Is Piracy Good?

This article has been taken from the April 2006 issue of computer magazine DIGIT. I am sharing it here just because I thought it was worth it. The article is written as it appears in the magazine. The ME in the article is not me, it is the author of the article.

Oh Shush, You Little **** Activist! Piracy is Good

This is what was said to me when I recently chided a female friend who called me to ask for a “free version” of a very popular (and expensive) image-editing software! The verbal refuse did not ruffle me- but her statement,”Piracy is good,” left me speechless.

A lot of muttering and stammering and hurled abuses later, things calmed down a bit and I got down to asking her how exactly piracy was good, and for whom.

“Not unless you buy me coffee and get me that software,” she teased. Long story short, I took her out for coffee, but made sure she got someone else to do her piracy work.

Here’s what transpired:

Me: So how can piracy be good? Good, for you, yes, but not good for the poor developer or for our economy!
She: Nope. Piracy is good for the software developers themselves. I mean, it’s also good for me, but it’s lot more beneficial for the big software companies.

Me: Oh really, how? Do you know how many billions of US dollars of profit they lose because of piracy?

She: Sure, but how many billions more do they make with sales?
Me: Oh, that’s not a valid argument; it’s like saying that since 1 million citizens pay tax, why should the government want tax from rest of the population?
She: No, taxes are different. You have to pay them, but when it comes to software, I don’t have to use it; I could choose to be like you and not use paid software at all!

Me: So why don’t you?
She: Because I am keeping the balance of good and evil in the world! What do you think, dummy? It’s because there are popular software that are easy to use and the not-so-popular freeware that are a lot harder to get used to! I like to keep it simple.

Me: So piracy is justified for you because you are lazy?
She: No. Piracy is justified for me because I want to use same software at home as I do at work. My company will not buy me a copy for home, so I pirate it!
Me: Wha…huh…umm…that’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard! Why can’t you just use logic and listen to what you’re saying!

An Ideal Microsoft Keyboard!

Is this what Microsoft is all about…

Google to acquire Postini

Google made the announcement today about their acquisition of Postini for $625 million, a hosted enterprise communication security solution that enables companies to protect their users from things like viruses and phishing attacks. It also provides a robust archiving service that helps organizations stay in compliance with regulations.

Postini is the global leader in on-demand communications security, compliance, and productivity solutions for email, instant messaging, and the web. Postini’s award-winning services are designed to protect customers from viruses, spam, phishing, fraud, and other attacks; encrypt messages to ensure confidentiality and privacy; and archive communications to ensure compliance with regulations and to prepare for e-discovery.

Since the for-pay version of Google Apps was launched, Postini has been one of the third party services available as a paying subscriber. Now the company is a part of Google, it wouldn’t surprise me if pieces of the Postini solution find their way into the free edition of Google Apps in the future.

A cool little MS Paint trick

The video is not of as good quality. The effect you get in reality is much smoother than shown in the video. Try it yourself.

I went a little further and created something like below:

Find the icon (file) in a folder quickly

If you have a lot of icons on your desktop or in another folder highlight one of the icons and press the first letter. For example if you were looking for an icon named “test” highlight any icon and then press the “t” key.

Login as administrator if you don’t see it available

Unless and until you have run into issues and fixing XP (underwhich case you have to go to Safe Mode to login as Administrator), you can get to administrator screen by simply pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE twice at the welcome screen.