Hi there
I'm sure they do.
What about the FBI or Hollywood CEO's -- do you think they logon to Torrentfreak or even download torrents themselves for all sorts of purposes. I'm sure they do.
It's not even unknown for company staff to "Pirate" their own software or leak info about it enabling others to design bypass hacks etc etc.
There is currently a court case pending of an "Agent Provocateur" type where it's being alleged that Hollywood itself uploaded a DVD screener of the Jack Reacher movie. - DVD screeners usually have some sort of unique identifier as these are given out in advance of the cinema release for publicity etc and the distribution is quite carefully controlled. Of course some of these do make it to torrent sites.
It appears that an uploader was a Hollywood "Insider" alleging they were doing this to "entrap" illegal downloaders.
Now apart from the pretty dreadful film (OK YMMV but I love the novels --the film was horrible BTW -- and I didn't get it from a torrent) using these types of tactics in our part of the world immediately renders an instant dismissal of any case where this type of evidence is used on behalf of the prosecution. - It might seem a "legit" way to catch criminals -- but the logic is the crime should be entirely pre-mediated. Almost coercing people into committing a crime and then arresting them -- No Go here. Slightly different rules apply for "Shop lifting" etc.
I'm sure the Vatican logs on to Al Jazeera etc --why not --always pays to know what "The opposition" is thinking or how their mind set works. I know it's true also the other way around.
So I'd suspect that a lot of Ms people DO read these Forums (hopefully not for malevolent purposes).
Remember that Work PC's are essentially a diminishing sale -- especially as more and more are going the "Bring your own Route" and those that don't are replacing workstations with company laptops.
The whole nature of what you have to do at work with a computer is also changing -- there really isn't much I can't do at work using a Windows 8 PC compared with a Windows 7 one -- once I've logged on to the work VPN / servers (one is still XP the other W7) the desktop looks and behaves exactly like XP / W7 -- All W8 needs is basically a start up script after boot to automatically start the login process to your VPN.
I'm lucky -- at work I have a "Bring your own" policy --I've tried both W7 and W8 -- I really have no probs connecting to our VPN's with the W8 machine --difficulty is IMO GROSSLY overdone.
I can't see what's hard about that or what major change do you need in the way you work.
Whether you LIKE or DISLIKE the new GUI isn't the issue here - some will like it others will hate it - but as people have pointed out you cam make W8 look and behave almost exactly to W7 with a little bit of work. What Ms needs to do is to allow people to organise their workspaces EASILY -- for example it's a wee pain being able to pin an application ICON to the desktop --you need a little backdoor method to do it whereas in W7 this could be done straight from the menu ==>sent to desktop (create short cut).
In W8 you have to get into search the application, then from the start screen right mouse click to get the bottom screen set of options, then chose open file location, then right mouse click on the .exe pgm and then choose send to desktop --a bit cumbersome compared with W7 to achieve the same result - but you only need to do it once.
Cheers
jimbo
Thanks Jimbo, seems like I am a dying breed then, I don't work in a company, I am more or less a one woman band, but I do use my powerful desktop PC for all kinds of activities. I cannot do on my laptop what I can do on my desktop, things like graphic work, video editing, and hefty document publishing. And as you say maybe in the future Microsoft (I reserve the MS inititials for the disease Multiple Sclerosis which features prominently in my family) will resurrect some of the more useful aspects of Vista and 7.