Yarrr!

I had to give a stern lecture to the new guy this afternoon regarding our company's policy on unlicensed (pirated) software. Basically, our stance is: Under no circumstances should pirated software be installed on any of our systems. This has been reiterated at least twice a week to no avail. It's not rocket science, people.

This lecture came after I left my XP workstation unattended for a couple of days and found it loaded up with stacks of software upon my return. He rebutted by saying the software he installed is a "corporate edition" and therefore doesn't need a license. That's like saying, if it's not bolted down, it's free.

So in order to clarify our policy to him, I updated our definition of pirated software. If the software is downloaded from:

• a warez site
• P2P file sharing applications (Kazaa, Limewire, etc. etc.)
• Newsgroups
• Bittorrents

- then it's probably pirated and shouldn't be installed. The blank expression on his face says that I'm going to have to repeat this lecture again.