MSCEO Steve Ballmer is not happy about low sales of Windows Vista. Rather than blame the lack of drivers, and various other problems facing Vista, he blames the tech industry's favorite scapegoat: pirates. The pirates did it! WTF! ... Sorry Steve, we're not buying Vista because it's still not ready, not because we pirated it :-)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has told Wall Street analysts that the company might "dial up" the intensity of antipiracy technology baked into Windows Vista as part of an effort to squeeze more revenue from China, India, Brazil, Russia and other emerging markets. Ballmer's comments came during a conference call with financial analysts in which he repeatedly hammered home the theme that sales forecasts for Windows -- Vista in particular -- have been "overly optimistic."  One way Microsoft can bump up Windows sales is to tighten the screws on pirates, Ballmer said. "Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we'll make some piracy improvements this year."

Last fall, when Microsoft announced details of Windows Genuine Advantage in Vista -- which included new counterfeit-sniffing software as well as the crippling or disabling of important features such as the built-in antispyware protection and the Aero interface in bogus copies of the operating system -- the company took heat from both users and analysts. It appears that Ballmer doesn't agree, for he hinted that Vista's antipiracy features might be tightened even more. "We [will] really ferret through how far we can dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer satisfaction," he said. In other comments during the hour-long call, he repeated the promise that Microsoft would not again make the mistake of taking half a decade developing the next Windows. "We won't go five years again, I promise, between big Windows releases," he said.