Topic: Software piracy falls in UK

[Clive]

Levels of software piracy in the UK remain at an "unacceptable level", according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

That's despite the fact that piracy in the UK actually fell in 2007. However, it only dropped by one per cent, to 26 per cent, the BSA said.

"The fact remains that an unacceptable level of UK organisations still flout software licensing regulations," said Julie Strawson, chair of the BSA UK Member Committee.

The BSA said that using unlicenced software, many companies were unable to get vital security updates for products. This could have serious consequences, it warned.

"By using software illegally, businesses are undermining the software industry - a massive revenue generator for the UK – and also putting themselves at risk of losing data and incurring both financial penalties and serious damage to reputation," Strawson continued.

www.bsa.org

[sam]

guess we are all slowly moving to open source??

[Simon]

Talking of which, I installed Open Office on my new PC, but I found it wasn't fully compatible with my existing Excel documents, and as I have five years of accounts in this format, I had to revert to MS Office.  Problem was, it insisted on displaying zero amounts as £0.00, instead of a blank space, and I couldn't find a way to stop it doing so.  Also, it's a shame it doesn't include a calendar, but I'm using Mozilla Sunbird, which is open source, and works very well.

[sam]

hmm, that seems odd that it is compatible... if you give me more specifics I might be able to help (are you using the latest version?). Are we just talking about the zero amounts or other issues (the file format?)? You can change the formatting.

[Simon]

No, it's just zero amounts, Sam.  Say, on a blank invoice template, I have 5 entries, all of £10.  Well, the £10 displays as £10.00, and the total displays correctly at the bottom, but then you get the rest of the amount column filled up with £0.00, which looks messy, and not how the template was created.

[sam]

hmmm... I'll have a think, you may just need to tweak the template a little.

[Simon]

TBH, it's not worth a lot of hassle, Sam, as I have MS Office installed now, but it would be interesting to find out what the problem was.  The trouble is, fixing it on the blank template would be OK for future invoices, but it would still leave me with 5 years worth of previous records, which wouldn't display properly.

[Sandra]

Looks like its ideal for dodgy accounting Simon, its always handy to have a program that calculates your profit as £0.00 for tax purposes 

[Reno]

[sam]

Looks like its ideal for dodgy accounting Simon, its always handy to have a program that calculates your profit as £0.00 for tax purposes 

lol

[sam]

now give me your gold!

[Simon]

Looks like its ideal for dodgy accounting Simon, its always handy to have a program that calculates your profit as £0.00 for tax purposes 

I wish it did, Sandra!