How do you combat software theft? Give it away for free.

Microsoft recently announced that anyone in China who has a copy of the Windows 7 Operating System (and up), legitimate or illegitimate, will be able to upgrade for free to the new Windows 10 version. The estimated number of users, who would be able to take the advantage of this offer, would be in the hundreds of millions!

Why would Microsoft do such a crazy thing as giving their operating system away for free?

Microsoft is moving thing to cloud – I know, I am stating the obvious here – and they not the first to do it. Well it turns out that having things in cloud makes it very difficult for a would be thief to use it without either previously registering or paying for it. Also with the free version of the Windows operating system, Microsoft will be able to push ‘upgrades’ to the end user much faster.

Windows 10 is intended to serve as a unifying platform for all the hardware devices Microsoft has introduced (or will in near future) so in providing this free upgrade it will ensure that the migration from on-device to in-cloud is done as quickly as possible.

The dog days of pirated software are slowly coming to the end.

Trending this week …

This week brought us some interesting, note-worthy articles and news:

  • Do you remember, last week, we reported that Uber (the non-taxi company) had a security breach and 50,000 of the driver’s records were stolen (http://g3t.ca/47ERoy ). The troubles are coming as fast as fast the company is growing. Uber got banned in Germany, its executives are sued for running illegal operation in South Korea, Uber office was raided in Paris by, what was described as SWAT team ( http://g3t.ca/8Ve5d3 ). The other challenge is coming from Lyft, which just raised $530 million dollars and is ready to eat into the Uber’s US market –> http://g3t.ca/UWkg8R
  • What do you call a guy, who is on his 9th credit card in few month and all of them were already compromised? Some, even before he received them!! –> http://g3t.ca/IyRxWe
  • IBM is venturing to Bitcoin. Not the ‘currency’, but the technology. It plans to offer secure, fast transfer of money among interested parties in major currencies –> http://g3t.ca/2tM4M8
  • What kind of wheels do you have to build for the fastest car on Earth? The ones, which won’t explode at 1000mph and will spin at 10,500RPM –> http://g3t.ca/yW6PPt
  • Are we in for digital cat fight? We will see. Microsoft is planning to release its digital assistant Cortana on iPhones and Android phones. Maybe, just maybe, Siri and Cortana will have nice chat when nobody will be listening –> http://g3t.ca/YMoqST
  • Blackberry, Secusmart, IBM, Samsung – these are the companies behind the ultra secure tablet. The target market are government agencies and senior executives, or anybody who doesn’t want their data be compromized –> http://g3t.ca/M6OFvz
  • Biorobotics researchers have developed the first aerial robot able to fly over uneven terrain that is stabilized visually without an accelerometer. Called BeeRotor, it adjusts its speed and avoids obstacles thanks to optic flow sensors inspired by insect vision. It can fly along a tunnel with uneven, moving walls without measuring either speed or altitude. –> http://g3t.ca/q5HElj
  • Check out even more trending topics here –> http://g3t.ca/Gubr8w

The past future is here…

In case you missed any of the past issues. Here is the complete archive: http://g3t.ca/GB1jPs