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[vagabond48]

Mestizo, on 2009-10-30 15:31:11, said:

To indoctrinate the children to their products at an early age! Get em hooked on it at an early age and there is the potential for future home and work place sells.. Just like the old drug dealer motto "The first hit is free!".

Yeah and after that, pirate copies are practically free.

[wolf5370]

john b good, on 2009-10-30 14:19:34, said:

gosompoi, on 2009-10-30 13:23:12, said:

99% of all Software at Thai government schools are not legal, in other words pirated. The schools do not have enough money for clean quality toilets. So adobe products are out of the question. Adobe should provide free copies to the Thai government schools that teach the students how to use their software. Thai schools are teaching future workers and users of Microsoft, adobe and many other products. These companies should at least provide free copies to the schools to aid the purpose of education of the future work force.

Why should anyone give free software to schools in Thailand. The money is there so what's the problem.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

As for toilets not being properly cleaned they might educate the users to be a bit cleaner in their habits.

How many Thai's do you see "children included" who wash their hands after using the toilet. That's right a minority. And if parents do not educate their children to do so who should.

Personal hygiene is not high on the agenda here

Actually JB I have noticed in shopping malls and the cinema loos that that its mostly the farrangs (males as I don't tend to visit ladies loos much ) that walk out without visiting the hand basins. However, no one seems to use the dryers just their shirts!

They are mostly dirty I think because some guys just don't seem to bother aiming at all and rarely does anyone seem to flush the urianals. They also seem to use either nothing or choped fruit instead of chemical blocks in the urinals, so germs mutiply and make the place stink all the more.

[jsflynn603]

The ubiquitousness of pirated software came "home" to me recently...

I wanted a set of DVD's for the TV show Stargate SG3. I was watching Ebay for sets and found that generally they sold for about $120 (there are 54 DVD's in the entire series box). I noticed that one fellow on Ebay had sold several sets at $130 and was offering one at $109.99. Most sets from previous sales had been selling for a low of about $140. He had very high "positive feedback." (For anyone unfamiliar with Ebay, positive feedback is the % of people that have been happy with their transactions. For instance I will only buy from people with greater than 20 sales and greater than 98% positive feedback, and in many years have never had a single problem (until this one)).

The package arrived quite promptly, within a week. I was quite surprised to see that it was shipped from China. Opening it, everything looked in order except that a tiny area on each disk around the rim had a spot where clearly a maker's mark had clearly been removed. The box and everything else looked quite proper, and the DVDs played properly.

I wondered if this was a legal edition. But then I noticed: On the box one of the logo's for the copyright owner Metro-Goldyn Mayer was spelled Metro-Boldyn Mayer. Then I saw "Seasom one.." instead of Season One. It amazes me that so much work had gone into pirating a look-alike so professionally and yet, nobody checked for spelling errors.

Well, since it was clearly counterfeit, I wrote the fellow and said "I want nothing to do with pirated goods, and I want my money back." The guy wrote back and rather arrogantly offered me a discount! Ok, let's see, I agree to pay $90 but I'm going to risk a federal crime? I do not think so.

I called Ebay and complained. They knew already, and his account had been closed. I then filed an FBI complaint at IC3.gov and was advised to hold all materials including packaging. I then wrote to the fellow and simply stated "good luck," assuming that he was somebody in China who thought that Intellectual Rights were bogus and who was "untouchable" due to the distance. I stated that I filed an IC3 complaint with the FBI and would file a claim with Paypal who would refund the money (and they would as the sale was guaranteed under Paypal since I paid with Paypal).

I was surprised to get an email in half an hour asking me to call the seller. It turned out he was a guy in Michigan (a state in the US) in college who had been "drop shipping" items from a China source. He claimed he thought it was a legitimate copy. He probably did think that.

I cannot imagine the boldness of anyone doing this. But then, for me this was half a day's pay--for the seller in China, it was probably two or three weeks pay.

Clearly it is inconceivable to many people that Intellectual Property is something "real". But I do not doubt that the Sofware Police are real and I will bet that they will become even more real as time goes by. Why? Because currently trading agreements between the US and Asian countries and tarrif rates on goods imported to the US are being linked with expectations of a crack-down on intellectual rights theft.

Still, I am surprised that major manufacturers don't sell legitimate software at appropriate prices even if it is a bit more dated. My Microsoft Word 2007 is not really that much better than Word 2002 or, in my opinion, My Corel WordPerfect (that I still miss on occasion) from 1985. As has been pointed out though there are "open source" sofware that can compete even with the likes of Word and Photoshop and they are free (and quite legal!).

