Starting Wednesday, users with pirated copies of Microsoft Corp’s Windows XP Professional operating system (OS) on machines that are Internet-capable could find their computer displays going black and with no screen icons visible.

There are 8.6 million users of Win XP Pro in Malaysia and about three million are expected to suffer the “blackouts,” according to Microsoft Malaysia.

To continue working, the user would need to reset the machine’s desktop background. Everything will return to normal. But when 60 minutes are up, the black screen will reappear and the user must go through the whole process again.

This will keep happening until the user licenses the copy of Win XP Pro on the machine by going to a Microsoft reseller or getting a licence online at the www.microsoft.com/malaysia/genuine. Each licence costs RM580.

This initiative is part of Microsoft’s antipiracy campaign, dubbed Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), aimed at educating users on the benefits of using genuine software, K.T. Ng, Microsoft Malaysia’s director of client business group, told The Star on Tuesday.

Win XP Professional was chosen for the antipiracy blitz because it is the most pirated version of Microsoft’s Win XP operating system. The other version is Windows XP Home, which is for home users.

This is the second time that Microsoft is needling users of pirated copies of its operating system to go legitimate. Two years ago, it sprang its WGA initiative on local users of Win XP Pro and Win XP Home.

That time, a pop-up message showed up whenever the PC with a pirated Windows OS was switched on, with the intention of shaming business and home users into getting legitimate copies. The message said “This copy of Windows is not genuine.”

It was quite successful. At that time, there were about 5.1 million pirated copies of Windows XP Pro and after the exercise, about two million of the copies were validated, said Microsoft Malaysia.

“We are encouraged by that response,” said Ng. “So this time, we have escalated the penalty to a black screen that reappears every hour until the user validates his or her copy of Win XP Pro.”

Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, chief executive officer of Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), lauded the WGA campaign.

MDeC is caretaker of the country’s MSC Malaysia initiative, which is working to build up the nation’s knowledge economy.

“MDeC respects the rights of companies to protect their intellectual property. It’s a reminder that software piracy doesn’t pay, especially when Malaysians are themselves putting a lot of effort into creating original software,” he said.

source = TheStar

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Hello dudes and dudettes..
Well, I’m not really a fond of Windows Live Messenger but I’m holding an account there which I have been using since 1998..And I dont want to lose it..hehe..So I keep it for my Windows Live Messenger ID - at least the account will not get expired anywhere near..I logged in today and found out that all of a sudden, the all this while stingy MSN have become so generous that they are now offering a whopping 5GB of e-mail space..Well, before, it was just 1GB so that’s a huge leap..And if you do have money and really loev Windows Live Messenger, you can pay $15USD/yr for another 5GB so that’ll total up to 10GB..
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But well, thanks to MSN for giving out another 4GB to us though..At least those who are the die-hard fans of Windows Live will be thankful to them Cheers~
ShahZ

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