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Filed under: Business, Internet, Windows, Microsoft

Counterfeit software dealers beware, Microsoft is on your tail

microsoft counterfeit legalToday Microsoft said that it had 55 legal cases started with dealers that have been accused of selling counterfeit software online. Microsoft said that this is the highest number of shakedowns to date, hitting the US, Germany, Netherlands, France, Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Korea, Mexico and Poland.

Online sellers of the counterfeit Microsoft materials have been using eBay and auction sites to sell the materials. This is an extremely pressing issue for Microsoft--not only are they loosing money, but the software in question could be defective and potentially hazardous to users, leaving backdoors open for possible security breaches and identity thefts. Our friends at Microsoft investigated these counterfeit applications and found that 43% actually contained additional programs and code that is not part of the actual operating system! Wow! I know that Microsoft's software can be rather expensive at times, but is it really worth dealing with all the hassle counterfeit software can bring? Especially nowadays when we live online, and do practically everything on the World Wide Web including banking and purchasing. Pretty spooky stuff!

Filed under: Design, Photo, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe

How to scan money in Photoshop

Scanning money in
PhotoshopPhotoshop has a charming "feature" that prevents you from importing images of money. It's an anti-counterfeiting measure of dubious value, and if you're a designer who wants to make fair use of images of money in a piece, the restriction is a huge pain. Fortunately, there's a way around it, as described by Deke McClelland in this video at O'Reilly's Digital Media blog. It's a really easy trick that basically boils down to this: Every version of Photoshop comes with ImageReady. ImageReady doesn't have any anti-counterfeiting technology, and Photoshop implicitly trusts anything ImageReady sends its way. Presto!

[Via Boing Boing]

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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