[World Leader Pretend]

In a recent online article on Yahoo!, hackers have been finding a different type of warning against piracy; poetry.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060217/...hacker_warning

One instance of the embedded poems read: "Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc."

Pretty strange, but also sort of cool. I know of similar things in Darwin when entering stuff on the system level, a funny message about "with great power comes great responsibility" and other more casual feedback will show up.

Someone on the inside has a sense of humor.

Comments?

[BlueRabbit]

Originally Posted by World Leader Pretend Pretty strange, but also sort of cool. I know of similar things in Darwin when entering stuff on the system level, a funny message about "with great power comes great responsibility" and other more casual feedback will show up.

Actually, that shows up every time you use sudo in Terminal.

[PKIDelirium]

Um, I don't get that on Sudo...

[Brad]

It only happens the first time (ever, for a particular user) you use it.

[scratt]

Slightly off topic....

These fears about the OS being pirated seem pretty unfounded in my view, which probably explains why Apple have been pretty lax (up until now) on enforcing IP rules on people like the os86x site.. I guess the recent activities against these sites is because Apple must do something, rather than appear complacent and leave themselves open to legal arguments to that effect in the future, should they need to take action.

If you think about it people constantly say that putting OSX onto PeeCees as a legal operating system will bog Apple down in the same problems that have dogged M$ for years, and still do.. The plethora of different hardware flavours out there..

The very arguement that Dvorak (pillock) uses to justify Apple moving to Windows for an operating system (i.e. Let Windoze at a lower level worry about supporting all the wierd configurations of hardware) undermines the premise that OS X will get ripped and spread accross the PeeCee using fraternity.

I myself have experimented with a version of OSX86 on a compatible PeeCee and it was a great deal of work to get it to run, and in any case was sadly lacking in features..

I just don't think there will ever be the market for this because of the above simple facts. Therefore I think we will find that Apple's methods to combat OS piracy will not be overly energetic, and these little reminders in the OS in the form of text messages, are there to enforce and remind people of their right to the IP..

Just my 2c

EDIT : It has oft been said that Apple doesn't care too much about piracy of software as most of it's stuff requires the purchase of Apple hardware to run, which is what they care about selling.. Heck they give away their OS with their machines.
This is not going to change any time soon, and even in the last couple of years Apple has only made pretty ineffective efforts to prevent piracy of it's entire range of software.

There is even a school of thought that Apple leaves it's software open to piracy so that people that want the toys but can only afford the hardware will still buy their machines in the knowledge that they can get the software elsewhere. I think if we see Apple protecting it's software to any greater degree than it does today then with the small market share they have we will see a much more significant loss on their bottom line than would say affect M$.

[intlplby]

Dr. Suess works at apple..... Steve Jobs and him are related