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SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an “abuse of power”

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MPAA, All I can do is a facepalm over this…

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has looked at tomorrow’s “Internet blackout” in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and it sees only a “gimmick,” a “stunt,” “hyperbole,” “a dangerous and troubling development,” an “irresponsible response,” and an “abuse of power.”

Wikipedia, reddit, and others are going dark to protest the legislation, while sites like Scribd and Google will also protest. In response, MPAA chief Chris Dodd wheeled out the big guns and started firing the rhetoric machine-gun style. His statement feels unusually angry for the normally unruffled trade group, but the MPAA has long asserted that Google simply wants to profit from piratical ad money.

via SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an “abuse of power”.

As one of the commenters said, pot call the kettle black.

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EA says offline Single-Player games are “Finished,” Online is the way forward

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Well, now EA wants to convert to making games that have no ‘offline’ component, no true singleplayer mode.  I have to wonder what’s up with this?  First Blizzard with Starcraft II, and now EA wants to make online games.  Yes I hear the ‘It allows us to reduce piracy’ argument, but it can lock a lot of paying customers out of the game that they bought.

I’m not fond of this type of stuff.  What if you have no internet connection, or a bad connection?  People using dial-up, and satellite are going to be unable to play any game of that type, at least it wouldn’t be too fun.

In the end of the day, I believe that the best way to stop piracy is to sell the game for a good price (Not $60.00+) Don’t lock people out from the game, the Pirates will remove that part anyways, so it doesn’t stop them.

Go to Maximumpc.com to read the article.

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Microsoft says that Windows is cheaper than Linux

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Well, I’ve seen this many times, Microsoft saying that their $200-$500 Operating system is cheaper than the $0.00 Linux.  Their reasoning is because “Everyone uses Windows, You have to spend time to learn Linux, and if you’re in a Business environment, that time is lost money. Also Linux Administrators are more expensive in business.”

I have to go, What if you already have workers that have learned Linux, or if your people know Windows XP, but not Vista or 7, because Vista and 7 are quite different than Windows XP. Or they currently use Microsoft Office 2003, but not 2007, or 2010, you would have to spend time training workers to use the new office suite.

In the end, you can upgrade to Linux with OpenOffice, or Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Office, and often a paid Antivirus Suite.  Both ways you will have to spend about the same amount of time training your workers, so why not go for the free ones instead?

I’ve been hearing of a few businesses that are doing that, My Mom’s home company, Filbert Publishing, almost exclusively uses Linux, just a copy of Windows 7 in a Virtual Machine to run some website design software.

Oh and here are a few articles you may find interesting.
Microsoft HPC claim: Windows is cheaper than Linux
Switching to Linux picks up steam
Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux
Large, Medium, and Small Companies Switching to Linux

Have a good day 🙂

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Appeals Court Rules Some Software Can’t Be Bought

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So when you buy software in the store, you are just paying for the license to use it. You don’t own anything, the program that gave you the license can revoke it at any time.  As one person that pointed out, It’s not like any standard system of renting, in the end you don’t own the software that you went into the store and paid for. Comment found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/12/appeals-court-rules- some-_n_713652.html (Read the whole article while you’re at it 🙂 )

It is of course even more strange in the Software Download world, where you don’t have any physical media that you can give to someone else.  Let’s just say don’t give your friend a copy of a downloaded program that you paid for, you can get in some trouble with the company behind the program.

In the end, you don’t own any programs installed on your computer, you’re just being allowed to use them by the company that you paid.  They can revoke your license to use the program at any time, at which point, you either have to pay for it again, or use it illegally, or move to a different program. (Hopefully Open Source, which doesn’t go by the same rules)

Man am I glad that I use Linux, and other free software. 🙂

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Microsoft has a new marketing campaign

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Microsoft has started a marketing campaign against Apple, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/pc-vs-mac.aspx , and the Mac users don’t seem too happy.  I, myself am a Linux Person, and I remember Microsoft’s ‘Get The Facts’ campaign, which did the exact same thing to Linux, annoying lots of Linux users.  (Well they did have the top link on the Google search page for Linux…)

Looking at their new site, it appears that this time, it’s just trying to keep people that are on the fence from switching away from windows.  Those who have already switched are not likely to change back, I know that, because I switched to Linux a few years ago, and only keep Windows around for those few games that don’t run on Linux, through Wine or other means…

As time passes, I see Microsoft becoming irrelevant because everything seems to be moving to the ‘cloud’.  I like the fact that I can easily move from computer to computer without needing a flash drive, but I still like having a local copy of my data.  On the ‘facts’ that microsoft has on their site, most of them seem to do with shortcomings in their software, which requires users of other systems and programs to do workarounds, because Microsoft Products refuse to work with Mac or Linux formats, but Mac and Linux can work with Microsoft formats.

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