It does make me realize that "honesty" means something different in different countries. Until there is some relative pricing parity between countries (meaning if, in country "A" the average teacher makes 1/8th what an average teacher makes in the US or UK, and in that country the sofware costs 1/8th what it does in the US or UK) there will be theft.

Perhaps the software companies ought to take a good look at the music industry's idiotic (and unreasonable) history of struggling with intellectual rights and learn a lesson and try to find a "middle road." In the '80's I'd spend quite a lot each year on music (CD's). Then one day, I purchased a CD and it would not play on my music system (which was my computer) because it had DRM (Digital Rights Managment). About the same time Sony infected millions of computers with a "rootkit" (a form of virus) which damaged many computers. (Sony was subsequently sued by the State of Texas). Since that time, I have not purchased any music, nor will I until DRM (Digital Rights Management) dies a natural death. So the music industry can do without the ~$1000 that I "would have" spent. But in a way, by not accomodating countries with appropriate parity adjusted pricing I predict that the software companies will never win the battle. It is not right to have entire school systems utilizing pirated software, but it is also not right to have school systems with no sofware.

Just some thoughts....

[Dontdisturb]

gosompoi, on 2009-10-30 13:23:12, said:

99% of all Software at Thai government schools are not legal, in other words pirated. The schools do not have enough money for clean quality toilets. So adobe products are out of the question. Adobe should provide free copies to the Thai government schools that teach the students how to use their software. Thai schools are teaching future workers and users of Microsoft, adobe and many other products. These companies should at least provide free copies to the schools to aid the purpose of education of the future work force.

And what's the point if these students, when out of school will not be able to purchase an original software. And will work in a company who use pirated softwares ?

It would be better to get rid of the corruption in Thailand where most of the officials have the pockets full of money to keep the people uneducated and poor.

Anyway, I don't know why somebody needs Photoshop to resize a picture.

[thaimite]

Dontdisturb, on 2009-10-31 23:41:16, said:

gosompoi, on 2009-10-30 13:23:12, said:

99% of all Software at Thai government schools are not legal, in other words pirated. The schools do not have enough money for clean quality toilets. So adobe products are out of the question. Adobe should provide free copies to the Thai government schools that teach the students how to use their software. Thai schools are teaching future workers and users of Microsoft, adobe and many other products. These companies should at least provide free copies to the schools to aid the purpose of education of the future work force.

And what's the point if these students, when out of school will not be able to purchase an original software. And will work in a company who use pirated softwares ?

It would be better to get rid of the corruption in Thailand where most of the officials have the pockets full of money to keep the people uneducated and poor.

Anyway, I don't know why somebody needs Photoshop to resize a picture.

I wonder how many people use M$ office because it was free / bundled or easily available in the pirate shops.
I am sure that most users would find alternatives such as open office did all they required if they would give it a try. The main exceptions would be power users who have many macros written in VBA that would need rewriting
I wonder would somebody like to start a poll on who uses what office suite and why.
I used to use M$ office because it was provided by the company, and I installed it on my home machine so as I could do work at home, but now Open Office can open and save all the popular formats (including PDF) I cannot be bothered with the constant upgrades with features that I never need or use, security patches, and changing file formats that potentially could cost me 100s of $$ a year from M$

[Donnyboy]

wolf5370, on 2009-10-30 17:56:18, said:

Actually JB I have noticed in shopping malls and the cinema loos that that its mostly the farrangs (males as I don't tend to visit ladies loos much ) that walk out without visiting the hand basins. However, no one seems to use the dryers just their shirts!

those dryer things are useless!
why would anyone have their wet clean hands dried by a hot air blow dryer that requires the air intake from inside the restroom

[Donnyboy]

theres heaps of freeware out there if you look
some good stuff as well. It might not have all the bells and whistles, but it usually does the job

i think google is/has come out with some good stuff, havent they?

[Maejo Man]

Donnyboy, on 2009-11-02 10:20:57, said:

theres heaps of freeware out there if you look
some good stuff as well.

Yes there is most certainly, and I use a lot of it. Quite often they ask for a donation to keep it going, and if it works for me, I often send them five or ten dollars, as a thankyou.
Take a look, it's out there.

