Big farms and bigger claims
Mark my words. Software piracy is a terrible thing to behold. Worse, still; the reactions of certain larger corporations who believe that their rights have been slighted.
While setting up machines for a workshop this morning, it came to our attention that five new laptops, duly purchased from a major manufacturer, seemed to have an operating system. That is, an operating system that did not pass the “test”. Not for me to wonder why, since I’d seen the requisition and the packing slip and the request for payment. Mine was only to try and get the show started, on time, in spite.
Oddly enough, the only symptom of a greater malaise, after the initial delay while the machine tried to phone home and prove its filiation, was that certain sites refused to permit download. Among the restricted: Mozilla. I could see the page for Firefox, but no download was possible. Similarly, attempts to update an obviously crippled native browser were rebuffed. The solution: pack the five machines back in their boxes until the legitimacy of our purchase could be explored, and then dig out some older Macs.
Dare I say the name? In our new Web 2.0 world, the brand doesn’t matter to the client.
Had a friendly exchange with a teacher from Alberta this afternoon. We were talking about vacations on the Island, and he wondered if there were visible differences between the area around Rustico and the area around Souris. I wouldn’t touch that one with a warped broom handle, so we added a larger area of interest. He wondered about the size of farms on the Island, and when I mentioned my grandfather’s farm as one of “fifty acres”, he returned that they couldn’t turn some of their agricultural machines around in such a small piece of land. What to reply? I’ve not “been out West”, therefore I have to accept the claim at face value. Remember, though, that good things come in small packages.
