It’s not news that parts of the world are awash in pirated software, mainly Windows and MS Office. What is news is that in many countries, governments are no longer turning a blind eye to software piracy at the corporate level.
Recently in China, once considered something of a safe haven for piraters, a two year joint effort by Chinese police and the U.S. FBI led to 25 arrests and the seizure of $500 million in counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec software products, which included over 290,000 counterfeit discs and fake certificates of authenticity. The incident reportedly led to the bringing down of two criminal organizations that were responsible for distributing up to $2 billion in pirated software.
Speaking of things as certain as gravity…
The thing that is worrying or bothering you? Jump ahead 24 hours in your mind. What will you most likely be doing? Does that thing you are worrying about now have any bearing on your life 24 hours later? Has that thing you are worrying about followed you? Has worrying about it made it better or go away? No? Then stop worrying. If what you are worrying about isn’t going to be important 24 hours from now, just stop it. Stop injuring yourself. And for those who don’t realize it…worry can often lead to anger. In fact, it most often does.
The deal created a river of money flowing into Mozilla’s coffers — $138 million in 2011 alone — allowing rapid development of Firefox, proper maintenance of Thunderbird and Bugzilla, and the creation of Firefox OS. Although there was a bit of grumbling from some FOSSers who would’ve preferred a default search engine that was more respectful of user privacy rights, the deal was generally seen as a good thing for the free and open source community.
We had passed each other while shopping earlier and had exchanged nods and smiles. I had to laugh. She didn’t flinch when I put the robo-Ken device to my throat to talk to her.