Double OT: Huskies beat Beavers in a nail-biter last night.

Microsoft Does Good: Reports recently revealed that lawyers retained by Microsoft were supporting law enforcement efforts to investigate advocacy groups by using software piracy as a pretext to suppress dissent. In response, the company will be providing 500,000 free software licenses to groups from China, Russia, and ten other countries.

Iran Ready For Nuke Talks: But Ahmadinejad isn’t ready to give up his nuclear program, according to official Iranian press.

Don’t Eat Your Vegetables: Frozen are veggies recalled after glass fragments are discovered in the packaging.

Australia’s First Saint: Sister Mary MacKillop was a rabble-rousing Catholic nun who co-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart in 1867.

Two in Hospital After Capitol Hill Apartment Fire: Two men in their 20’s were sent to Harborview for smoke inhalation after a fire in a building on the 300 block of Harvard Avenue East.

Facebook Will Save Your Life: A two year old girl was diagnosed with cancer by a family friend who spotted her retinoblastoma in a picture on Facebook.

No Social Security COLA: For the second year in a row, Social Security benefits will not be adjusted for inflation.

13 replies on “The Morning News”

  2. Actually they did a lot of good, borderline amazing. PR that is.

    Google up “Russia software piracy rate” and the same for China. These numbers are extremely generous.

    M$FT isn’t making any money off of these countries. All software, no matter how DRM-laden it may be, will be cracked and pirated within a week of coming out. Usually weeks before it comes out if it’s something big from a big publisher. If you’re at the point of needing a computer to express your dissent for your topic of choice, you can easily find a pirated copy of XP and Office 2003 in any of these countries.

    So MS turned lemons into lemonade and got a surprisingly amount of good PR. A company whose entire management is probably dumping cash into Rossi’s pockets and strongly opposed to 1098 got props on Slog. That takes skill. All because what they did sounds perfect on paper, until you realize it’s totally pointless.

  5. In my little anti-MS rant I totally forgot you could get everything for free legitimately! Thanks for reminding me #3. Way to tie these dissenters into closed-box, proprietary, for-profit computing solutions, MS.

  6. Though I agree with part of what @2 is saying (software licenses don’t cost MS a thing as they don’t make money in those countries anyway due to rampant piracy), the point is that MS is removing itself as a tool for these repressive governments to use as a pretense for more repression of critical organizations. Think of it less as a gift of software and more of a modification of their human rights/corporate responsability/don’t be dicks policy (yes, they have one).

    Of course, it is also incredible PR, and requires little effort on their part, but if it results in less dissident organizations being harrassed, not to mention imprisoned, I’m all for it. I’m sure they did the numbers and declared this course of action a “win-win.” I’d have to agree.

    Also, yes to @3. (I swear, Bailo, free/open source/libre software is probably the only thing about which I’ll ever agree with you.)

  8. Australia has its first Saint, or as a rational person would say “the world’s biggest cult just decreed a woman from Australia had magic powers.” Too bad she wasn’t around to try for The Amazing Randi’s million dollars.

  10. @9: Oh how I wish, Vince. But as evident by the fact this is somehow still considered news, this type of thinking is still so 21st century.

  12. At least no one is (are they?) cutting SS benefits yet. I honestly think that might be next for those folks.

    My Seattle-area non-profit office team had a 7% pay cut last year (as well as 68 million bucks cut from national health coverage (30,000 employees total) sending premiums and co-pays up, up, up!

    Another office of my organization, also in Washington State, had a 15% pay cut to get in line with the changes mandated by national.

    We were promised that it was a one-year thing.

    So imagine our surprise when paycheck amounts didn’t return to their 2008 levels as expected at the start of the fiscal year in July and our CEO said, “oh, didn’t we tell you? National decided that the paycut was permanent. But there might be a small COLA increase NEXT July if this year goes really well.”

    I guess the lesson of the new economy has to be, be grateful for what you can cling on to.

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