"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

a trip to staples
June 19, 2005 - 5:37 pm

what i was looking for doesn't matter, but while browsing i overheard two staples people talking to a customer about troubles the customer was having with her computer.

basically, she needed to be able to run the lastest version of excel, but her computer didn't have excel and had some old ass version of windows (i think).

the staples folk basically counseled her to buy a new pc, but to wait until august when the school kiddies would be buying and she could get a better price OR to contact her company (she worked at home it seems) and ask them to supply her with a new pc and/or the software she needs. fair enough.

the lady said something about buying used software on line.. and this is really where i started to pay attention. one staples person said that was a bad idea (i tend to agree) and then related a story where a friend actually got a cease and desist letter (really getting my attention) and the friend ignored the letter (never a good idea).. and the friend's harddrive was shortly fried -- the implication of the story was that microsoft fried the friend's harddrive.

now, on a common sense level i call bullshit. however, i used to work for the software police (as we were sometimes called) for microsoft and know for a fact that microsoft does not (and probabaly can not) fry your harddrive.

first, from the common sense side.. think about it for a moment. sure, microsoft has a right to say how you can and can not use their software. you may think you own word or windows, but really you just license it.. remember that thing you had to click "agree" on before the program would work? that's the license agreement. you really should read one sometime, kinda intereting.

anyway, if microsoft fried your harddrive.. that means microsoft destroyed your property -- for you do indeed own the harddrive and probably some info/data contained on it. if microsoft did fry your drive, you'd be able to sue the shit out of them. microsoft can sue you to stop you from using illegal copies of their software, but they can't destroy your property willy-nilly.

make sense?

so i hung around for a bit and caught up to the staples lady who told the story.. and told her that was, at best, an urban legend. she went into some detail about her friend who got the letter --- and on a sidenote, if he was, as she said, running this on a home machine, he musta done something really extraordinary to catch the attention of microsoft. in fact, i'm sort at a loss for what he could have done.. though perhaps he was selling copies of what he installed or got his hands on company license or soemthing. i don't know, but it wasn't just your average joe paying for/installing a junk copy of software.

so we went round and round.. and i explained what i used to do.. and went into some detail, but not too much, about how licenses work.. and her eyes glazed and she shrugged just like i knew she would.

in short, the guy's harddrive dying was either due to chance.. or from some virus from some other piece of illegal software he installed.

if microsoft did fry harddrives this would be national news and we'd all know it.

yet again.. i'm amazed at the ability for people to take bizarre stories and accept them as fact.