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It's a pity that the then Micro-soft did not have copy protection technology - if they had, they might never have established such a strong foothold in the mark
by rvkennedy 14y ago
It's a pity that the then Micro-soft did not have copy protection technology - if they had, they might never have established such a strong foothold in the market, and the history of computing would have been quite different.
- zdw 14y agoYeah, they look like they've really been hurting for years now... (oh come one people, downvotes? You can't tell the OP is attempting humor, and I'm trying to acknowledge that?)
- saraid216 14y agoFrom HN Guidelines: > Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- DigitalJack 14y agoResist quoting from HN Guidelines. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Confusion 14y agoTo me it's quite obviously sarcasm based on a counterfactual and I don't see how one could interpret it otherwise.
- Vivtek 14y agoMy guess is that "Yeah, me too" posts rarely add anything to the conversation - sorry, I'm being blunt here, but that's the way HN rolls. If you find a post humorous, just upvote and move on. You'll get your chance to crack a joke in due time. The contrast is with ten-comment-long Redditesque variants-on-a-theme threads, which I personally enjoy - on Reddit. Here, I'd rather cut to the chase with insightful commentary.
- dpcan 14y agoYes, I'd love to hear a response from (2013) Bill Gates to this letter. I wonder if he sees this in a different light now? Could the piracy of his early programming language been what started the exponential growth/adoption of all Micro-soft software? If he could, would he go back and release BASIC for free as a springboard to sell other software?
- undershirt 14y ago[He said something similar about China:](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461490/piracy http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461490/piracy) > ...in 1998 during a candid moment in front of an audience at the University of Washington acknowledged the problem with enforcing software copyrights in the developing world: > Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though, and as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
- Jplenbrook 14y ago"as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours" Shrewd wisdom.
- flomo 14y agoMicrosoft moved to a business model where they received royalties paid directly from the OEMs. And I suppose, BASIC was a teaser for MS's more advanced developer tools.
- yuhong 14y agoDR decided on this from the beginning.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Natsu 14y agoHeh, that reminded me of this old thing: http://www.macgui.com/usenet/?author=gm%40trsvax&group=26&id=11916 http://www.macgui.com/usenet/?author=gm%40trsvax&group=2... Internal Security Violation The tree of evil bears bitter fruit Crime does not pay The Shadow knows Trashing Program Disk.