I know someone who had a Yugo and wanted to get rid of it, since he couldn't sell it--nobody wanted it. So he drove it to a rather rough area of downtown Chicago, left it unlocked with the keys in it, and walked away, hoping to get the insurance money for a theft.

He came back a week later, and it was still there, untouched. A week later, still there. Someone who had seen him leave it there stopped him and asked, "Why did you leave that thing in our neighborhood?" He explained his idea, and the resident responded, "Why would anyone want to steal that? 

So last week, Microsoft announced that, by their estimations, Windows Vista is being pirated about half as much as Windows XP was. They claim that it's because of Vista's improved anti-piracy software, but I've used Vista and XP and would prefer XP any day. The automatic mouse click "feature" alone is enough to drive me to downgrade. To me, anti-piracy software on Vista is like theft protection on an old Yugo.

To further confuse the situation, Microsoft has decided that Vista Service Pack 1 will have nagging alerts to encourage pirates to pay for it. Microsoft has also made it easy for pirates by reducing the price, allowing them to get Vista Home Premium for $119, which is 50% off the original price.

Stop and think about that one. If you go to the seedier sides of the internet, download a pirated copy of Vista, and install it, you can then pay for a legal copy for $119, but if you're a law-abiding citizen and buy it legally, you pay $240 ($218 from Amazon) or, if you're upgrading from XP, $160 ($145 from Amazon). While we're not encouraging piracy or any other kind of illegal activity, this is a perfect example of copy protection encouraging people to become criminals.

In my experience, Vista doesn't encourage criminal activity just because I like XP better, and while I understand Microsoft saying, "Fine, if you're not willing to pay full price, how about we knock off 50%? We'll take what we can get," 50% off the price of a lemon is still not a good deal.