something along the lines of "To install Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 you must validate your Windows installation. Click here to validate." In my mind, this translated to "You are a dirty rotten thief! To dispute this claim, please click this button." That's the problem with all DRM and call-home procedures on our PCs these days. They assume the worst, and treat everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

I don't think it is in your best interests for Microsoft to call you a thief and make you prove them wrong. The problem is that it's by far the easier path for them. If they tried to gather information about who was pirating Windows and go after them, they'd be spending their own time and money doing so. If they just accuse everyone, they're spending your time.

Individually it wouldn't be that much - say, two minutes. Multiply that over a company of 2000 employees and we have 66 hours wasted just proving to Microsoft that the company is legit. Across a user base of 100 million people, it's 380 years of lost time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's non-stop, not just working hours.
PPS - Crazy, isn't it?

4 comments:

Erin Marie said...

Sometimes you make my brain hurt with the way you think about things the way I would never think about them.

Of course, my head is already hurting, so that doesn't help.

Good point.

Anonymous said...

but werent you a theif? i thought the reason you didnt install it was cause you were theiving it :P hehehe

John said...

It didn't say anything unusual at all, and I haven't stolen anything. I refused to install IE7 because it requires me to validate my already-valid copy of Windows. I don't need that kind of trouble. The world of Linux is looking better all the time.

Anonymous said...

haha, or mac... go mac. everyone loves mac :)