Pirated Windows XP Professional Edition, Office To Get “Black Screened” Beginning Oct 20, 2008

News or not news? If you use pirated Microsoft tools to get work done (which is really bad for you, karma-wise, even if it is the “evil empire”), you could be in for — a major hammering.

Or major inconvenience-ing, rather. If you continue to use these pirated tools on and beyond October 20, 2008, you’ll be treated to a totally black desktop every 60 minutes. You will, of course, be able to resurrect this by changing your desktop pic, but that’s going to be a lot of electronic fumbling about.

Furthermore, you’ll be subject to near-permanent warnings down at your taskbar. Oddly enough, all of this will happen without breaking your Windows system.

Even scarier is the idea of being sued en masse. Turns out if you’ve done Internet-based upgrades to your Windows system, they already know what you’re using. However, Microsoft China has already announced that they’ll not be suing the masses.

The easy way out, of course, is to disable the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and OGA (Office Genuine Advantage) apps and AutoUpdate this instant.

But why would you want to do that? What’s wrong with using non-pirated software?

(We might like to remark, though, that fully legit Microsoft software is still on the expensive side in China — CNY 1,000 to CNY 1,500. People don’t earn as much PRC-side as they do State-side…)

Sources: Local (with reference to Sohu IT)