Well who woulda thunk it:  Vista sales are below expectations, and pirates are to blame!  <cough>RIGHT.</cough>  An article by Nick Farrell reveals Steve Ballmer's sadly funny reaction to disappointing Vista sales:  it's those darn software pirates!  The solution?  Tighten up the piracy controls aka Windows Genuine Advantage!  More activations!  Call in the product keys!

It'll be interesting to see what the next response is once that's been done and it still doesn't improve sales--could be Osama Bin Laden activating pirated copies from his cave to undermine the US economy, or aliens be setting out to destroy Microsoft?  Or maybe, just MAYBE, nobody cares about their operating system any longer?  I'll almost guarantee the number of Vista sales closely parallels the number of new PC sales from here on out, simply because there is no longer any compelling reason to upgrade an operating system:  the Internet is THE reason to own a computer, and it works just fine on XP or a Mac (or Linux, if they ever start selling it at mainstream retailers, which would pretty much shoot Microsoft in the head).

Oh, but they have a solution for that too.  Says Ballmer:  "We won't go five years again, I promise, between big Windows releases"  So the solution is to continue churning out irrelevant software, but FASTER now.  That'll teach them pirates.  If it wasn't for the XBox 360, I'd be shorting Microsoft stock right about now.