From the actual reports, it looks like two directors were done for allowing counterfeit goods to be sold on their market sites and the rest were traders who rented stalls there, hardly "staff"

They should have also been required to change their name. Wendy UnFair Markets Ltd would obviously be much more appropriate.

When will Trading standards issue warrants and investigate the blatant theft by MS everytime we pay 300+ for Vista when it isnt' anything near that in America.

One price for them and one for us... Despite Bill and his "exchange rates."

We don't like pirates, they get in the way of converting people to the good side and using proper operating systems.

Unless u want to play games ........

"Or like a grammer checker."

Or like a spell checker...

"[snip] Open Office. It does all I need, with an interface that's familiar, license thats acceptable and a format that belongs to us all and not a megacompany.

"These days there is no excuse at all for pirating M$ stuff, unless your just plain thick!"

Yes, I see that I'm thick for using MS Office, while your [sic] plainly quite intelligent, for an OO user. Now, I'm a huge proponent of open-source software, and I use quite a lot of it myself (I'm in love with my Firefox extensions). However:

I would never consider seriously using OpenOffice. I work as a professional proofreader and editor and there are many of the features of Microsoft Office which are either unique to it or much, much better than in OO.

1) lots of Betas. I need something which is broken or inferior in the current version, and I can't be sure that it'll be fined in the next one - never mind (sometimes major) changes to the UI and core system.

2) lack of features. Sure there's a way around them, but I don't want to spend ages doing the 'way around' when I have a one- or two-click solution in MS Office.

3) lock-in/export. Exporting and format of exports is sadly not very good between OOo and, well, anything else. And a lot of my clients use MS Office; I really need to keep document layout and formatting the same; I don't want to have to worry about pointless layout problems.

4) change auditing. Due to the nature of my industry, I need these sort of collaboration tools which OOo just doesn't provide. Ahh, proofing tools.

5) lack of localisation. This is done in OOo on a voluntary and completely random development basis - unless you are happy to stick with enUS, which surprisingly, a lot of people in the world don't find to be their mother tongue.

6) yes it's open source and yes it's free, as in beer - but that just means that I'm not paying for reliable, helpful customer support. I have no assurances that my problems will be dealt with.

7) it's slow to load. I work with deadlines. 'Nuff said.

8) it's customisable. You can fix and/or report bugs yourself. But that's not really a good thing, because most people lack either a) the time, b) the inclination, or c) the knowledge:

From the Guardian:

---

"The myth of open source rests on two improbable assumptions. The first is that a significant proportion of users can fix bugs. That is true at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the concept of open source was first formalised in the 1980s by Richard Stallman and others, and it is true in some of the geekier corners of the internet. But on programs intended for use by the non-programming public, it's a very different story.

"This is important because of the second crucial false assumption: that even if not all users can fix a bug, they can help find them. They can't. Most users just think: "The computer isn't doing what I want."

---

Now, I could keep going on but I'll stop there. While OOo/the open source movement in general is a wonderful thing, please don't fall into the bad habit of Linux and Apple fanbois and do cut-and-paste rants. Try to keep an open and objective mind. I don't particularly like Microsoft (from a business and ethical point of view) but there's nothing wrong with thier post-XP products (XPSP2, Office 2003) which have worked well and consistently ever since I started using them. A lot of the bias against Microsoft actually isn't well thought-out and comes simply from ignorance, the reputation of past incarnations (I'm sure we all remember Windows ME), and jumping on the it's-cool-to-hate-Microsoft bandwagon. That sort of shallow ignorance is what will really end up destroying the open-source scene - how many of you Microsoft-haters actively work for or program open-source projects?

I believe the original poster said that "there is no excuse for pirating office" because of OO. If you are an "professional proofreader" (which is hard to beleive, considering how poorly you read the original post) then you can afford the latest copy of Office.

However your overly long (and partially incorrect) analysis of OO, followed by your clear distaste for Open Source software, points to you being a Microsoft Employee/Fellow Traveller rather than someone with a genuine point to make.

For the home user, who needs to be able to use simple documents that get set to them by people with Word, OO does a pretty good job. Some things it does (in my opinion) better than word, some things it is not so good (as you have pointed out).

As far as "cut n paste fanboi rants" go, it would appear that you have cornered the market so far on this thread.