Pirates beware!
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006The Star writes: “Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of local PC users running pirated Windows operating systems will soon face the shame of being reminded of their illegal action every time they switch on their machines. The feature will be added to the operating system by Microsoft Corp from tomorrow and cannot be erased. It will nag the guilty users and can be awkward if it shows up on corporate PCs.
There are about six million Windows PC users in the country, according to industry estimates, while anti-piracy watchdog Business Software Alliance has reported that 61% of all software used in local private businesses is illegal. Current users of PCs running pirated Windows will find their machines “tattooed†the next time they update the operating system.”
Personally, I wonder how long will it take for the pirates to come with a patch for it or even better make the message customizable. Rather than it saying “This copy of Windows is not genuine” perhaps make it like “This PC belongs to [name]“… a new security feature by Windows! hehehe…
But seriously, if using Windoze OS is gonna burn a hole in your pocket… why not change to Linux or even a Mac? If you’re worried that you can’t run Windoze apps in Linux, why not try out WINE (www.winehq.com) to run it in Linux? It just take a little effort and you can save on the OS for every single machine… plus, you might just make your machine a whole lot safer without all the PC viruses lurking around the cyberspace… 
Cheers~!