Surfing with an Eye-Patch

In one drinking session with a criminal law professor and my classmate who was his undergrad and DnD buddy a conversation arose:

Classmate: Sir, excited na ako na mag-recit ulit sa class mo

Sir: Anung crime gusto mong i-recite?

Classmate: Piracy sir

Sir: Sige nga, what are the elements of piracy?

Classmate: Simple lang sir, the elements of piracy are three P's:

1. Parrot
2. Peg-leg
3. (eye) Patch

As such the conversation transpired before I spaced out.

I always regarded copying digital content as a form of protest, of sticking it to The Man. Until they decided to install Linux in the computer labs in AS, I guess some battles must not be chosen. I thought of having a computer with all-freeware but that's just not practical like some stands on seeming principle.

Here's my confession. My laptop's OS is licensed, which seemed to not be a very good idea to the service person I consulted regarding hardware drivers for my laptop which I have apparently been using for two months without enjoying its independent graphics card and excellent speakers.

The license however, belongs to a multinational company a friend of my brother is working with, and this particular license costs around 35K, according to the service person. I remembered the old Vista Media Edition installed on my laptop and realized that one fundamental difference is that I could never update it. Upon installing this new licensed software I was eager to find out how wonderful updating my OS would be.

I was disappointed. There is 101 updates every so often and the only thing it does for me is make my laptop blink once while in the heat of playing Civilization 4. It's not at all convenient.

So now I come to the usual cost-benefit analysis of the situation. The main criteria for me was convenience. This new OS is not as convenient or seamless in operation than what I remember of the unlicensed one. I have found a new hobby in torrents where I download most movies and even the expansion for Civ4 which is part of the reason while this entry is a bit late.

Up until and unless the system would admit of the Lenonnist "best things in life are free" system, I realized that in line with convenience, the criteria should be "whatever works best for you." I also realized that to a pirate, everything is free. And should freeware be the wave of the future, the "pirates" of the present could just simply be well ahead of the legal times.

While thinking of the end to this entry, I came up with a solution: I just turned the automatic updating off.