Microsoft is a software pirate!

Microsoft is a software pirate!
Oooh! I simply love this one! PC Welt (a German magazine) carries this amazing article titled "Did Microsoft use Warez for Windows XP?". For the uninitiated warez refers to pirated / cracked illegal copies of software. You can read the original article in German here or the English version here.

In a nutshell, someone at Microsoft used pirated software to make some of the audio files for the Windows Media Player tour. What's ironic is that Microsoft, the quintessential retailer of proprietary "closed source" software and a rabid anti-piracy advocate has been caught in the act of using a pirated copy of a US $400 audio encoding software.

And don’t take my word for it, see for yourself: -

Open notepad in Windows.
Select open and goto your Windows Directory (usually C:\Windows\).
Open the "Help" sub-directory.
Open the "Tours" sub-directory.
Open the "WindowsMediaPlayer" sub-directory.
Open the "Audio" sub-directory.
Open the "Wav" sub-directory.
Select any one of those files.

Instead of playing them in MediaPlayer or any other audio software, open the file in Notepad. Now scroll all the way to the bottom.

See those strings "SoundForge 4.5" and "Deepz0ne"? Yep, this means that the file was created with a cracked version of Soundforge, cracked by a cracker called Deepz0ne. Good show Microsoft! Always knew we could rely on you guys for ethical business practices!
source:http://www.pcwelt.de/start/sicherheit/sonstiges/praxis/104830/gotcha_did_microsoft_use_warez_for_windows_xp/index.html
http://www.abhijeetsingh.com/blog/archives/archive_2006-m07.php