[thaimite]

Maejo Man, on 2009-11-02 10:31:27, said:

Donnyboy, on 2009-11-02 10:20:57, said:

theres heaps of freeware out there if you look
some good stuff as well.

Yes there is most certainly, and I use a lot of it. Quite often they ask for a donation to keep it going, and if it works for me, I often send them five or ten dollars, as a thankyou.
Take a look, it's out there.

In addition there are sites like http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ which give out selected software for free that would otherwise have to be paid for.
http://sourceforge.net/ is another great site for free and open source products which are generally very professional
Now I am changing over to Linux of course nearly all apps are free.

Edited by thaimite, 2009-11-02 10:56:05.

[sbk]

another great freeware site is nonags.com with an extensive list of freeware. Tucows.com also has a lot of freeware but you need to be sure to sort by license, same as download.com

[BlackArtemis]

Actually I believe there was a move to openoffice about the time I was leaving my job.

[SM7WGP]

Open office is far far better then MS Office.
I have a legal MS Office but never use it , Open Office has it all and more and its Free ware

[heazille]

Presumably, this is the same set up as the "music police"

IE No paperwork,no warrant,no receipt for the fine etc etc


Keep a camera charged and see how fast they run (cos the music police can sure move when a camera starts flashing )

Cheers
Richard

Edited by heazille, 2009-11-02 15:00:08.

[pj123]

WinnieTheKhwai, on 2009-10-29 16:46:55, said:

Tsss.. I agree with MM on something. Honestly I can vouch for Sao Chiang Mai. I also work in this industry myself, and while the CHANCE of a company being raided is small, if it does happen it will have VERY serious consequences, no matter how legit a company it is; it's VERY hard to prevent employees to load a copy of Adobe XYZwhatever if they feel they want it. Then they hit you for millions of baht.

I thought it was easy for a company to lock its pcs to make it impossible for employees to install their own software. I have worked for several organisations here and in the UK where you could not install software. One company even took the precaution of preventing USB flash drives and CD Roms from working.

[thaimite]

pj123, on 2009-11-04 09:54:00, said:

WinnieTheKhwai, on 2009-10-29 16:46:55, said:

Tsss.. I agree with MM on something. Honestly I can vouch for Sao Chiang Mai. I also work in this industry myself, and while the CHANCE of a company being raided is small, if it does happen it will have VERY serious consequences, no matter how legit a company it is; it's VERY hard to prevent employees to load a copy of Adobe XYZwhatever if they feel they want it. Then they hit you for millions of baht.

I thought it was easy for a company to lock its pcs to make it impossible for employees to install their own software. I have worked for several organisations here and in the UK where you could not install software. One company even took the precaution of preventing USB flash drives and CD Roms from working.

It can be done, and indeed it is done in many companies, but I have also worked in large organisations within Thailand (and elsewhere) where there are no controls at all. If the company sees fit to invest in a proper IT department and IT management software then they should have no problems, but unfortunately many see this as an unnecessasary expense, and these are often the same people who distribute illegal software to their employees.

Edited by thaimite, 2009-11-04 10:03:02.

[Gonzo the Face]

This post has been around approx a couple weeks now ...... and I am sure has made a few of us a bit uneasy.

BUT..... does anyone know first hand of any place in or around CM that has been hit ???

[elektrified]

heazille, on 2009-11-02 14:57:55, said:

Presumably, this is the same set up as the "music police"

IE No paperwork,no warrant,no receipt for the fine etc etc


Keep a camera charged and see how fast they run (cos the music police can sure move when a camera starts flashing )

Cheers
Richard

Not the same set up as the music police. They won't run. These guys are uniformed police from a special division that carry little computers that can check to see if the bar codes and other info are legit. We saw them questioning a seller of designer jeans who was in tears. One guy was inputting data from the tags on the jeans into the little hand-held computers. They confiscated about 4 large boxes of "Levi Strauss" jeans from her and shut her down.

They showed up at my friends business in Bangkok asking to see all the CD-ROMS and licenses of his Windows and Office software from his office computers. Fortunately his are all legit that he purchased in the USA. He said they were well educated and very thorough. They told him that the penalty is severe if you are caught - especially if you have a work permit and a Thai company.

[Greenside]

I know of a sign maker fined an undisclosed amount but forced to stop working and is now having to put legit copies of windows on five machines. They'd removed about half the computers from the premises but the boys in blue, brown or whatever the software police wear turned up before they were bullet proof. I think they now feel that they will be checked every time there's a crackdown so will be a lot more careful (or they might just buy the software they need to operate legally!).

