Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system.
--- Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living.
cited, in turn, in the GNU tar manual
11:52:46 AM comment []
Over at Ars Technica, Nate Anderson asks "Global software piracy losses: US$3- or $34-billion?" The BSA doesn't make their case any better by making outrageous claims. Software piracy is an issue, but it is not a world-shaking crisis. 87% of the people with a pirated version of PhotoShop have no idea what to do with it. 63% of the people with an illegal copy of Adobe Acrobat would likely switch to a free product like PDFCreator if they knew of the product and had some motivation not to pirate. Use of the software by others does not correspond 1:1 to lost sales. And 73% of statistics are made up on the spot.
10:02:06 AM comment []