[Gonzo the Face]

May be a stupid question, and I am not a computer geek by any means, but as an example ,,,,, say your computer crashed and you get a guy to fix it...... they reformat what has to be,,,,, how do you know if the reformatting was with legit copies..... or someone installs a new or bigger hard drive,,,,, how do you tell if the installed versions are legit?

Is there somewhere , when the computer is booting up, that this is able to be seen?

Sorry if it is a simple minded question,,,, but I do not know the answer

signed: simpleminded

[Mestizo]

Gonzo the Face, on 2009-11-05 10:19:04, said:

May be a stupid question, and I am not a computer geek by any means, but as an example ,,,,, say your computer crashed and you get a guy to fix it...... they reformat what has to be,,,,, how do you know if the reformatting was with legit copies..... or someone installs a new or bigger hard drive,,,,, how do you tell if the installed versions are legit?

Is there somewhere , when the computer is booting up, that this is able to be seen?

Sorry if it is a simple minded question,,,, but I do not know the answer

signed: simpleminded

Technically, it doesn't matter. The way I have seen these things work in the past (I've been working in IT for 10+ years now), is that all you really have to do is be able to produce a legit license. So if you ever were raided, as long as you have a legit paper license/ CD Key that came with the product when you bought it, you are OK.

This is especially important in enterprises that use things like Ghost to image a bunch of laptops. They all end up with the same license key. As long as you keep the paper copies of the keys that came with each laptop, you are ok.

As an enduser here, to ensure your Microsoft stuff is somewhat legit, you can try the WGA Validation tool.

http://en.wikipedia....nuine_Advantage

-Mestizo

[WinnieTheKhwai]

..however, if it's NOT somewhat legit, or if you upgrade enough hardware on an OEM license, then you eventually get locked out of Windows... Reasons I always avoided WGA like the plague. (Ok, often phone calls to Microsoft sort it out again after an upgrade, but it's just one hoop I don't particularly enjoy jumping through).

And like you said before, if you have the license key then you're in the clear.

WGA is a pretty controversial scheme.

Edited by WinnieTheKhwai, 2009-11-05 13:46:52.

[Sao Jiang Mai]

Yup, I know a couple of design businesses which were fined and a printer - the rest are all rumours at this point. What happened was the software association and a unit from the police in BKK came up for one week. They apparently gave many businesses a month's notice to purchase software licences, but I didn't receive notice for my company, hence the panic. At the end of the day if we don't buy the licences then we are breaking the law, so we have this morning decided to bite the bullet and buy all the licenced softwares for our office...it was wrong of me not to have it all fully licenced in the first place, but frankly it is really really really expensive and I can't see how everyone can afford it. Still, for peace of mind, I am glad we decided to do the right thing...and it is a lesson to myself to not take such illegal shortcuts. After all, I write about ethics in my magazine and I broke the law myself. So I am glad we decided to put it right. Even though the staff will not be getting a bonus this year! Apparently the unit has left Chiang Mai, but once again, rumours in the 'industry' (magazines, design companies, sign companies, media firms, etc.) are rife, and one doesn't know what to believe at this point.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

I would do a review of your actual software needs. Obviously SOME people need for example Photoshop, but others can probably get away with free alternatives. This applies to other software as well, such as MS Office for example; OpenOffice is free and gives you basically everything MS Office does.

I guess Photoshop and Illustrator and so on are the biggies in your business; while alternatives exist you would be taking a productivity hit to make people use alternatives. (Still, this may be an opton for some people in your office who don't do hard core graphics and layout)

[Gonzo the Face]

"Cream will rise to the top"

Thanks for that heads up Sao Jiang Mai .

Edited by Gonzo the Face, 2009-11-05 16:40:15.

[thaimite]

WinnieTheKhwai, on 2009-11-05 16:30:24, said:

I would do a review of your actual software needs. Obviously SOME people need for example Photoshop, but others can probably get away with free alternatives. This applies to other software as well, such as MS Office for example; OpenOffice is free and gives you basically everything MS Office does.

I guess Photoshop and Illustrator and so on are the biggies in your business; while alternatives exist you would be taking a productivity hit to make people use alternatives. (Still, this may be an opton for some people in your office who don't do hard core graphics and layout)

After you are sure all your PC's are 100 legit, don't forget to seek advice about locking down the system so as employees cannot install their own 'versions' and land you in trouble.